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Insidethe new home of Byron’s youngest cubs
Including photos and features on district buildings
2 SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2016
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•Page 2
Greetings!
It is with great pride that I write this letter as we prepare for the grand opening of the Byron Primary School. I am also so honored and thankful to serve the Byron School District as your Superintendent.
On March 14, 2014, the Byron School District residents approved the funding to build our new primary school to serve our preschool through 2nd grade students. Thanks to the hard work and a dedication to our youth, the Byron School District community continues to put education as a top priority. As I overlook our new building, I am awestruck by the countless hours spent by design teams, construction workers and community volunteers that have put their heart and soul into this building. The building is a shining star of beauty and innovation that will lead our students well into the 22nd century.
The Byron Public Schools is a proven leader in education and will continue to lead with a supportive community that truly believes and is driven by a mission to Learn, Share, Innovate and Inspire.
Go Bears!
Sincerely,
Jeffrey S. ElstadSuperintendent of SchoolsByron Public Schools
Byron Independent School District No. 531 630 1st Avenue NW · Byron, MN 55920
Phone 507-775-2383 · Fax 507-775-2385
All photos used in the layout of this magazine were taken by Byron native Chris
Douglas. Articles and design were done by Mitch George.
POST-BULLETIN•www.PostBulletin.comSATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2016 3
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• MADONNA SUMMIT OF BYRON
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Personalizing learning is important once students advance into their education; however, it is crucial to provide similar oppor-tunities to children beginning their learning careers.
Jen Dole, Community Education Director for Byron Public Schools, says teachers have been lexible when it has come to per-sonalized learning in the past. “In early education, we’ve been doing a lot of personalized learn-ing already because the teaching opportunities stem from what the students are interested in,” said Dole. As its name infers, community education doesn’t stop at the pre-school level. Byron Community Ed has been reaching outside of the school district to educate the rest of the citizens in Byron. In the world of Community Education, everyone is a student re-gardless of age. Students have the opportunities to pick classes that they are interested in whether it be an adult itnessclass like Byron Kraze or an AARP Driving Class. “The programs we ofer constantly shift to what the needs are in the community and we try to personalize the classes to what members are telling us they are looking for in classes,” remarked Dole. Community Ed also ofers classes for older citizens in our com-munity. In this area, administrators have also showcased a great deal of lexibility when it comes to registering for classes. While Community Ed encourages online registration, they have kept the avenue of paper registration open for people who are more comfort-able delivering their registration themselves. Personalized learning and lexibility are the name of the game at the Community Education building, and all students and communi-ty members beneit greatly from it.
Community Ed intErmEdiatE SChool
Due to the addition of the new primary building, the building for-merly known as Byron Elementary School will now be named Byron Intermediate School. Previously, the building had
housed grades K-4, but will now be home to Byron’s 3rd-5th graders. Principal Abe Rodemeyer is excited about this new opportunity because it allows the faculty to “have laser-like focus on a speciic de-velopmental stage in a child’s academic career.” Because of the more advanced stage of mental development, stu-dents at the intermediate school will be given more choice than they have been allowed in the past. Also available in the media center is a new “MakerSpace.” Ac-cording to Rodemeyer, the MakerSpace “allows students to build structures, program robots, create webcasts, paint, weave, all in an environment where that is collaborative and requires teamwork to solve problems.” Byron Intermediate School is piloting a new curriculum at the 4th grade level titled 7Mindsets. 7Mindsets is a program that focuses on students’ social and emotional wellbeing that can be taught in the classroom. Students will now be able to learn about social skills in the classroom. There will be an entire class devoted to friendship. Jen Hegna, Director of Information and Learning Technology for the Byron School District, shed light on the thought process that goes into personalizing learning. “We are bound by our standards, but the way we teach those standards changes from student to student,” said Hegna. Byron Intermediate School staf is excited to continue serving their students in a more focused way. They are now able to pinpoint the needs of a speciic age group to a greater extent than they have been before, and, in turn, further ine-tune instruction at the teacher level that will increase the educational beneit received by students.
4 SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2016
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Primary SChool
By now, you’ve almost cer-tainly heard about it. “It” is the Byron School
District’s newest leap towards providing students with the most extraordinary educa-tional opportunities possible. “It” is a structure that has been built with the ut-most integrity and designed with the intricate character-istics of its students in mind. “It” is Byron’s new primary school building. The reason a new school building is constructed in the irst place is to increase the maximum enrollment within a district; however, this new building was crafted to such high standards that it sets it-self apart from its peers. This new building will undoubtedly tap potential from students, teachers and technol-ogy alike due to the vast array of new opportunities it provides. Technology plays a large part in the education of Byron’s students, and is not restricted to the upper grade levels. Start-ing at the Kindergarten level, there are iPads available for uti-lization. Kindergarteners have 2 carts of iPad minis at their dis-posal, while 1st graders have 4 carts to use. 2nd graders now have 3 carts of iPad Air 2’s that will be used to facilitate testing as well as everyday educational use.Since student creation has been making the transition to a more tech-heavy medium, the new building will feature TV monitors in the hallways at every grade level to display students’ work digitally. Those in charge of de-signing the new school and ev-erything in it dedicated a large amount of time to researching
the most hospitable environ-ments for children to learn in, as well as which practices lead to the highest level of engagement and retention at the student level. Firstly, they looked at the efectiveness of learning breaks on children. Teachers and ad-ministrators found that when kids are granted more recess time, once they return from recess, they are more likely to retain information and stay fo-cused, which, in turn, increas-es overall teaching eiciency. “Flexible furniture”
and “work stations” (desks)are some other assets that have been added to this school. Traditional desks have been replaced with “work stations” to allow students to keep their materials in a remov-able drawer and sit wherev-er they’d like on any given day. All of the work stations are completely mobile and come with a variety of seat-ing options for students. The “Innovations Lab” is also a new addition to the building. This room is meant to unleash a child’s creative capacity through a multitude of resources. This room will feature a green screen, pro-grammable mini robots of all sorts, an animation studio, gears and other small pieces of tech. These tools are meant to be used by both 1st and 2nd graders. In addition to these pieces, every classroom will be outitted with its own Smart TV, which has the capabili-ty to let up to eight students draw on the screen at once.
More research went into the type of playground equip-ment present, because, based on age, some equipment is more appropriate than others. Due to this, there are three separate sets for children to take advan-tage of: a kindergarten set, a 1st/2nd grade set, and a Nature Explore set. The Nature Explore playground set consists of nat-ural logs and stumps that func-tion as balance beams and other equipment. The school has also de-cided to add another interest-ing tool for nature education in
the form of window nest boxes. Students will be able to view the inside of an actual bird’s nest (once inhabited) from a window inside the school. An overwhelming theme that the Byron School District has adopted is giving children the choice to do what interests them. This allows students to pursue their passions, even at the youngest level of education.All-in-all, this building will be incredibly beneicial to our com-munity for many, many years to come.
A typical classroom features lexible furniture and a Smart TV.
Ken Nyberg, the man who sculpted the bear at Byron High School, created a matching set of bears for the Primary School.
The cafeteria was designed to it the growing population of new students.
POST-BULLETIN•www.PostBulletin.comSATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2016 5
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6 SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2016
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The Byron Middle School is the inal building that will be afected by the addition
of the new building. Now home to Byron’s 6th-8th graders, the school is continuing to adjust and accommodate students in the most efective way possible. The latest efort to do so is in the implementation of a block schedule, which is the same schedule in use at the high school. This change does not come with-out due research, as a team of faculty looked at the beneits of the block schedule on students in 6th-8th grade, concluding that it was in their best interest to move forward with it. The block schedule al-lows teachers to dive further into their lessons and help stu-dents achieve what BMS princi-pal Richard Swanson calls “deep learning.”
middlE SChool
“Deep, meaningful learn-ing has not always been the fo-cus of education throughout the years, but it is exactly what BMS students need and deserve,” Swanson added. Starting last year, stu-dents were able to register for elective classes that were of inter-est to them. Principal Swanson noted that students are learning about themselves in these classes by iguring out what they are/ar-en’t interested in. Another BMS staple that is relatively new is the BEARS acronym, which exempliies the mission of the school to not only create smart, intuitive students, but to also create well-rounded, thoughtful members of the com-munity. BEARS stands for Be-longing, Educated, Active Learn-ing, Respect and Selless. With a combination of trusted methods and new tech-niques, Byron Middle School is as good as it ever has been at help-ing kids take the next step up to the high school level.
The Byron Middle School has been home to Byron’s students since 1967.
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POST-BULLETIN•www.PostBulletin.comSATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2016 7
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high SChoolyear-long course, students will be tasked with running their own city by managing resourc-es, controlling pollution, facili-tating inter-group trade regimes and tackling other issues that arise. “In order to build a transportation network, stu-dents will need to physically build roads and cars and tracks and trains with powered mo-tors. To create a city, students will need to physically pipe wa-ter under their plot and run electricity to real lights and fans within a 3D-printed apartment building,” described Pethan. Along the way, students will be assisted by mentors that have experience in the re-al-world areas in which the stu-dents are addressing. Ryan Radke, the home economics teacher at BHS, has been integrating real-world as-pects into his classes for the last
Byron High School has a reputation as being one of the most technologi-
cally innovative schools in the area. This notoriety is justiied, as the school has granted each student with his or her own iPad. iPad’s are fantastic tools to aid in the learning pro-cess; however, they mean noth-ing if they aren’t reinforced by solid instruction. Luckily, that is not an issue at BHS. Byron has set itself apart as a tech destination, but the high school is a building that houses innovation of all varieties. The newest example of such innovation is the intro-duction of a new course be-ing ofered. “Grand Challenge Design” is a class that will be taught by Andy Pethan. In this
few school years. In one of his courses, students prepare meals in an actual restaurant for actu-al paying customers. Not only do they cook the food, but they also serve the tables, clean the restau-rant, and carry out any other du-ties that come along with running a dining facility. In a course that combines both technology and english, Jennifer Green teaches Creative Communications. This class cov-ers a wide variety of subjects that include creative writing, blog writing, design and green screen broadcasts. Post High School Planning is a course that has been dedicated
to educating students on what op-tions they have after they graduate from high school. Recently, this class has struck a partnership with the Rochester Chamber of Com-merce and the Byron Chamber of Commerce in order to get kids out into the workforce to show them what it takes to function in that ield. With the implementation of new technology, a fantastic group of faculty, and new class-es that allow students to explore their passions at a irst-person lev-el, Byron High School continues to provide the excellent education that the community has come to expect from it.
The iconic metal bear greets students as they arrive to school.
8 SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2016
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