To the Vinton-Shellsburg School Community from Superintendent Kyle Koeppen:
As we move from the doldrums of winter into the renewal of spring, the Vinton-Shellsburg Community School District has so much to celebrate! To begin, our students have been working so diligently on their studies. Through our formative assessment system at the elementary and middle school levels, we were able to see where students were to start the school year in relation to their basic skills. As one would guess, our scores were lower than usual with last spring’s school closure. As we finished our winter session of assessments, we found our students have made tremendous progress. We observed double the typical growth from fall to winter. This is a testament to the hard work of our students and staff.
Our clubs and teams have witnessed great success this winter as well. From our speech, dance, FFA, wrestling, basketball, to bowling we had record breaking seasons! All of this through a pandemic. Our students and staff have shown great resilience to persevere through all of the changes and challenges which this year has brought. Hopefully, you have been able to observe these successes through our communications to the community. We want to celebrate their successes as much as possible and our community always rises to the occasion to share in celebrating these accomplishments.
As author Jon Gordon points out, teams and organizations that focus on and celebrate success create more success. Success becomes ingrained in the culture and people naturally look for it, focus on it and expect it. This is why certain organizations are always successful. They implement systems and principles that create a culture that celebrates and expects success and this drives behavior and habits that create successful outcomes.
What we focus on shows up more in our life. If we look for and celebrate success we’ll see more of it.
Speaking of successes, I’d be remiss not to point out that we have not had to shut down school due to the Coronavirus. We have had to quarantine individuals and groups multiple times throughout the school year, but the strategy has been effective in stopping large outbreaks, while allowing the schools to remain open. Also, because of the derecho, we implemented remote learning for winter weather days. By the school’s observation we have seen a 95% participation rate on these days. We are on track to have the last day of school on Friday, May 28th. The remote learning time for snow days was only allowed for this school year by the governor. It will most likely not be allowed following this year.
If you have any thoughts or questions to share please reach out to me. You may contact me through email at kyle.koeppen@vscsd.org or phone 319-436-5685.
Take care,
Kyle Koeppen
VSCSD Superintendent
319-436-4728 ext. 5685
