Students head back to school

SANDPOINT — The fresh notebooks and folders come out today as students across the county check out their new classes and teachers for another school year.

Staffers throughout Lake Pend Oreille School District schools and the district office have been busy preparing for the day, finalizing classroom compositions and preparing lesson plans. Over at Sandpoint High School, teachers spent much of Thursday putting the final touches on room decorations and adjusting to the curriculum changes necessitated by continued implementation of Idaho Core Standards.

Administrators also used the past weeks to bring new school staff up to speed in time for a new academic year of education and management. That includes people like the new SHS technology manager, Robert Lindner, who just moved to Sandpoint a few weeks ago to take his job corralling and fixing the projectors, computers and other technology teachers and students use every day. Having spent most of his life in Phoenix, Ariz., he’s excited to get to know a new community and participate in a school with an athletic and academic reputation that precedes it.

“It reminds me a lot of my own high school,” he said. “It’s a very familiar feeling.”

English teacher Mike Randles, on the other hand, is no stranger to an LPOSD classroom. However, this year he’s moving from the middle school to the high school and is eager to engage higher levels of material. The classroom starts off with world literature, a topic that will doubtless be subject to higher degrees of analysis and writing under the new standards.

“I’m looking forward to the change — the challenge of adapting to a new grade level,” he said.

The new standards will likely not throw history teacher Tyler Haynes for a loop. He’s recently returned from training sessions, which detailed some of the most effective ways to tackle implementation.

“Common Core really dives into critical thinking,” he said. “It develops these skills that students will take into their adult lives.”

For instance, a history class isn’t just about dates and happenings under the new standards. Students will now dive into the eras to develop arguments about, for example, the American colonists’ legal and political justifications for rebelling against England.

The same concepts hold true for Kristin Hawkins’ social studies classroom. In fact, Hawkins is applying the standards to two new classes developing student leadership skills. One of them, Global Issues and Community Leadership, employs a community support element by getting students involved in causes they care about. The students themselves will play a big role in developing the inaugural class.

“It’s totally diversified to the students and what they’re interested in,” Hawkins said.