Warsaw Community Schools welcomes students, faculty and staff back for new school year

WARSAW, Ind.-- Class was back in session on Friday for the Warsaw Community School district. We all know the first day of school is a new start for everyone — students, parents, staff, and educators.

Friday marked the start of the 183rd year of public education for Warsaw Community Schools. Each year the students learn more and the passion burning inside of these educators intensifies.

"That's the great thing about our schools. We're really here to serve our community and help grow our students in so many different ways," said Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert.

Leesburg Elementary School offers a dual language immersion program and has been for the past few years.

"Students start in kindergarten, and if they're in the program, they are in a Spanish classroom for 50 percent of the day. During that 50 percent of day, it is 100 percent Spanish. So they start off very first day hearing a language that might be they might not be familiar with. We do have some native speakers as well, and so a lot of our native speakers are also in our dual language immersion program. And so it's really neat to be able to see those students be leaders when they're in the Spanish classroom," explained Principal Nathan Polston.

"There's a book by Stephen Covey called the seven habits of highly effective people, and eventually, after he wrote that first book, it became something that schools started adopting over time. It focuses really on first three habits that are about self-leadership. It's be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, and that's teaching our students how to lead their own learning and own it. And it's not just about academics; it's just life and what are your goals. And then the next habits have to do with interpersonal skills, things like synergize and seek first to understand, then be understood. All of the things that are required to really work well with others. So first, we teach those skills of leading yourself, and then once you're good at that, then you can begin leading others," shared Lincoln Elementary School Principal, Hilary Stouder.

"We are a Leader In Me leadership school; We have seen dramatic growth in our attendance. Kids who didn't want to go to school before maybe had a wildly important goal, a W.I.G of their own. They would come and check in with somebody, have an accountability partner, and they would have a chance to want to come to school. And so, we provided different opportunities for those students so that they would want to be here.

They did decide that they loved school because they were checking in and felt like they were a part of Lincoln. They had a purpose to be here, up and a sense of belonging there. And so, our attendance went up. Along with that, our behaviors went down as students decided that they found and created their own rules. Things that we didn't even know we needed, students found for us," explained Title One Interventionist, Shelby Beam.

Claypool elementary school instructural coach, Brock Rhoades, says,"We're an official state-recognized STEM building, and we have designed it in a way that we have what we call bricks and pillars. At Claypool, we have a pillar for lakes and streams. We have a whole setup out in the woods of trails and outdoor classroom. We have creek access. We do water quality tests. We look for macroinvertebrates, so we judge water quality. Then our other pillar is agricultural technology, and so we focus on where food comes from and how technology is critical in agriculture today."