While many schools now open before Labor Day, it’s still the late-summer holiday that signals the transition from leisurely vacation time to buckling down to hard work.
As always, a sense of anticipation is in the air as many take on new challenges and refresh routines.
Our local schools are ready, geared up with great energy and an impressive array of new offerings for students as well as exciting improvements in technology. In some cases — including Amherst Regional Middle School and Smith Vocational — that means handing out personal computers. In Amherst, all seventh-graders will be getting Google Chromebook laptops to take home, while Smith Voke freshmen each get their own iPad.
While digital advancement is a highlight at all the schools, Belchertown is expecting the big prize — $100,000 in state funds to buy equipment ranging from computer processors to robots and 3-D printers to boost its science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) offerings.
In that same vein, Amherst Regional High School, with support from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, is offering more classes with a heavier focus on STEM courses and will be developing a longer range plan with WPI to include the middle school in the future.
South Hadley High School is adding culinary arts and carpentry courses to give students a chance to develop skills both for life and future career opportunities. Hatfield Elementary School has created outdoor spaces, or “forest classrooms” to give its youngest students — preschoolers and kindergartners — a chance to regularly work on basic math, science and art skills outside where they are less restrained. Pelham Elementary School will be using the outdoors, too, working gardening into its curriculum with each grade tending its own plot.
Students at many of the schools will be greeted by physical changes: Northampton High School gave its cafeteria a face-lift to be more college-like with amenities such as high-top tables. The city has replaced gymnasium floors in the high school and middle schools, resurfaced tennis courts and refurbished baseball fields. The Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter High School has a new state-of-the arts theater. Teachers and staff took up paintbrushes this summer and gave the hallways at Easthampton a fresh coat of paint.
Shutesbury schoolchildren will find a new playground when they arrive at their elementary school, as will Crocker Farm School preschoolers.
As usual, there are lots of new faces among teachers and administrators, with Granby introducing a new upper leadership team: Superintendent Sheryl Stantion, Director of Pupil Services Carol Hepworth and elementary school Principal William Lataille, who will lead the East Meadow and West Street schools.
These are just a few of the changes in Valley schools that add to the sense of possibility that marks the season. It makes even those whose routines don’t change this time of year feel energized, too.