Mineral Wells School gives Chamber committee update
PARKERSBURG - Mineral Wells Elementary School presented a virtual update Wednesday to the Mid-Ohio Valley Chamber of Commerce Schools and Business Committee.
Principal Melissa Powers spoke with committee members online via Zoom, briefly highlighting some of the challenges schools have encountered this past year.
“The past 11 months in education have been a time of constant change for us,” she said. “We are constantly working at the school level and at the county level to adapt and meet the needs of our students.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced schools to work around a variety of challenges, including a mix of in-person and online instruction. Technology distribution, online systems and blended learning have meant teachers as well as students have had to learn new things and adapt to frequent changes.
“Now that we are again returning to in-person instruction, things have drastically changed within the school building. We’ve had major changes to our schedule,” Powers said. “We have to accommodate more lunches now because we have to seat the students 6 feet apart. We have four lunches a day to accommodate every student in our cafeteria. Our youngest learners, pre-k and kindergarten students, eat in the classroom.”
During the school day student are in “cohort groups,” meaning they stay with the students in their particular classroom.
Mineral Wells Elementary’s playground has been split into zones so students can still play in their cohort groups while safely sharing the playground with other students.
Intervention programs which traditionally pull students out of regular class for specialized instruction based on grade level now do so by class in order to keep from mixing cohort groups.
“We’ve temporarily eliminated weekly collaboration time for our teachers because we have to recapture every single moment of instructional time that we’ve lost,” Powers said. “These are just a touch of those changes that we’ve had to make in our overall structure. We are adjusting to the new way of life.”
Powers said the school itself has gone through multiple renovation projects during the past few years, including new roofing and siding, and more projects are planned for this summer.
School officials are looking forward to purchasing and installing a new grades 1-5 playground. Officials hope more renovation projects will be completed this summer, including creation of a secure main entrance and a new heating and air conditioning system.
Powers said the hurdles encountered this year and last have highlighted just how important schools are in the lives of children and to the communities served by those schools.
“We have learned so many lessons, but I think the biggest lesson is to never underestimate the impact of a school on a child and on our society,” she said. “It is something I think we all hope we will never take for granted again.”