As summer break comes to an end, the teachers and staff of Metea Valley have been coming back into the building in preparation for the upcoming 2024-2025 school year. With these preparations, there have been new device replacements that could benefit both teachers and students, within the new year. Besides having technology improvements throughout the building, the staff have also implemented a new system for incoming freshmen, allowing them to utilize the resources available to them throughout the school year.
Over summer break, the Metea Valley school staff gets the chance to unwind from the year before and get ready for the upcoming school year. Due to all their hard work, Principal DeBruycker encourages the teachers to enjoy their break. “I think, philosophically, I really try to allow the teachers to have the time off, because they deserve it. They’ve earned it. So I see them once in a while, but for the most part, we set that we do a lot of the work right at the end of the year to then allow us to kind of transition into the new school year a lot.” With the teacher doing all their planning for the next year in April and May, they get to enjoy their break as well and not stress about planning for the next year.
Metea Valley has made exciting additions over the summer to improve the students’ learning environment. In an interview with Ms. O’Connor, one of our system support specialists, all classrooms have been outfitted with new phones and better desktops for teachers, ensuring better communication and access to resources. Freshmen will benefit from brand new Chromebooks coming into the new school. Additionally, to improve comfort and safety, a large fan has been funded and installed above the swimming pool to decrease excess heat near the pool area.
A new school year arises at Metea Valley and welcomes a new group of freshmen, with certain activities around Metea Valley that help them find their niche in the school. During an interview with Principal DeBruycker, a new system was mentioned which will be implemented during freshmen lunchtime that’ll be a substitute for an ideal study hall. “We’re going to try to allow them to have some freshmen, what they need time, what we’ll call freshmen win time, which will be half of their lunch period. So a couple days a week, we’re going to have them not in the cafeteria the whole time, but be able to transition into a study hall, and then be able to tap into our different resources through the building.”
In addition to freshmen win time, other activities will be present to keep freshmen engaged and welcomed to the new school. Principal DeBruycker intends to use the activity fair to help freshmen find their niche, having an overall goal to make them feel supported. “The activity fair is really kind of created in September for the freshmen to find a try to find their niche, because they’re coming from smaller schools to now a building that has over three, almost 3000 kids, and they got to find where they fit and make sure our goal is just to make feel, make them feel like they belong, that they they’re loved here, and then that we’re here to support them throughout their journey.”
As teachers and other staff prepare for students to enter the building, energy and excitement is increased based on the anticipation of the new school year; Metea Valley will raise in spirits as all classes begin on August 22nd.
