Among the policies announced at the start of the school year was that formative assessments could no longer be worth more than 30% of a student’s grade, while summative assessments were required to be weighted at 70% or more.

Additionally, any form of extra credit has been prohibited and teachers are now required to allow retakes on all summative assessments. One-third of BHS teachers  experimented with these new practices as a part of the district-wide Grading for Learning program last school year.

The new policies are intended to make grading reflect what a student knows at the end of a unit or course and not reward or penalize students for things like behavior, attendance, participation, or work that is unrelated to standards. The policy distributed to teachers explains that “equitable and consistent grading practices give all students the opportunity to succeed”.

The University of Minnesota has pushed to allow increased weight of formative assessments, which is why CIS classes are exempted from the required 70/30 split. This is aimed to encourage students to invest in an actual process, in which skills are developed over time and mastered, rather than just demonstrated on a final paper.

“In order to have a dynamic, risk-taking writing classroom,” the U of M policy statement explains, “it is essential that students understand the importance of engagement in the process, not just the production of a final essay.”

Peter Sommers, who teaches CIS Writing, agrees with the U of M’s standpoint.

“I tried using the school’s policy of not counting formative assessments last year, or counting them for less than I currently do, and I found students (often because of a poverty of aspiration and motivation) did not value or engage in the writing process,” said Sommers. “This undermined their ability to practice and grow as writers, and it undermined their accountability to their peers’ growth as well as their own. ”

Even though most teachers are using these new non-negotiables, some are skeptical of the impact they are having on learning.

“Retakes slow down learning when you allow them,” one teacher said, “because students are more focused on relearning old information than learning the material that is currently being taught. In the best interest of my classes, it doesn’t work. Segments don’t connect and are not built off previous units. […] The only times I have allowed them, the students who were allowed to retake typically have scored lower on their retakes.”

Members of the BHS administration were asked to comment on the new assessment framework but did not respond to emails from The Hoofprint.

Varsity 2, which was made up of juniors Amelia Butler, Matthew Scherber, Avery Thompson, Milo Zimmerman, and Ryder Zvorak took first place in the entire region. Varsity 1, which was made up of seniors Adam Blevins, Will Borgerding, Andrew Braun, Rachel Lawrence, and Elise Lubben took second place in the tier and fifth overall.

Only two teams were able to be selected to represent the region. This is the second year in a row that both teams were from Buffalo. The state tournament will be held at Cragun’s Resort in Brainerd on April 7.

Buffalo had seven teams this year, but only two were allowed to compete at the Regional Meet.

Varsity 2: Amelia Butler, Ryder Zvorak, Milo Zimmerman, Matthew Scherber, Avery Thompson

Varsity 1: Ryan McCallum (coach), Rachel Lawrence, Will Borgerding, Elise Lubben, Andrew Braun, Adam Blevins, Brandon Aldrich (coach)

Q: What things are you looking forward to coming back to?
A: I am looking forward to seeing everyone. I miss the daily interactions with students and staff. I also look forward to having some structure and routine back in my daily life.

Q: What do you miss about teaching and being around students?
A: I miss seeing everyone. The smile and laughter I see on students and staff and the opportunity to connect with so many different personalities throughout the day. I also miss the opportunity to learn about student interests and things they enjoy. I probably learn more from the students than they do from me.

Q: What do you fear you’ve missed out on?
A: I fear I’ve missed out on the opportunity to connect with kids more than I was able to before I got sick. When I come back it will be a new semester and many of the students I was getting to know may not have in class again.

Q: Any other comments?
A: I really felt guilty for a while after I got sick because I felt I let the kids down. I was not able to grade many of their assignments and to continue teaching them. This really bothered me for awhile.

With the recent rise of digital media, it was expected that there would be a fall in the need for paper copies of books, but that turned out not to be what happened. While the number of books being checked out from the library hit its peak in 2017, the amount of people using the space on a daily basis to work is as high as ever.

The daily use plummeted in 2020, due to a false belief that students couldn’t use the library due to COVID and the complications it brought. We interviewed Ms. Sparks about the subject, “There were students that didn’t know that they could still come into the library and still check out books,” she said, “So getting the message to students that they could [was difficult].” Through the 2020 year it looked like the library was going into a steep decline as people weren’t concerned with the whole process of checking out a book when they could just look it up online.

But when students came back to school in 2021, the number of students visiting the library spiked as more people were using the area for reading, working on assignments, and just hanging out with friends.  “It’s crazy because this year I still I feel like we went from really not having a lot of people using the library,” Ms. Sparks said. “I think that they’re using it possibly because of how they feel coming back to school after COVID part of the fatigue of just being [at school] on a very structured day.” The amount of students is at its highest during lunch hours, but there’s always a sizable amount of people, whether they are from a whole class visiting, senior study, the mentor program, or just passing by to print something.

Two years ago this scenario would have been unheard of in the district, but now it’s a fact of daily life. How did this come to be?

In March 2019, COVID-19 forced schools worldwide to shut down while they figured out how to teach in the midst of a pandemic. Teachers couldn’t communicate with students like they always had due to distancing policies and the rapid spread of the virus. When it became apparent that school wouldn’t be reopening any time soon, the obvious solution was to communicate online. Many districts easily converted as everyone already had a computer from the school that they had used every day, however, BHM needed to get devices out to students. Historically, the district has been against adopting an official 1:1 policy, instead opting to use computer carts and desktops in labs. Now that this wouldn’t be an option, BHM, along with other districts, adopted a new learning policy, known as the 1:1 device initiative.

The policy ensured every student in the district was given the option to get their own device for learning provided by the school. While this policy worked during quarantine, teachers found that they were able to teach more effectively when their students had devices every day. When students returned back to the building, the school had them keep their laptops to be used in their in-person classes, which allowed teachers to use online resources for lessons without needing to reserve Chromebook carts or computer labs. However, some teachers, like Orchestra teacher Kristine Wiese, consider having laptops a burden, because it requires students to have a backpack with them when going to classes, which takes up a lot of space in the Orchestra room.

Teachers across the district have modified their curriculums to fit the new device.

“I think it was basically a year and a half long process. As we were doing distance learning, I was adapting my slideshows and lessons to fit this format,” said Spanish Teacher Elizabeth Nordmeyer.

However, some teachers didn’t find adapting their previous lessons to the new format difficult.

“When I joined BHS seven years ago I was already using Google Classroom, so [the lesson] was already on a day-to-day basis,” said English Teacher Anna Reedy.

This process may be working right now, and District IT Director Dr. Mat Nelson is in charge of ensuring the program can be sustainable.

“District-wide we were thankfully able to use CARES and ESSER [COVID relief’ funds to purchase devices, cleaning supplies, and other things to assist safe learning during the pandemic,” Nelson said.

This does mean that the only way the school was able to fund the project was through the district’s COVID relief fund, and Nelson said the district will need to assess if it wants to keep repairing and replacing their devices.

The school does hold students accountable for their borrowed devices, because there is an insurance program and repair costs for high schoolers to pay for in case of damage to the computers.

Students are given the option to pay a $45 fee to insure their device, meaning all repairs for the rest of the year will be free, otherwise, the prices of repair costs vary with the severity of the damage, up to $175. The school’s attitude towards the protection of their devices has also changed dramatically, as before every Chromebook had numbers and its location was always known at all times.

We interviewed a librarian, Tammy Otten. “Before March of ‘19, if you would have told me that every student would have a device that could be taken out of [the building] I would have told you that you were crazy,” Library assistant Tammy Otten said, “because we held our devices very tightly, and accounted for them very closely.”

It remains to be seen if the policy will be kept, with this year being an official pilot for this program.