ADRIAN — A brand new 12 months of college is now in session for the general public faculty districts in Lenawee County.
The beginning of the 2022-23 faculty 12 months for a majority of the Lenawee County districts started Monday and was greeted with morning rain showers — typically heavy downpours — which cleared up in a while.
Addison and Sand Creek faculties received a jumpstart on the county’s 9 different public districts, opening their doorways and welcoming college students again into the school rooms Aug. 22. For the county’s remaining districts, the brand new faculty 12 months kicked off Monday.
Carl Lewandowski, principal at Adrian Public Colleges’ Prairie Elementary Faculty, is getting into his forty second 12 months of public schooling, his twenty fifth 12 months as a faculty administrator and his third 12 months as principal at Prairie. In these years of academic service, he stated, he can’t keep in mind a time when it rained on the primary day of college.
“We needed to throw some plans out the window due to the added problem of the climate,” Lewandowski stated whereas directing college students all through Prairie’s constructing Monday morning. “Everyone’s excited, although. You simply by no means know what’s going to occur the primary couple of days. Contemplating the challenges that we had with the climate, welcoming within the college students was really fairly good.”
Some college students entered the constructing drenched from head to toe however had been correctly dressed for the weather with raincoats and their hoods up. Different college students huddled subsequent to their mother and father or guardians, standing beneath a shared umbrella. As a substitute of the scholars lining up outdoors of the college to enter their school rooms, college students filed into the constructing and checked out their lockers or had been directed to the gymnasium in the event that they had been consuming breakfast.
Lewandowski was accountable for greeting college students and their households coming into the gymnasium for breakfast, usually instances receiving fist bumps, high-fives and hugs from each college students and fogeys. Extra Prairie academics and workers had been stationed all through the hallways, greeting and helping with college students’ wants.
Cindy Marcum, literacy help specialist for the elementary faculty, stood outdoors of the elementary constructing with an umbrella for protection from the rain and made positive college students knew the place they had been going and helped them keep away from some deep puddles of rainwater forming across the faculty.
“(Adrian Public Colleges) is a good place to work,” Lewandowksi stated. “I actually want I might have recognized about Adrian Public Colleges earlier in my profession, as a result of that is positively a spot the place it is like actual life. There’s a bit little bit of every part happening right here.”
One of many highlights in regards to the district, Lewandowski added, was the encouragement from the state of Michigan and Adrian’s administrative group to implement the Optimistic Behavioral Interventions and Helps (PBIS), which is a set of concepts and instruments faculties use to enhance the habits of scholars. Lewandowski referred to as PBIS “a sport changer for everyone.”
“I really like the truth that we spend extra time specializing in catching children doing the issues we would like them to do, as an alternative of cracking the whip on the dangerous decisions they make,” he stated. “We nonetheless have to deal with that stuff, however specializing in optimistic issues, to me, that is the best way to go. It has been fairly thrilling.”
There are 176 days of instruction scheduled for the 2022-23 faculty 12 months and for every of these days, Lewandowski stated, he plans to begin off every morning with a joke of the day, some fascinating information and bulletins, and phrases of encouragement in order that Prairie Elementary college students can “do the precise factor” and exhibit “Prairie Satisfaction” all through the college 12 months.
