CCSD news: First week of school in the books

From Superintendent Derild Parsons — 

The first week of school was a great success in the Churchill County School District.

As your superintendent, it was an honor and a privilege to be able to visit all of our schools while watching students, faculty, staff, and parents adjust to the new school year. Throughout my visits, I saw teachers, staff, and administrators providing a welcoming, nurturing, and friendly atmosphere for our students. In this setting, students are able to learn and grow within their safe and supportive surroundings.

With the first week of school comes the prospects for a new beginning, in new classrooms, and depending on the grades of our students, in a new school. As we begin this educational journey together, the district is focused on our Profile of a Learner. All of us here at Churchill CSD are committed to becoming learners who are critical thinkers, inspired innovators, collaborative learners, effective communicators, global citizens, and lifelong learners.

During the year, let’s seek to understand each other to become partners in education who are working creatively on behalf of our students. Best wishes for great success during the 2023-24 school year.

It was so great having you all back, and we welcomed our pre-k and kindergarten students earlier this week.

Churchill County High School

Students in Steve Johnson’s class verified Charles's and Boyle's gas laws by filling 50-foot balloons with air using a fan. As the sun shines on them, the trapped air inside expands and becomes less dense.

The balloons rise as a result. Unfortunately, the sun went behind the clouds, the air cooled, and the balloons fell. This is a perfect example of Charles's law, what goes up must come down. Unless it gets stuck on a transformer like one balloon did, causing a small power outage.

Principal Tim Spencer jokingly thanked Johnson for a perfect start to the new school year to which Johnson responded, “just wait until you see my encore.” This will definitely be a first day of school students will never forget.

Churchill County Middle School

Student’s in Vickie Purrell’s class participated in their first-week activity, “Procedure Day with a Twist.” Students had to specifically follow the directions to complete their lab, which resulted in slime. Along the way, students were required to perform. Some of the directions required them to sing “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

They also had to cheer on their peers as they stirred their ingredients, chant, "I love Science" as they kneaded their slime, and at the end, they had to shout out, "This Lab Rocks.”

“The objective was for them to demonstrate how well they could follow a procedure. To earn their points they had to do each step. It was a day full of laughter and some surprise performances,” Purrell said.

Numa Elementary

Numa’s theme this year is “Stay Classy.” Each individual class worked together to come up with ideas of how they will, “show their class” throughout the school year. Some classes made banners or posters, some made class mottos or quotes, and a few made up skits or planned special projects.

“At our assemblies on Friday, each class gave a presentation of how they will SOAR and Stay Classy this year. It was really great to see what each class came up with,” Numa school counselor Noreen Swenson said.

E.C. Best Elementary

Students in Valerie Holeseth’s third-grade class worked on their creative writing skills. Students had to craft an ending to a suspenseful story called, “The Whopper.” They had to decide what the child in the story pulled out of the lake with the fishing pole and what happened next. Assistant Superintendent Stacey Cooper observed this activity, and said she was impressed to see that, just three days into the school year, students were already entrenched in learning.

“Seeing children engaged in creative writing warms my heart,” he said. “I am looking forward to a great year of high-paced learning.”

Lahontan Elementary

Gratitude was the student's superpower this week in Crystal Cabral’s first-grade class. They read the book “Gratitude is My Superpower” and learned how the main character made a gratitude rock to help shift her mindset when she was feeling unhappy.

After spending time telling each other what they were thankful for about each other, they shared what makes them grateful, and then created their own gratitude rock. “This was an important start to creating a grateful, and respectful culture in our classroom this year,” Carbal said.