PREPARING STUDENTS FOR LIFE
PAGE 4
School Board members Dirkswager, Simon, Harvey
take oath; 2018 board leadership selected
The Anoka-Hennepin School Board welcomed a new member and elected officer
positions at their first meeting of 2018. The meeting was held Monday, Jan. 8 at the
Sandburg Education Center in Anoka.
School Board members Bill Harvey, Jeff Simon and Anna Dirkswager took their
positions on the board following a ceremonial oath of office. Dirkswager won in the
Nov. 7 election and will represent District 4. Harvey and Simon return to office.
Members of the Anoka-Hennepin School Board serve four-year terms.
Board officer positions will remain unchanged for 2018. The School Board selected
Tom Heidemann to continue to serve as chair, Marci Anderson as vice-chair, Bill
Harvey to serve as treasurer and Jeff Simon to serve as clerk.
Regular meetings of the Anoka-Hennepin School Board are held at the Sandburg
Education Center and work sessions are conducted at the Educational Service
Center, both in Anoka.
Visit ahschools.us/schoolboard for contact information, meeting schedules,
recordings, agenda materials, and additional information. ■
Virtual reality brings learning
to life at University Avenue
Elementary School
Earlier this month, fourth graders at
University Avenue Elementary School for
Aerospace, Childrens Engineering, and
Science (UAE), in Blaine, got to go where
few people have gone before: inside the
International Space Station. Second
graders, meanwhile, swam the Great
Barrier Reef, while kindergarteners got up
close and personal with “gas giant”
planets like Jupiter and Saturn.
And they never had to leave their
classrooms.
These immersive experiences came
courtesy of the Google Expedition virtual
reality goggles the school debuted in
November. For a magnet school with a
theme of aerospace, children’s engineer-
ing and science, the goggles were a
perfect fit, said Curriculum Integration
Coordinator Kate Watson.
“We get to bring our kids all over the
universe with this device. And we’re going
to be able to tie it to our reading, our sci-
ence and our social studies,” she said. “As
a STEM school in our district, our teachers
have always felt very strongly about trying
to enhance our technology and keep our
kids on that path of discovery.”
The school purchased 30 sets of gog-
gles, which are essentially viewfinders with
smartphones inside that can take students
on hundreds of journeys, from Antarctica
to the Galapagos Islands, from the oceans
to outer space. There are even programs
exploring the world of bacteria and the
ratification of the Constitution with
Alexander Hamilton.
“We’ve taken our fifth-graders to differ-
ent biomes, so they were able to look into
the rainforest and tie it to vocabulary, like
learning about canopies,” Watson said.
“We generally start these lessons with
doing something fun, like seeing the stars
in