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Students and Staff Celebrate First-Generation Week
As a child growing up in Florida, Marckileine Legros expected she would go to college one day. But her path to higher education wasn’t guaranteed. Her own determination, her family’s support, and the assistance of a program for college-bound students from disadvantaged backgrounds helped her navigate the many challenges of being the first person in […]
Translation App Engages Families in Student Learning
Regular communication between teachers and families is vital to student success, but even during ideal circumstances, it has its challenges. Throw in a pandemic, periods of hybrid and online learning, and multiple languages spoken by families within the district, and the challenges of effective communication are compounded. But a new translation platform used by Northfield […]
Program Expands College Opportunities at High School
More than 100 Northfield High School students managed to attend both high school and college last year, without leaving their regular classrooms. How did they do it? Through a new pilot partnership between the high school and Minnesota State University, Mankato. The concurrent enrollment pilot program allowed 108 students to take classes from Northfield High […]
TORCH Summer Scholars Build Community
Given the variety of experiences offered during the four-week TORCH Summer Scholars Program, Katie Lovrien expected that the participating middle school students would find something to interest them. But she didn’t expect a humble pond to create such a splash. During a visit to the River Bend Nature Center in Faribault in mid-July, students were […]
Reading Program Gives Students a Summer Boost
Two hundred Northfield elementary students who attended Summer PLUS, and more than 50 teachers and staff, participated in the Springboard Collaborative Learning Accelerator this summer. The evidence-based program coaches teachers, trains family members, and cultivates reading habits in students so they learn to read by fourth grade. Northfield Public Schools paid for and staffed the […]
Transformed by Education – A StriveTogether Scholar profile
As a kid growing up in Northfield, Armando Valdez was fascinated by Transformers toys – plastic, human-like robots that could turn into animals or vehicles. He’s still interested in robots, but at age 20, he’s considering turning that interest into a career. After a year of earning college credits at St. Paul College – a […]
Law Enforcement Program Coming to Northfield
A new collaboration between Riverland Community College, the Northfield Community College Collaborative (NCCC), and the Northfield Police Department will make it more convenient for Northfield-area residents to earn an associate’s of science degree in law enforcement without (mostly) leaving town. The program starts this fall and is open to anyone with a high school diploma […]
Northfield Named a Bright Spot for COVID Response
The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (CLGR) has named Northfield a 2021 Bright Spot community for its responses to the COVID crisis last year. Northfield was one of 54 communities across the country, and the only one in Minnesota, to receive this recognition. CGLR highlighted communities that developed exemplary or innovative responses to the COVID crisis […]
Books Help Kids Dream Big
Northfield area residents, families, and organizations together donated more than 1,000 new and gently used children’s books to the recent Northfield Promise Book Drive. Throughout February – I Love to Read Month – people were encouraged to donate books for readers ages birth through eighth grade. The books were collected at a drive-through collection event […]
Justice Propels YouthBank Discussions
Following the killing of George Floyd last summer, amid the ensuing social unrest and the concurrent pandemic, members of Northfield YouthBank met (safely) to have honest, heart-to-heart conversations about racial justice. The short-term result was the crafting of a commitment to anti-racism statement that the group posted on its website. But the discussions also propelled […]