News : Orientation: New teachers, admins begin learning about schools, area

New VS administrators: Tech and Curriculum Dir. Kim Meyer and VSHS Principal Matt Kingsbury.

Allison Gates will be the Teacher-Librarian at Tiilford and Shellsburg elementaries.

New VSHS Teachers: Amanda Repp, Tyler Lorenzen, Amy Sandau, Nate Lahr, Matt Finn.

Orientation: The day for learning about your new school, your new location, and the people who you will see every day.

While the freshmen at VSHS, and other new students will certainly experience the challenges of the 2011-2012 year in a new location, several teachers will be facing the same thing.

There are five new teachers at Vinton-Shellsburg High School, along with the new principal, Matt Kingsbury. And at Tilford and Shellsburg, Allison Gates is new, as well. She will be the Teacher-Librarian for the district's elementary schools. The other new face in the district is Technology and Curriculum Coordinator Kim Meyer.

All of these new staff members spent Friday morning, Aug. 12, in the VHSH Media Center, with Supt. Mary Jo Hainstock and other school administrators, as well as Mindy McClintock of the Vinton-Shellsburg Education Association. In addition to introducing themselves, each had an opportunity to draw a question from a stack and answer it.

McClintock gave her new colleagues a brief lesson on the history of Vinton, discussing the Iowa Braille School as well as the more recent flood and this year’s storm.

Hainstock then asked the new personnel to share a bit about themselves.

Kim Meyer will be working from the Middle School building, where she will help coordinate the district’s curriculum as well as its technology. She and her husband both have new jobs; he will be teaching at North Tama, another area where the July wind storms caused significant damage.

Matt Kinsgbury did his student teaching at Aplington-Parkersburg, where one of his mentors was the legendary Ed Thomas. Kingsbury said his cooperating teacher passed onto him something that Thomas had taught him: Even when you need to “break down” a student because of disciplinary students, you need to also build him up.

Kingsbury then introduced each of his new colleagues.

Amanda Repp will teach family and consumer science. She grew up in Dike before moving to Cedar Falls. She said one thing she learned from her cooperating teacher during her student teaching experience was how to integrate technology into the learning experience and to encourage students to try new ways of learning things.

Tyler Lorenzen, of Oelwein, recalled a golf event in which his school narrowly edged out the team from Vinton-Shellsburg. He is one of the new science teachers, and did his student teaching in Fort Madison.

Amy Sandau, the other new science teacher, is also a certified coach. She has not yet received a coaching assignment, but she said it is very unlikely that she will get a job in Iowa coaching her favorite sport: Downhill skiing. She and her husband recently returned from a trip to Greece.

Nate Lahr, a West Delaware graduate, also remembers competing against Vinton-Shellsburg on athletic fields. He is teaching math and is also helping coach the Viking freshman football team. A third-team All-State catcher who was part of the 2007 WD state championship team, Lahr has also helped coach baseball for his alma mater before moving from West Delaware to V-S this fall.

Matt Finn, a 2005 graduate of Vinton-Shellsburg, returns to the district to teach Language Arts.

Although Finn graduated from the “old” V-S high school, his face has been seen in the new building ever since it opened. Finn was an active member of the speech and drama departments while in high school; his picture appears with his cast mates on some of the posters honoring previous high school plays and musicals outside the doors of the auditorium.

Finn's question asked him to mention a favorite teacher. His response: Le Cox, who was one of his speech coaches. "She treated the students like adults, and did the most to prepare us for college," said Finn. Now, Ms. Cox will be one of his colleagues at VSHS.

Allison Gates, a native of Ryan and a Luther graduate, majored in music education and Russian studies before becoming a teacher-librarian. She has visited Russia, and worked in the library at Luther. She will serve the elementary students in the media centers at both Tilford and Shellsburg.