Author: Decorah Community School District

Decorah High School Commencement is this Sunday, May 21st at 2:00 p.m. in the Gymnasium.

Spectators will be able to watch commencement live by accessing the following link:

Decorah High School Commencement

On Thursday, May 18th, the Decorah High School band department will be performing their annual “Outdoor Patriotic Concert.”  This concert will begin at 12:00 pm and will be located at the intersection of Washington and Water Street. 

The Decorah High School Concert Band will feature patriotic music, including a salute to armed forces, marches, gospel/spiritual, the “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and more. 

This free concert is open to the public. The community is invited to stop by to enjoy some great patriotic music and is encouraged to bring their lawn chairs.  In case of rain, this performance will be moved to the auditorium at the high school. Notifications will only be sent out if the concert is to be held in the auditorium due to weather. 

On Thursday, May 18th, the Decorah High School band department will be performing their annual “Outdoor Patriotic Concert.”  This concert will begin at 12:00 pm and will be located at the intersection of Washington and Water Street. 

The Decorah High School Concert Band will feature patriotic music, including a salute to armed forces, marches, gospel/spiritual, the “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and more. 

This free concert is open to the public. The community is invited to stop by to enjoy some great patriotic music and is encouraged to bring their lawn chairs.  In case of rain, this performance will be moved to the auditorium at the high school. Notifications will only be sent out if the concert is to be held in the auditorium due to weather. 

Mr. Bliven remarked, “We are extremely excited to perform this patriotic concert this year.  Please stop by and see us while enjoying our beautiful downtown and all of the stores.”

Decorah educator Tyler Wedemeier has been recognized by the Iowa Academy of Science with an Excellence in Science Teaching Award. The award is based on Wedemeier’s strong educational background combined with his commitment to science education and to professional development. In addition, he was recognized for the creation of a stimulating environment for learning science and a mastery of educational strategies and appropriate assessments.

Wedemeier partnered with Winneshiek County Conservation in the development and delivery of an award-winning unit of instruction. The Iowa Association of Naturalists and the Iowa Conservation Education Coalition granted the 2021 Chris Holt Youth Environmental Education Award to his Dry Run Watershed History and Flood Mitigation unit.

Wedemeier was also a partner in implementing a Resource Enhancement and Protection (REAP) grant obtained by Winneshiek County Conservation. Titled “Bundled, Place Based, and Assessable: A New Model for Environmental Education in Iowa,” the grant reached 63 teachers and naturalists throughout the state of Iowa with workshops, collaborative learning, and materials.

Before becoming an instructional coach for the Decorah Community Schools, Tyler was recognized as an effective and well-loved classroom science teacher. “It was his precise attention to science standards, meaningful assessments, and data driven instruction that served as a model and inspiration for other teachers,” remarked Birgitta Meade, Environmental Studies instructor at Luther College. She continued, “In addition to his technical expertise, Tyler has delightful gifts of warmth, caring, and pragmatism that inspire others. He leads by example in order to bring out the best in everyone.” 

Barbara Bohach, Associate Professor of Education, shared, “I have been so impressed with Tyler’s teaching prowess and dedication to furthering the quality of science education for elementary teachers and their students. He was in the first group of Luther elementary majors to teach in a community partnership between The Norman Borlaug Foundation and local 5th graders when he was a student at Luther College. As an adjunct instructor this spring, he now leads our current prospective elementary teachers. It is amazing to see Tyler now coming ‘full circle’ from his time with us as a preservice teacher to his role now as a teacher-leader and model of expert teaching. He is so deserving of this recognition.”

Members of DHS’s Community Club take pride in finding ways to give back to the community, and senior leader Rorie Wiedow took the lead in organizing a fundraiser to do just that.  Members sold frosted cookies provided by Kailynda Davis, a Decorah graduate and owner of Kai’s Kreations in Cedar Rapids.

As students purchased cookies to share with their classmates, they also voted for one of four local entities to receive the profits of the fundraiser.  The organization which received the most votes was Helping Services of Northeast Iowa, which also provides support for the work Community Club does in the area of tobacco education and prevention.

Ultimately, bakery owner Kailynda Davis (who happens to be Rorie’s aunt) donated the cookies to the project, resulting in 100% of the profits–$195–going to Helping Services.

Seventh graders at Decorah Middle School are sponsoring their annual Water to Thrive fundraiser with a goal to reach $5,000 to support the building of a well in rural Africa. From May 8-12, all students at DMS can bring monetary donations of any amount to school. These donations can be made during students’ lunch shifts.

Orange donation buckets will be placed at businesses around town with QR codes explaining the reasons for the fundraiser. People can also donate by directly visiting https://www.watertothrive.org/campaigns/one-well-one-drop-5.

In class, DMS students learn how water can impact health, hunger, education, and poverty–creating inequalities. As a way to ‘be the change’ and address those inequalities, the students partner with Water to Thrive through which one well can be built for $5,000. That well can bring clean, safe water to over 500 people. DMS has funded four wells since 2018 and hopes by the end of this fundraiser will be able to fund a fifth well.

In language arts class, students read the book A Long Walk to Water. In this book, one of the characters has to walk for water twice a day to provide for her family. Although the character is fictional, the scenario is real. 

On May 17^th, students will leave from the middle school and walk indirectly to the Upper Iowa River to gather and carry water. 7^th grade Global Studies teacher Carrie Reed remarked, “We do the water walk to gain a sense of empathy for those who face that reality every day. In the past, the community has offered smiles and words of encouragement as they see us walking through town. We’ve even had people stop us and hand us money to add to our fundraiser total!”

Reed added, “I always tell my students that this is truly the most meaningful teaching and learning that I have ever been a part of. In a world where negative stories are easy to find, it’s good to share the amazing things that our young people are making happen!”

On April 28th in Arlington, Virginia, Decorah High School junior Simon Kutz competed with 100 other students from across the country in the United States Geography Championships and finished in 7th place. During the competition Kutz had to take a written exam covering the following categories: geomorphology, geography and current events, historical geography, cultural geography, economic geography, urban geography, biogeography, and climate geography. Then he took a test meant to assess the types of practical map skills and cartographic reasoning reflective of exam questions as well as field work examinations.

In addition, he was a finalist (8th place) in the National Varsity round of the International Geography Bee.

Kutz participated in both competitions last year, finishing 12th in the United States Geography Championships and 16th in the National Varsity round of the International Geography Bee. 

More information about these contests can be found at https://geographychampionships.com/nationals/.

The Decorah Family, Educator, and Community Organization (FEC) recently held a Spell-A-Thon Fundraiser. Through generous donations from families and community members, they raised over $36,000 for the Decorah Elementary Schools (John Cline and Carrie Lee).  This money will be used for field trips, extra classroom supplies, guest visitors, family events, teacher appreciation activities, and the like to support the elementary students, staff, and schools.  

The FEC would like to thank the community for supporting this fundraiser and our schools.

To learn more or to volunteer with the FEC, follow them on Facebook or contact FEC President Shanna Putnam Dibble at shanna.putnamdibble@decorah.k12.ia.us.

Justin Berlage of Decorah High School has been named a semifinalist for the 2023 U.S. Presidential Scholars program, one of the highest honors bestowed upon graduating high school seniors in the country.  He is the son of Jodi Enos-Berlage and John Berlage of Ridgeway.

Out of nearly 3.7 million graduating high school seniors from across the country, over 5,000 students were identified as candidates for the program, which originated in 1964 by executive order of the president. Application to the program is by invitation only. This April, 628 semifinalists were selected, including eight students from Iowa. Scholars are selected on the basis of superior academic and artistic achievements, leadership qualities, strong character, and involvement in community and school activities.

Berlage plans to attend MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the fall to study mechanical engineering, with special interests in computer science and robotics. 

Berlage is a National Merit Finalist and has played a key role in leading the Decorah Robotics team and a Decorah Envirothon team to regionals and back-to-back competitive appearances at state competitions. He attended summer programs at NYU-Tandon School of Engineering and Carleton College Summer Program in Computer Science/Robotics. He has also been involved in High School Mathematical Competition in Modeling (HiMCM), soccer, National Honor Society, and chorus. He is a graduate of St. Benedict’s K-8 Catholic School in Decorah. He is also a member of the Madison 4Hers 4H club.

For his application to the U.S. Presidential Scholars program, Berlage was required to submit a photograph of something of great significance. He chose a picture of a K’Nex roller coaster that he designed and built when he was eight years old. In his related essay, he explained how the many hours and years he spent building various items using K’Nex materials instilled creativity, testing of ideas, risk-taking, confidence, and joy—attributes that he later applied to robotics, engineering, and computer science. Other major influences described by Berlage included growing up in a household and community where education was highly valued, reading hundreds of books a year from the Decorah Public Library–further supplemented by Dragonfly Books–and growing up on a farm, which developed problem-solving skills, a strong work ethic, and an appreciation for the fragility of the natural world.

In his response to the essay prompt “If you could improve one thing in the world, what would it be, and how would you change it?”, Berlage focused on elevating environmental education at the K-12 level, intentionally integrating it as a required core subject in elementary, middle school, and high school, equal in importance to reading and math and taught in a similarly successive fashion. He emphasized that these changes to the educational system would give his generation their best chance of living in a sustainable future.

The Commission on Presidential Scholars, a group of up to 32 eminent citizens appointed by the President, will select approximately 160 U.S. Presidential Scholars program finalists. The U.S. Department of Education will announce the Scholars in May.

Margaret Aitken Haggerty, a Chair of the Commission on Presidential Scholars, remarked, “Regardless of the final outcome of the competition, it is a great honor and an exceptional accomplishment to have reached the semifinalist phase in this highly selective and prestigious program.”

Two Decorah Middle School students recently qualified for the National History Day competition which will be held June 11-15 at the University of Maryland.

Jayden Lundtvedt qualified with her exhibit titled Valentina Tereshkova: Frontier in Female Cosmonautics

Naomi Kutz qualified with her website titled Jane Bolin: Leading the Frontier for Equality in Law

This year’s theme was Frontiers in History: People, Places, and Ideas.