Welcome to Plank Junior High School, home of the Pirates. At Plank, we encourage students to live by the Pirate Code: Always Safe, Respectful and Responsible. We want our students to be proud to be a Pirate and strive to improve every day. We are very excited to kick off our 2021-2022 school year. We have had an interesting journey over the last year and a half. We are ready to bring all of our students back full time, every day! 

We want our students to "Own" their learning. There are several things that we will work with students this year in order to build ownership and excitement around learning. Students will be building relationships with their teachers and each other in their Crew Time classes, and be able to reflect on what they do in order to strive to be great socially and academically. We want students to know why it is important to do their best on their Fastbridge and IAR tests, as well as in the classroom, and take ownership of their performance in positive ways. We are focusing building relationships with our students. The first three days of school will be learning about what makes our students tick; learning personalities and interests through collaborative learning activities. Teachers will work to incorporate these interests into their lessons in order to make learning more connected to interests for students. As an AVID school, students will be working with each other on Cooperative Learning Activities in their classes. This means that they will be working in small groups in activities, learning using speaking and listening as well as writing and reading. This will help our students showcase their understanding in different ways. Finally, we want to empower our students to be self advocates in order to prepare for the positions of the future. We are trying to prepare all of our students for jobs and careers that haven't been created yet. This unique challenge means that teachers will be working hard to develop inquiry and questioning skills so that students are strengthening their skills in problem solving. 

We are focused on safety as well. We planned to create as much distance between students in order to meet the CDC and IDPH guidelines in areas where it is challenging to space students. We will do our best to ensure the distance between students in these areas. Students may need to adapt to some new procedures, but we will focus on the positives. All students will have to wear masks while at school to promote our safe environment.  

The staff at Plank Junior High is committed to serving the students and parents of the surrounding community. We want to provide multiple opportunities for students to showcase their talents, and grow as young adults through academics and social emotional learning. Our focus is to prepare our students to be ready for college and future careers. If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact me and we can work together to find solutions. I can be reached at 630-551-9410 and thaymond@sd308.org. We look forward to collaborating with you and your student throughout the year.