How do you feel about this school year and how did everything go?

“At this point of the school year I’ve realized many mistakes I made in terms of studying and learning in ways I could improve which maybe could go poorly up till this point. With that being said, I feel like this allows next year to be useful, I’d say. Without all of this, I don’t think that next year would be possible although this reminds me of the difficulty of the online year because I felt clueless when I got here, which was the main Issue.”

—sophomore Noah LaBrie

“So I’m in CAPS. It went pretty smoothly. I got to do a lot of opportunities that I didn’t think I was able to. I learned a lot of things outside of CAPS like financial literacy and banking, so now I can use that outside the school. I also got to be in this program called Mirea so I can come back to Cedar Falls and help teach kids. I really want people to do CAPS because you get to learn more than what you went in for. CAPS teaches you more about outside-of-school skills that you can use.”

—junior Zien Houston 

“Overall, I think this was a great year. I had a lot of really good students come through. I think it was great to see things start to get back to normal after the strange years we had the past couple years.I think you can kinda see that in the students. They are starting to get back to their normal selves and being more outgoing and participating a little bit more.

“From my perspective as a para, it has been really good to get back to a more normal kind of school year, since my first year here was ‘Covid Year.’ In some ways it felt like I finally got to know everyone the first time because I discovered that I really rely on the nose and mouth to recognize and remember people. It was both a challenge and blessing to work with a couple of the seniors who needed a little extra help with things many students and teachers often take for granted, like opening doors, opening packaging that lunch comes in and taking class notes. I am looking forward to a restful summer and eager to return to CFHS in August.” 

—special education paraeducator Doug Knudtson