Hiawatha Elementary receives national award for closing achievement gap

KIRKLAND – Hiawatha Elementary School recently was named among 20 Illinois schools that received the National Blue Ribbon by the federal government for its work in addressing student academia.

The National Blue Ribbon was awarded to Hiawatha Elementary by the U.S. Department of Education after a months-long nomination process, said Principal Caitlin Benes, who’s led the school for six years.

She said a representative from the Illinois State Board of Education told the school in January that it was nominated, which was a pleasant surprise.

“I think that it was so nice, so unexpected,” Benes said. “It really just is this great feeling of that validation of what we’re doing. In education, you do ask yourself a lot, ‘Is this the best thing?’ You want to make sure you’re doing the best for your students. ... This award, I felt, and I think I can speak for my staff when I say it was great validation that we are doing great things for our students at Hiawatha and for our community.”

Schools can be nominated in two category: one for extremely high achievement and another for closing the achievement gap, a phrase commonly used to refer to areas of learning in which a group of students – whether by race, ethnicity, age or gender – outperforms another group beyond the normal margin of error.

“We have worked tirelessly for the past five, now six years on adapting and adopting a new curriculum across the board,” Benes said. “We started with math and reading, language arts. [...] They were really asking our students to do a lot of high-level thinking, problem-solving, reading and comprehension in different ways. So both curriculums really built off each other year after year.”

It’s a team effort not lost on Benes, especially when changing curriculum is involved. She credited Hiawatha Elementary School teachers for their dedication to students.

Benes said data collected from the district over the past year has shown the students’ success rates have grown in math and language arts.

“The teachers did a wonderful job,” Benes said. “Learning a new curriculum is no easy task. As an elementary teacher, you’re asking them to be a master in every curriculum. They really took the workload on to learn these curriculums [and] teach them well to their students. They did a ton of hard work.”

In a smaller school district such as Hiawatha School District 426, which is home to a town of fewer than 1,800, support from parents makes all the difference, Benes said. She thanked the larger community for their role in students’ success.

“Change is hard for everybody. It’s not just the teacher, it’s difficult for our parents that we work with to support,” Benes said. “So it was really nice that we were able to make thse changes with the support of our community.”