New academic year starts this week for Great Falls public schools

Great Falls Public Schools' faculty and staff gathered together on Monday morning for their annual convocation to ring in the new school year.

“The point of the convocation is to get us all together into one room, because we all share the same purpose and that is to go into our schools, go into our community, and provide the best learning experience possible for our great falls public school students,” said Gordon Johnson, board chair for Great Falls Public Schools (GFPS).

There are 68 new teachers joining the GFPS district this year, and they are excited and ready to start.

“I’m really excited to finally have my own classroom and my own students and really build those relationships,” said Sydney Eastwood, a first-year teacher at East Middle School. “I'm very excited for kids to get into the classroom. I'm excited to start working with them and start working on them with music especially."

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“I’ve been in the classroom every day for the last week or so that I’ve been here, truly just organizing and cleaning, and there's so much to do with that,” said Ali Dewey, a first-year teacher at Great Falls High School.

For many of the new teachers joining GFPS, the sense of community and assistance from older, experienced teachers is what made them choose Great Falls.

“Everyone's been really friendly, and I know [GFHS principal Geoff Habel] has made an emphasis on making a really good environment for the teachers there and, like, really wanting to retain people,” Dewey added.

“Great Falls just really showed me that they care about their teachers, and they have a really strong sense of community here. That was an environment that I found I really wanted to be a part of, and somewhere that I really wanted to start in too, because I could see the support that I was going to get coming into the school district,” said Eastwood.

The first day of classes is Wednesday, August 28, 2024; click here for the GFPS calendar.