First-year Superintendent Shannon Cheek gets creative with Arthur/Lovington/Atwood-Hammond graduation

By FRED KRONER

fred@mahometnews.com

ARTHUR – Former Mahomet-Seymour High School principal Shannon Cheek is learning that veteran superintendents didn’t have much of an advantage over him this year.

His first year as superintendent of the Arthur/Lovington/Atwood-Hammond School district was marked by the outbreak of the coronavirus, which prematurely closed schools and prompted many other spring activities – including graduations – to be postponed, canceled or altered.

“People have said, ‘Look at what you’ve had to deal with in your first year,’” Cheek said, “but those superintendents with 20 or 30 years of experience have not had to deal with anything like this either.”

This year, everyone was on the same learning curve.

There was little that any superintendent statewide could do as far as getting students back into the classroom. However, salvaging some sort of graduation ceremony has been achieved in many districts.

Arthur/Lovington/Atwood-Hammond held its ceremony on Thursday, May 14.

The district, located in Douglas County, took advantage of a building just behind the high school in Arthur that is used by both the park district and the fair board.

“It’s a large indoor shed with a poured floor,” Cheek said. “It was perfect for us.

“It allowed us the opportunity to have parents and family members drive through and experience the graduation.”

The setup was relatively simple.

A makeshift stage was created inside a building which features roll-up doors on each end. Each of Arthur’s 78 seniors in the class of 2020 were provided with a time to arrive by vehicle.

They entered the building riding in their family’s vehicle and, when they reached a certain point, the graduate would exit and make his or her way to the stage.

“Families had to remain in their vehicle,” Cheek said. “We assigned kids times to come in. They went across the stage, had a couple of pictures taken, got back in the car and then the family drove out the other side.”

The ceremony started at 12:30 p.m. on the 14^th and ended around 7 p.m.

“We tried to spread it out,” Cheek said, “because we didn’t want long lines crowding up the streets and parking lot.”

Before the project received the green light, Cheek said it was submitted to the school board, the district’s attorney and also the local health department for their input.

“It wasn’t ideal, but our plans stuck to the (state) guidelines,” Cheek said.

While still in the organizational stage, Cheek said the key was to “gather as much information as you possibly can and make it fit you.”

Mahomet’s Mark Herman, who operates Flushing Pheasant Video productions, helped make Arthur’s graduation event special and memorable.

“He came down and did drone footage of our schools (located in Lovington, Atwood and Arthur) and was here (on Graduation Day) doing video,” Cheek said. “He will put that together and provide the kids a couple pictures and a jump drive (featuring all of the 2020 graduates).

“He is going to mesh it so it almost looks seamless.”

The video will also feature speeches from the school’s valedictorian and salutatorian as well as words from the high school principal and from Cheek.

Before the Arthur/Lovington/Atwood-Hammond school district settled on the drive-through graduation, several other possibilities were considered.

“We spent quite a few hours developing a plan and thought we had things in place,” Cheek said. “Our original plan was indoors in the gymnasium with families, but we scrapped that.

“Our interpretation was we couldn’t do that.”

An outdoor ceremony was also planned in front of the high school “with parents across the street,” Cheek said.

That was thwarted by a lack of cooperation from Mother Nature.

“There was no way we could do it,” Cheek said.

Eventually, things fell into place.

“We were able to work together and put together a plan that got us through the year,” Cheek said.

Though it is approximately three months before another school year will start, Cheek has canceled plans for a family vacation to Colorado in June to immediately begin working out details for what the fall learning session could look like.

“We’re trying to be optimistic (about being in the school buildings to start the next school year),” he said, “but developing something to help you get by has been real challenging.”

A group of school administrators and teacher leaders will meet later this week to begin the process.

“We need to start the conversation now and say, ‘What does it potentially look like,’” Cheek said. “It’s important to be as proactive as we can possibly be.”

While chromebooks and technology have been hailed as saviors for at-home learning, the existence of those items, Cheek said, is “one piece of the puzzle, from my perspective.

“It’s one thing to have the devices, but the larger piece is to be trained on how to teach remotely. I’m not sure how many districts are truly trained to teach online.

“One thing we’re trying to do here is have staff provide instruction that is beneficial to students.”

Cheek said that when the state mandated that schools be closed this spring, “the first step we took was to identify our priorities.

“It was unanimous that the first one was to take care of our students’ and families’ basic needs to move forward, and then came the academic piece.

“Obviously, we wish it hadn’t happened, but we did a pretty good job of that.”

The current focus at Arthur is not just on the fall. Depending on when – or if – stay-at-home policies are lifted in Illinois, Cheek hopes to still hold a graduation ceremony in front of an audience.

“We have plans, potentially, in late June or July, if the state will allow,” Cheek said. “We may not do anything at all, but if they say we can have gatherings, we will do a graduation.”