Emily Kemper | The Chronicle
A quick glance at the 2025-26 Mason City Schools academic calendar reveals a major change: no more Personal Learning Days.
Replaced by four Journey Days spread throughout the school year, this change is expected to provide a more structured, meaningful learning experience for students and staff outside of the classroom. Each day will follow a theme related to the Portrait of a Comet: Learner on September 26, Leader on November 21, Citizen on February 13 and You on March 13.
Mason Deputy Superintendent Amy Brennan said that Journey Days will be a time for students to learn about themselves, their passions and future goals. She also said that it is important for Journey Days to be a manageable and meaningful experience for students, staff and families in the district or community since they are counted as educational days.
“We saw that students’ experiences [on Personal Learning Days] was really varied,” Brennan said. “This year we had some changes to our calendar that created opportunities for Journey Days. It meant that [Journey Days] were well timed throughout the year, ensuring that every student could have time to pursue their own strengths, passions and interests [while] aligning to our Portrait of a Comet.”
Journey Days will include Missions, Expeditions and Quests. Expeditions are activities catered to each grade level and connected to the day’s theme, formatted as a choice board. Quests are presented by MCS community partners that students may sign up for. For MHS students, these activities range from job shadows to workshops to volunteer opportunities. Learning Experience Designer Shanna Bumiller said that Journey Days will be flexible, allowing students ample time to complete their work if they are busy on the Journey Day itself.
“You don’t need to do it on September 26,” Bumiller said. “Let’s say you have your homeroom advisory during Connect on that Wednesday prior, or some free time Wednesday evening or you have a study hall and you want to do the mission then: [that is] awesome. There’s flexibility built into it.”
The Kiwanis Club of Mason is offering a Quest for the first Journey Day, partnering with the nonprofit Bicycle Recycle to repair old bikes. The bikes will be donated to the CommUNITY Holiday Help program to help Comets in need. Mason Kiwanis Club President Annie Droege said their goal for Journey Days is to fix 25 bikes and that Kiwanis was happy to support Mason students in this learning experience.
“It fits so well within our mission with our focus on helping students and children,” Droege said. “We were not hesitant at all to help out. I really recognize that it takes a village to make things happen, especially when it’s supporting education, and I think that things are more significant when [the] community comes together on an effort.”
The City of Mason will also be offering multiple Quest opportunities for MHS students, including public service job shadowing opportunities, self-defense classes and fire station tours. Assistant to the city manager Jenna Pantling said Journey Days will be mutually beneficial for both Mason schools and the Mason community by introducing students to job opportunities outside of the traditional college path that they may otherwise not have known about.
“We love engaging with the community and sharing everything about how local government operates,” Pantling said. “We’re really excited about this, and we certainly value our partnership with the schools. We wouldn’t be the community we are without them.”
Bumiller said a difference from past Personal Learning Days is that Journeys will not only occur on one day. Instead, there will be build-up and reflection opportunities called a launch and landing. This ensures students are aware of the requirements and can reflect on their experience afterward. For MHS students, this will happen during homeroom Connect sessions. Bumiller said that this was a major consideration when creating Journey Days to improve the experience.
“There wasn’t really any opportunity to share what you learned about yourself last year,” Bumiller said. “[Schoolinks] became more of just a checklist for students. So we asked students about it, and what we heard was: we don’t really mind doing this, but why am I doing it? Who’s looking at it? How is this meaningful? So that’s why we implemented more consistency with that homeroom advisory.”
MHS sophomore and Big Rock team member Merrick McClure said that she is looking forward to job shadowing an industrial designer on this upcoming Journey Day and trying to get more students excited about it.
“I know a lot of students are unsure,” McClure said. “[Students] are used to not having to do anything, but it’s not as strict and structured as they think. You don’t have to do something huge. It can be something small but productive, so we can get the most out of high school.”
MHS junior Hannah Kaufman said that while she wasn’t sure how she felt about Journey Days at first, she now thinks that they will be an improvement to past Personal Learning Days because they are more structured.
“At first I was concerned that we were going to be forced to do things [unlike] Personal Learning Days [when] we could learn something that had to do with us,” Kaufman said. “But now I think [Journey Days] will be more successful [than Personal Learning Days] because it’s giving us double the amount of days and actual examples of things that we can do.”
Journey Days aren’t just an experience for students; MCS staff get to engage in their own journeys. Bumiller said that all, approximately 1200, MCS staff members will be taking advantage of staff Journey Days to learn and grow alongside students. Bumiller said that the experience for staff members is a very important part of Journey Days and supporting the school community as a whole.
“I’m super proud to be a member of the Mason City Schools community,” Bummiler said. “ We are such a learning community. We put that first.”
