Sunday, January 30, 2005

My School...Why It's Special

In spite of occasional rants , about Feral Children and absurd innitives, I love my school and I love my job. Our attendance hovers around 620 depending on whether or not the nearby apartment complex is having a $99 move in special.

Of those 620+ kids, 600 are wonderful. Fun, curious, loud, noisy, reasonably obedient, willing to learn and downright interesting. It's the other 20 that seem to take up 80% of everyone's time.
It's a pity since the others sometimes get the short end of the stick.

We're a school with everything stacked against it - poverty - over 85% of our kids are on free or reduced lunch, language - most of our kids are Spanish dominant, transient population ($99 move in specials are the curse of education), single parent homes, you name it, we got it.

Despite all the odds we scored Exlempary on the Texas TAKS test. That's as high as you can be.
And we got there due to an dynamic Principal and Assistant Principal, incredibly dedicated teachers, fantastic kids, welcoming school climate and a a great library program - gotta put in a plug for me ;-) !
Regardless that No Child Left Behind does it's best to thwart our efforts there are some wonderful things happening in education today. Drop into a local school in your neighborhood and see for yourself!

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