Matthew Haas
Visit to Crozet Elementary, Portraits of a Division and Employee, Community Partner Breakfast

On Monday morning I had a super visit to Crozet Elementary School. I had the opportunity to complete five learning walks with principal Staci England and assistant principal Trish Moya. We enjoyed visiting Alex Lancaster’s kindergarten, Katherine Hamel’s 4th grade, Jaylen Crist’s 3rd grade, Hope Caplan’s Art class, and Will Donnelly’s 5th grade. Students were engaged in word study, celebrations of Hispanic Heritage Month, readings of Crozet’s common school book of the month The Magical Yet, a story (math) problem maze, personalized color wheels, and order of (math) operations. I was very impressed with each teacher’s creative approach to engaging students in learning tasks that were targeted to grade level standards. In addition, all of the teachers we visited were creatively integrating The Magic of Yet, a story designed to promote a growth mindset into the day's learning. 

I greatly appreciate the students and staff of Crozet making me feel welcome, and I know the teaching and learning I observed typifies the best in all our educators’ work. Thank you! 

 

Portraits of a Division

With our Portraits of a Division series, we aim to highlight students and staff on a frequent basis to see and know people who represent all of you who  make ACPS a great place. Below you will find a link to the most recent portrait. For earlier portraits of students and staff, please see our archive at the bottom of the portraits page!

 

Portrait of an ACPS Employee: Eva McGehee

Yesterday morning, our Office of Community Engagement hosted the first ever annual ACPS Partnership Breakfast at CATEC. More than 60 community partners came together to talk about ways that we can support all of students’ success as a collaborative team. When Director of Equity, Family, School, and Community Relations Eric Irizarry reached out to schools to ask you to identify partners who regularly collaborate with you, he accumulated a list of more than 200 partners! Since he opened up the volunteer portal, he has received notice from 500+ potential volunteers. I ask us all, how do we fully engage partners and volunteers in our mission to close achievement gaps? 

Media links for you! 

 

Speaking of community partners, Amber Roberts, ACPS’s Work- and Community-Based Learning Coordinator, was interviewed on NBC-29 about the broad range of outside the classroom learning opportunities available to high school students and the value that our students and businesses bring to one another.  You can see her interview here:

NBC 29 Community Conversation 

Over the past three decades,  the United Way Day of Caring has brought hundreds of volunteers into our schools, enhanced our partnership with businesses and has been responsible for many projects supporting our students.  Among the projects this year on September 21, was one at CATEC involving a local firm that at first thought they were too late to be awarded the opportunity:

Charlottesville Architecture Firm Partners with United Way Day of Caring 

 

Have you ever heard of the SCOPE program at UVA? The University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development (EDH), in cooperation with all Virginia school district members of the UVA K-12 Advisory Council, offers a two-year leadership development program comprised of cohorts of high potential school administrators. The purpose of the program is to develop and support a cadre of exemplary leaders (current principals, assistant principals, and central office instructional specialists) through the establishment of a statewide community of practice. The acronym SCOPE stands for Statewide Communities of Practice for Excellence. 

Nearly all of ACPS principals have attended the SCOPE program over the past decade, many of them as assistant principals, as it is an important part of our leadership development program. This week, SCOPE launched a new cohort, and three of our assistant principals are on board: Stephanie Provines, Comona Murray, and Trish Moya. 

 

Upcoming Events and Observances: