I’m a sucker for a good story. It’s hard to say if it’s nurture or nature. I’m a blend of story genetics: storytelling and story-reading. My maternal family is bursting with people who love reading. Some have even gone professional with their adoration of the written word; my mom and three of her sisters are [...]
They come running to the reception area with books, games, sketch pads, and friends. “Is it our day today?” they ask Mrs. Howard. Big smiles spread across the students’ faces as they scurry to different learning pods set up across the Learning Commons. To say this space is a hit would be an understatement. It [...]
As I am moving out of my role as middle school principal, I thought it would be appropriate to share my highlights from the past 13 years. In no particular order, some of the things I will remember are: Coffeehouse performances Pre-pandemic, our middle school would hold an annual celebration of the arts. We often [...]
A few surprises have come my way over the course of my time as a teacher and administrator. This is my 22nd year at ACS. For the first 9 years I was an assistant principal or vice principal, and for the past 13 years I have been the middle school principal. Before coming to ACS, [...]
Mind racing. Heart pounding. Hoping. Anticipating. Anxiously awaiting. The first day at a new job is always scary, but for teachers, it happens twice the first year and every September thereafter. Once when entering a room full of strangers in a new school in the final week of summer. Again, when the students arrive for [...]
These past few weeks we watched one of the final pieces of the construction project – the canopy over the front entrance – being put in place. This is like a giant erector set with a concrete cylinder base, a steel cylinder, six angled support arms, and beautiful wooden trusses, all supporting an angled wood [...]
“Hi Summer! Oh…and hi Mr. van der Leek.” She is often greeted first and I do not take offense. Summer has connected with so many middle school students during the past several weeks and has happily done her work making friends with these mid-sized humans. In fact, when we walk to school each day, Summer [...]
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….” Those famous opening lines of Charles Dickens’ novel, A Tale of Two Cities. The novel begins with, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was [...]
This past school year had its challenges to say the least! We navigated the two big C's: COVID-19 and construction. Both C's meant school had to be done differently. We stayed in our cohorts (another C word!), and we learned new routines like wearing a mask and using hand sanitizer whenever we moved from one [...]
“Leanne,” I wrote to my editor, “I think I just wrote a book.” Those words catapulted me into a world I had never dreamt I would be in. I mean, I teach math and science, what business do I have writing a book? I have plenty of excuses to NOT write a book: busyness, fear, [...]
