If you ever want to get a school year started off in the right way, start your day at Garfield Elementary School. The first thing that happens every morning involves the whole school standing and reciting the pledge of allegiance together. This year, I was able to be at Garfield on Tuesday, Sept. 5, to kick off the school year. What a great community atmosphere as they introduced new staff and helped set the tone for the school year.  

Strong schools build strong communities, and the first few weeks of the school year are evidence of that.

After starting my day at Garfield, I finished my first day at Discovery Middle School – during parent pick-up.  As staff assisted students in finding the right car as they made their way through the pick-up lane, I had a parent share an idea through her open passenger window about improving safety in the line. I love that part about being present.  You never know who will have an idea to help improve a challenge or solve a problem.  I love that community problem-solving spirit about Alexandria. 

As I made my way from school to school over the past few weeks, it was fun to see all of the community building and learning taking place.  I saw the Early Ed class at Carlos learn how to have snack time together. The little things - ask questions to create conversation, clean up after yourself, push in your chair. Going from Carlos to Alexandria Area High School where I stopped in a small engines class. I followed up with some students a few days later. It sounds like they learned a little about the importance of oil and how to repair an engine.  Next up at AAHS was a College American Studies class. They were reading a passage from British explorer and fur trader, Henry Hudson. The discussion was about how the vocabulary of the time and the meaning of some words have changed throughout history. It was fun to hear the student interpretations of the primary source documents.  

At Discovery Middle School, I was lucky enough to be in attendance during a community building activity using a “Would you rather” prompt. This one was about licorice.  Would you rather have Twizzlers or Red Vine?  After a taste test, most of the class chose Twizzlers - primarily based on comfort and traditions.  A number of students had never had Red Vine licorice.  As a teacher and administrator, I spent 8 years of my career in middle school. You never quite know what you might learn on a given day.  It could be about a new type of licorice. The staff at Discovery has been focused on creating quality relationships with students to start the school year. The teacher's phrase of, “They don’t care what you know until they know that you care,” is still true today.

And then we had homecoming last week. What a great week for our community. The excitement of different dress-up days and themes.  It kicked off with some Powder Puff Football and Volleyball on Sunday.  All of our teams had home competition including a fun tradition of a fireworks celebration after a boys/girls soccer double header. Our AAHS student leaders visited each of the elementary schools to talk about homecoming and school spirit. It was great to see the mentorship taking place as the high school students visited elementary schools.

I’ll finish with the parade – and strong schools equal strong communities. What an amazing showing of community support with all of the people that were able to attend. It seems like it is getting increasingly difficult to have events that cross generations. It was great to see grandparents and grandchildren together enjoying the community creativity that came through in all of the floats. Thank you to all of the area businesses and organizations that participated in the parade last Friday.  

Alexandria Public Schools have had a strong start to the 2023-24 school year.  My math equation for this month: Strong Schools = Strong Communities.