This week, my grandmother turned 90 years old. We will gather on Saturday, all her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and great, great grandchildren, to honor and celebrate her life. She’s an amazing woman and it’s hard to sum up all the ways she’s touched my life, but this week I’ve been thinking a lot about her and trying to isolate what it is about her that stands out so much and makes her such an amazing woman.
She’s all the things that grandmothers are, loving, patient, kind and sweet. She’s always ready with a hug or a kiss and spoils each of us certainly. But, to me, there’s something beyond that which sets her apart and has forever changed my life and the many children, not just her own, with whom she has interacted with over her 90 years.
My grandmother is a hugely gifted person. She’s just the kind of person that a GT Magnet would have been perfect for if it had been offered when she was a young girl growing up in Sea Grove. She can watercolor, she can sew, she can garden, she can play piano by ear, she can sing, and she can fix anything… with or without a manual. Her home was always beautifully appointed with embroidered pillows and wall hangings, hand sewn drapes, luxuriously healthy ferns, picture perfect roses she cultivated and various watercolors depicting scenes from the Outer Banks, her favorite spot to vacation with my grandfather.
As grandchildren, most of us had very young, and consequently somewhat financially poor parents. My own mother had me when she was 18. Money was always tight in those days for me and for my cousins’ families. My grandmother demonstrated her love for each of us by making us beautiful clothes, all from patterns she would pick out at The Remnant Shop in Burlington. While we would occupy ourselves looking at the toys in the pattern books and drawer after drawer of magical buttons, she would thoughtfully pick out patterns in classic designs and quality fabrics that she would then meticulously transform into beautiful clothes for us, clothes of such quality you would never dream they were handmade. I remember once she even made me a bathing suit!
She also had a knack for growing beautiful flowers. My love of gardening can be directly linked to her. When friends visit my house and talk about my impatients, I am always reminded of me and my cousin Matthew standing in my grandmother’s back yard with the hose in hand “helping” her as she watered them. One weekend before heading back to college, I was admiring a big pot of mixed impatients on her back porch. Without missing a beat she said, “Why don’t you take it.” So generously, she gave away this beautiful pot that she had cared for and nurtured from a little flat of sprouting plants. It transformed my run down and dark college rental front porch into a homey, warm entrance. My love of gardening was born and since that time, I’ve always kept a little something blooming close by to brighten up whatever space I may be calling home. My now seemingly natural sense about when plants need more light, more water, or more feed comes straight from all those years in her garden and the many phone calls since to troubleshoot. The reason I can name so many flowers, trees, shrubs and plants is directly because of Mamaw.
I gotta admit the truth here too, even though I am supposed to be the ultimate “enforcer” of rules. My grandmother was my accomplice on some serious truancy over the years. Those early elementary years had a few trials and tribulations, namely the divorce of my parents which manifested itself in some predictable insecurities. I confronted my doubts and fears as so many kids do by developing the tried and true “stomach ache” ailment. What was my mom to do? She had to get to work and there I stood in the apartment kitchen, gripping my waist claiming a cramping pain like maybe I would vomit or worse, have diarrhea. Since Mamaw had once been a nurse and she thankfully lived close by, momma would take me there instead of to school. Mamaw would promptly put me in bed in the middle bed room and tell me to “rest.” I’d lay there until about 9:30 and then I would hear the door creak open slowly. She would look in on me, the magic in her eyes and say, “You’re not really sick, are you.” Within the hour we would be at Mann’s Department Store running errands. Now that I’ve finished more years of advanced schooling than I care to even remember, I know that those days I skipped out of Dick and Jane to spend one on one with my grandmother didn’t hold me back. Through the wisdom of retrospect I can see now that the hurt little girl trying to make sense of her parents’ divorce was finding a way to get the nurturing she needed to make it through. Mamaw was there to administer the “cure” to my stomach aches with her quiet and steady love.
Sick days weren’t the only time I spent at Mamaw’s. Like many of us cousins, Mamaw’s house was what we considered “home” as kids. Most of our parents were divorced which meant moving a lot and separation from any constant place to call home. There was Shawnee Manor Apartments, Greenbriar Apartments, Friendly Hills Apartments, Westlake Condominiums, Beacon Hill Apartments…For me, the house on Main Street in Graham is what I think of when I think of “home.” I had another grandmother so you may be wondering why Mamaw’s house was the one that drew me in and where my cousins and I always wanted to be. I can only attribute it to the way Mamaw treated us. When I was at my other grandmother’s house there was a certain hyper vigilance about her manner. “Don’t take the food in the living room. Don’t spill your juice on the carpet. Don’t put your feet on the couch. Don’t use the dish towel to wipe up the floor. Don’t put too much soap on the rag. Don’t touch those, they might break.” It was kind of unnerving. Mamaw Rogers’ house was the total opposite. My cousins and I spent hours of creative exploration there, our every idea being nurtured with Mamaw giving us the tools to transform idea into reality. When my cousin Jennifer and I were maybe seven or eight at the oldest, I remember Mamaw showing us how to sew on the sewing machine. We were making skirts for Barbie out of left over lame from the live nativity costumes Mamaw made each year at First Baptist. The fur from the wise men’s robes became mink stoles for Barbie and her gang. There was no apprehension on Mamaw’s part to hand over her sewing machine to us, though I’m sure we jammed it plenty of times pressing the pedal too fast on the zig zag stitch. We did cross stitches till our eyes went cross. We hooked rugs! Her paint brushes and water colors were generously handed over to us along with the expensive pressed paper for us to explore and experiment mixing colors. I’ve played with her makeup and her nail polish more times than I can remember and you know what that means, nail polish on the carpet!!! Jen and I used to pull out all the office supplies and play “school” for hours. Mamaw never said a word. And the forts! I still remember the purple quilt that we used to drape over chairs and couch cushions in the living room to make our fort. Nothing was off limits at Mamaw’s.
And I certainly can’t fail to mention her patience! There’s the kind of patience one thinks of when you imagine kids whining or begging (I did my share of both of those…there was that Afghan Hound dog of Barbie’s that for some reason I just HAD to have)…but this is a different kind. My grandmother never grew weary of listening to me or my cousins yammer on and on and on. The topic didn’t matter. Sometimes we were acting out plays in the living room. Sometimes we were making up cheers in the kitchen. Sometimes we were plugging through Silent Night on the piano or worse yet, improvising on the keys ad nauseum. Lord! When I think of the number of children who have run straight to that piano upon arriving at Mamaw’s to begin pounding away…I don’t know how she stood it. In all the years I’ve been witness to these things, I don’t recall ever hearing a shush from her. I don’t remember her ever saying, “Why don’t ya’ll go play outside, I can’t hear myself think.” In fact, when I think about it, I can see the sparkle in her eye as she watched, delighting in our creativity and our zeal. To this day the phone bill will demonstrate that sometimes she spends hours “listening” to us. From break ups to breakdowns, Mamaw has put in so many hours being there for each of us. Thank goodness most phone plans now offer free long distance.
And while all those things above undoubtedly illustrate how amazing she is, there’s something more. I think all the things I have described above are very important to anyone who has or works with children. Being generous, providing a fertile playground for creative minds, setting an example by nurturing your own creative self and of course being patient and loving, but there’s something else about Mamaw that makes her unique and has made all the difference in the lives of her children, her grandchildren and I think it’s a safe bet to say that it will also ripple out to her great grandchildren and great-great children. Mamaw is a person who has always believed in me. There is nothing I’ve ever imagined doing, or dreamed of doing that Mamaw has warned me against (other than driving off to South Carolina to see some red neck boyfriend, but that’s not what I mean). From her and from my mother as her daughter and her other children as my aunts and uncles and her grandchildren my cousins, I have always received the message, “You can do it.” I never really realized what a gift this was until I reached adulthood and began to interface with people who lacked confidence in themselves. I can see now that all her listening and all her nurturing of my creativity conjoined with her fierce commitment to quality in all things be it fabric or roses or most importantly, character, blended together to provide a breeding ground for a family of really special people. Each of us has stumbled through our own periods of self doubt and personal failures, but the difference has always been that steady and constant message of love for us and faith in us that every time helped get us back on track. I never was able to really succumb to my darkest self doubts because her belief in me, in its stillness and sureness was always more powerful. Why a silly girl who got D’s in Biology her freshman year in college would think that she could pursue a doctorate from UNC-Chapel Hill is really quite illogical when you think about it. After all, neither of my parents even finished college? What was I thinking? Who did I think I was, anyway? Why I am the grand-daughter of Ruth Rogers, and I can do anything!
So the lesson from Mamaw is this: be creative, create a beautiful environment to enjoy, love people when they need it even when they can’t ask for it outright, see the magic in children when they bang on the piano, and most importantly believe in your kids. Who knows where our kids can go in this life and what harm is there in aiming high? Giving children the gift of believing in themselves can make all the difference.

Well it’s that time of year again. As I get older the season takes on new meaning. I am amazed at how busy I can be this time of year doing things to make the holiday special for my family. I am also struck by the kindness of parents who I watch going above and beyond to make the season memorable for their family by cooking, decorating, buying gifts, sending cards, taking holiday photos, baking, traveling, wrapping and the list goes on and on. If you all are like me, you may already be feeling somewhat anxious at the thought of all there is to do. My mom said to me over the weekend, “I have finished my Christmas shopping already,” and I felt somewhere between envious and nauseous.

To those of you, who like me, are already beginning to make huge lists of “must dos” and getting tired just thinking about the hectic pace the holidays can bring with them, I want to say that perhaps these things are not quite as urgent as we think they are. I’m sure my own parents and grandparents went to great lengths to make the holidays memorable and special for me and in the past years I’ve done my own share of overspending and running around like a chicken with my head cut off, but when I think back on the holidays, it is not the best present that I remember about holidays of the past or the time the house was decorated the best, it’s more simple things that I remember.

Like many of you I’m sure, my family has changed as I’ve grown older. Now when my family gathers for the holidays, there are many missing faces. Perhaps missing them is part of what makes me more nostalgic and adds importance to the little things associated with the season rather than the grand gestures implied by the Bailey’s and Lexus commercials we see on TV. I believe that for our children and for ourselves, it will be those little things that last in our memories and that things that don’t come with a price tag will be the things that make their holidays special.
For instance, I remember with fondness how on Christmas morning my dad and my uncles and my grandfather would all go through their closets and find either a red or a green shirt to wear when we all gathered at my grandmother’s house. That seems so silly, but now that they have all passed away, I can’t tell you how nice it would be to show up there and see them in those crazy shirts.
Another special memory from days gone by is sitting in my grandmother’s big living room and smelling the fire that my grandfather would build. Does anybody still have a wood burning fire place anymore? My grandmother agrees with me that while they were so very messy, they were so worth it. The entire ritual of seeing my grandfather outside splitting wood to his big strong arms carrying in a bundle to the first popping sounds as the kindling took the flame…I remember it all so vividly and it was a smell and a feeling like no other.
Here’s one I’m sure many of you have experienced…all the relatives would come to my grandmother’s house and everyone would bring a delicious dish to share. Until my late 20s this crowd could sometimes include my great uncle and aunt and my great grandparents! We all would eat to the point of gluttony. Then we’d share in clearing the table and washing the dishes. Here’s the part that I remember and miss. Everyone would find a comfortable spot in the living room. In a matter of no time we would be talking, or “visiting” as my grandparents would call it and it wouldn’t be long before my Uncle HW would begin to nod off. The kids in the room would slowly notice one by one and exchange knowing looks. The adults were too well mannered to giggle, but after the first loud snore, we kids could contain ourselves no more and would break out into loud laughter, often waking him. It was, as we would say, “classic!”
I guess you see the theme here. It’s not so much about the presents my family would buy, although I do have a great story about the games “Mouse Trap” and “Operation,” but I’ll save those for another day. What warms my heart now as I think back to the holidays are the memories of my family, just being themselves. I miss the thoughtfulness of my dad and my uncles and my grandfather to “dress” for the occasion, which was something they never did otherwise. I miss the distinct flavor of mamaw’s very simple punch (just red kool aid, orange juice and ginger ale) and her cheese straws. I miss Uncle HW’s predictable post meal naps. And of course I miss the warmth of the fire on my back that my grandfather had built with the amazing smell that filled the house and the air outside.
We’ll see if I can practice what I preach this year and try to focus on connecting with the people I love in the simple, yet meaningful ways. It seems like sometimes I can fall victim to irritability and short patience because of my long to do list, my stress over money and in general the fatigue of running myself crazy trying to make everything “perfect.” The truth is, when you are with your family and those you love, that is what is perfect. I miss my loved ones who have passed on so much and I hope that I can use these memories to help steer me toward keeping the spirit of the season in my heart, and for me that has nothing to do with Bailey’s or Lexus and everything to do with family and friends and loved ones. I hope your heart is full this holiday too. I know you are making memories for your children in the simple things you do without even knowing it. ~ Ms. Jordan

Teachers at Underwood vote for their colleagues for the distinguished honor of Teacher of the Year. Many of our teachers earned multiple votes from their peers, but only one teacher holds the title. This year’s Teacher of the Year is Pat Miller! I certainly can’t tell you why each of those folks cast their vote for Mr. Miller, but I can sound off about the things I see that I presume others notice as well.

First, to examine our parking lot, you’d be more likely to assume that Pat is a security guard for Underwood or the Head Custodian than a teacher. His is the first car in the parking lot in the morning and the absolute last to leave at night. Many times I’ve left school, run a few errands, gone home and leashed up the dog, walked back to Underwood to find Pat still here heating up dinner at the microwave in the copy room! Yes, people, teaching is a job that can take a lot of time!!! It always makes me smile to see Pat’s car here and I am touched by his dedication to his work.

Second, Pat misses no opportunity to fill his students with knowledge. In the afternoons I go upstairs to monitor dismissal in our 3-5 hallways. Every afternoon I find Pat standing at the doorway (so he can supervise kids moving in the halls) engaging in one on one instruction with a student. Whether practicing math facts or revisiting key concepts from a day’s lesson, Pat never lets the instruction stop just because the 3:45 bell has already rung. These meaningful, specific interactions with his students each afternoon make the difference between teaching and teaching for mastery.

A few years ago the district got fully behind the idea of Professional Learning Teams to promote student learning. In anticipation of our early release days, our grade levels embarked on intense training that summer so that when we met our time together would be successful and effective. I’ll never forget Pat’s enthusiasm and excitement about aligning instruction with assessments and the power of ongoing assessments to make students grow academically. Pat described with certainty the power of our school and predicted that in a few short years we could reach our goals. The data in the years since certainly proves his premonition. Pat is a master of data analysis and planning. He has a laser focus on the objectives and is relentless at making certain that not only his students, but also his team and all the students on his grade level, sit down for their EOGs fully prepared.

Lastly, with all these amazing strengths, you’d imagine Mr. Miller to be quite heady and full of pride. Quite the contrary. If you know Pat, you know he is humble and will pass credit quicker than a hot potato. His remarks to the staff upon being given the honor of Teacher of the Year were: “We are a team. One person alone doesn’t do it.” While I agree with Pat on these words, I must say that Pat gives our school a huge shot in the arm and we are all very happy to give him this honor. He deserves it!

-Ms. Jordan

When I made the decision to leave teaching back in 1996, the truth is it was more about economics than anything else. I loved my children and I cried at the thought of giving up the very special bond that formed each year with my students and their families. Back during my teaching days I used to have all my students over to my house at the end of the year for a party at my house. I went to birthday parties and ball games. I kept scrapbooks filled with notes from students, letters from parents, and candid Polaroid’s taken over the year…things I see our teachers doing now. I loved being a teacher. But, as a 26 year old, my tolerance for living with roommates was quickly wearing out and I was having some serious doubts as to how I would ultimately own my own home and be financially secure on a teacher’s salary. I lived with two roommates who had taken time off after college to travel across country before settling down and starting to work three years after me who were already out earning me by quite a bit. To add insult to injury, their nights were filled with leisure and fun while mine were filled with grading journals and lesson planning. It didn’t seem right.

I talked with my principal about my feelings and as an educator himself, he totally understood. He had become a principal at 27! He encouraged me to pursue the North Carolina Principal Fellows Program and seek a job in administration. I could still maintain my relationships with children and their families, but at least make a decent salary allowing me to live a financially independent life. The idea took some getting used to, but obviously, he had good instincts. I love being a principal and thankfully still get many of the perks I loved so much about being in the classroom.

So here’s what gets me really fired up lately…I get fired up when I hear public school teachers being criticized and when I think about how little teachers continue to earn for compensation compared to how much they are asked to do. For any of you who have volunteered in a classroom, on a field trip, or had a sleepover at your house, you don’t need me to tell you how physically demanding supervising children is. The level of vigilance and organization needed is unmatched. Our teachers though, must go even further. In today’s classrooms teachers must capture the attention of children who have grown up in the age of 3D movies, Ipads, Gameboys, and Wi-Fits. I’ve said before that teaching is like being a cruise ship performer. So much energy must be extolled to keep the attention of the students from 9-4 and there’s more work waiting once that work is done.

Unlike when I was in the classroom, teachers now have technology as an integral part of their working days. There is the internet! We all love technology, but let’s face it; it has added a lot of time onto our workdays and has allowed our workdays to creep farther and farther into our home lives. Many teachers engage in daily email correspondence with parents, create blogs and wikis, send home newsletters and plan Smart Board lessons for hours after students depart for the buses. Teachers must also complete all their yearly evaluation documents on line now as well. These tasks can not be done while teachers are supervising students. The teachers must also prepare and load the technology devices so they are ready for the arrival of students the next day. A fifteen minute activity on a computerized device can take hours for a teacher to prepare. They do this because this is what engages all learners and provides differentiated instruction, regardless of how much additional time it requires.

Our teachers today are also responsible for serving a wider range of students. Our students are more diverse than ever before and the teacher is the equalizing device charged with getting every one of them on grade level, positioned to achieve their full potential. A teacher used to plan a lesson for each subject area, but now must plan multiple lessons for each subject area to meet the needs of the students. A classroom used to have a teacher standing up front teaching, now classrooms have small groups spread throughout the room and the teacher is moving from group to group reaching the students at their level and challenging them to grow. We never needed eyes in the back of our heads more than we do now  Additionally, the instruction they deliver needs to contain not only the concepts from that subject area, but also 21st Century Skills such as cooperation, collaboration, financial literacy, creativity, innovation, and problem solving. Teachers need to be posing questions to help develop critical thinking skills. They are also mandated to teach in ways that counteract stereotypes and capitalize on diversity. Are you getting the idea? No wonder people admire teachers so much.

This is why I get so frustrated when I think about teacher pay. It’s not so much that I think teachers should get more; it’s more the consideration of what we pay for education compared to what we pay for everything else. Like you, I am a taxpayer, and obviously I don’t get excited at the thought of paying more taxes, but when I think of what everything else costs, it just doesn’t add up. For instance, how many of you have cablevision? Think about how much you pay to have cablevision. Then think about what happens if your cablevision needs aren’t being met, if it isn’t working. You call and you wait and wait and wait and finally somebody comes on the line and asks you to repeat all the information you’ve already entered in while you were waiting and then says they can send someone over to your house between 9-5 and please be waiting there so they can come and figure out what is wrong. And we are paying them! Who has time to wait around for 8 hours? Imagine if you had a problem with your child’s teacher and they told you to come to the school between 9-5 and wait and they would see you sometime between that window. And can you even imagine a time where someone from the cable company would call you or email you if you asked? And how important is cable anyway? For the price you pay, it would seem that it is very important. So many places I go now seem to offer the bare minimum for customer service and we are all paying significantly to get it. Yet teachers continue to give an excellent product year after year after year in a job whose demands continue to grow and their pay doesn’t grow at all. I was talking this week with a parent about the quality of goods we buy and how the quality and sometimes the quantity of those goods seem to be ever diminishing, yet the cost increases. The opposite is true of our teachers. Today’s teachers are more highly qualified than ever before with advanced degrees, multiple areas of licensure and rigorous evaluation demands, yet our teachers have not had a pay increase in the past four years, four years during which the price of everything else has continued to increase. How have we become a world able to pay more for cable, Honeycrisp apples and a bucket of movie theater popcorn, but the teacher pay remains fixed?

Think about it this way…a first year teacher makes about $2,700 a month after taxes for ten months a year. A teacher who started teaching four years ago makes that also, due to the pay freeze on teachers. Imagine having to pay for prescriptions, student loans, utility bills, groceries, child care, car insurance…and all of life’s necessities on that salary. Then ask yourself if you think that the people that work so hard for all of the children in our community deserve to be living on a wage that requires most of them to have part time jobs outside of school. I know that I for one would like to see North Carolina work to be compensating our teachers appropriately for all that we expect of them. This is one of the reasons I am so grateful to be at Underwood. Over and over when we survey teachers about what they feel is helping them do their job, they continue to say that it is the support of the PTA and the volunteers in their classrooms. Every day you help me make the teachers feel valuable and appreciated. I thank you sincerely for all that you do to show our teachers that we DO realize how hard they work. I hope that someday very soon we will see teachers being compensated appropriately for all that we expect them to do.

I Sure Could Use a Little Good News Today

Yesterday I was driving home from a meeting in Chapel Hill listening to the radio. The market was down. Unemployment is up. There was a shooting in Nevada. A local man is being charged with killing his step-daughter who is possibly suffering from PTSD after being in Iraq. In a matter of a few short minutes I noticed a pattern of all bad news. It struck me how many troubling messages we hear each day. I wished that there was at least one bright story of hope that I would hear.

It made me realize once again how much I appreciate the opportunity to work with children each day. For those of you who may be experiencing what I did on that drive, I offer up to you that if you are looking for good news, spend some time with children. Our students bring excitement to each day at Underwood, despite cuts to materials and staff. Throughout their day we hear their laughter and enthusiasm when they work with their friends or head out to recess or sign up for electives, regardless of their fears about doing well on tests or stress and strains that we know many of our families are dealing with in this economy. It’s also hopeful to see that race, religion and economics become invisible within the walls of Underwood as students sit among each other sharing stories about their weekends, reviews of the latest Diary of a Wimpy Kid book or out do each other with silly jokes. It reminds me of that song “If It’s Magic” by Stevie Wonder. If the magic of childhood could remain, our world would undoubtedly be a better place.

So, where can you go to get a big dose of this “magic”? Well, the Back to School Picnic on Thursday night is a great opportunity to enjoy an experience that will give you “a little good news” to share the next day at work. Bring a blanket, bring a dinner and come sit back and relax while our children run and play. I think we could all use a night like that and maybe afford to miss the news just this once. I hope to see you there. ~Ms. Jordan

A Stellar First Week
August 26, 2011

As we close out the end of the first week back to school, I think we should all pat ourselves on the back. Teachers prepared this year in the shortest time ever for the return of their students, this year without the support of teaching assistants who no longer work on non instructional days. Thanks to parent volunteers we were able to have the building in top condition and ready for the arrival of students on Thursday. Teachers also managed to be ready despite fewer supply dollars and more required time out of their rooms for trainings. Once again, my hat is off to them. They are positive, professional and continue to amaze me with their commitment to Underwood.

Parents also deserve a huge pat on the back. I can only imagine how stressful and hectic the start of the new year is for families. Bedtimes after a summer of sleeping in, rushing to get dressed and have breakfast, remembering to take backpacks, struggles over outfits, anxiety about new teachers and friends, not to mention the tremendous costs associated with preparing for another school year are just some of the things parents must manage on top of what is already an extremely busy role! My hat is off to you because you don’t show your stress. When the first day rolled around, parents came in beaming with pride holding their children’s hands and greeting staff members with jubilant hellos.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the outstanding efforts of the office staff and the custodial staff this past week. As many of you know, budget cuts have also directly effected the workforce of each of these two groups. We lost one whole position in both the office and on our custodial team. Work that was once shared among those employees has not been delegated to other employees. No one is earning more money and the workload hasn’t decrease. Have you heard any complaints or seen a change in quality of service? Me neither. I am so thankful for the incredible work of Mr. DiMarco, Mrs. Sundin and Mrs. Collins as well as Mrs. Hunter, Mr. Bynum, Mr. Bec and Mr. Jones. Their standards for Underwood have not changed and they continue to blow me away with the great work they do. I appreciate them and I know you do too.

As we look ahead to next week I wish everyone a safe and relaxing weekend. A hurricane and an earthquake in one week seems an ominous way to begin a new year. Take care and be safe.

Ms. Jordan

I am here in my office anxiously awaiting the end of the day so that we can officially begin ARTSPLEASURE. Artspleasure is just another fabulous example of what our school offers students. And speaking of magnet schools…Everyone is aware that the new American Idol, Scotty McCreery, is a product of Wake County’s magnet schools, aren’t they? He evokes all the strengths we see in students who have attended magnet programs…strong sense of self, confidence, poise and a well nurtured gift and talent. I was so proud to learn of his victory but even more excited for the recognition and affirmation of what WCPSS’s magnet schools offer children. In some ways tonight will be very similar. We will browse around campus and from place to place we will be struck by the incredible talent nurtured by the magnet teachers at Underwood. I’ve heard that the performance led by Mrs. Glenn and Mrs. Raley is so amazing homeroom teachers were brought to tears from pride and that they smiled so much their faces were sore. It’s hard to imagine something topping this year’s Pieces of Gold, but hey, when you’re talking about the Underwood Arts Team, anything is possible. I’ve already been blown away by the new artwork Mrs. Jacobs has displayed throughout the campus and I’m very much looking forward to seeing Spanish and French students demonstrate their skills later tonight. These events leave me feeling so grateful for the chance to be a part of this wonderful staff of educators. I wish every board member and state legislator would come tonight to see what magnet programs do for children, for their families and for the entire school community. I hope this upcoming long weekend is restful and relaxing for each of you and I’m sure I’ll be back on line in the next weeks with more postings as we wrap up testing, enjoy field day, and I’m certain I’ll have something to say about the 5th Grade field trip to DC. Until then…

This Friday we will host our annual Volunteer Appreciation Luncheon. This is a time when we come together as a staff to show our appreciation for all the help and support volunteers give us over the year. As we hear of more and more potential cuts to school funding, this occasion takes on an even greater significance. You can not find any activity, classroom, or program at our school that is not directly enhanced by the support of our volunteers. Volunteer support puts Smartboards in classrooms, gives money for teachers to attend professional development, buys learning materials such as leveled book baskets, and created a garden area in our Kindergarten courtyard that has brought science and ecology concepts alive for all students K-5.  Heck, just last week I ate a handful of ripe strawberries grown pesticide free right here on our campus. Wow, what an experience! Volunteers oversee differentiated learning events that help each child receive learning opportunities at their optimal level. Some examples of these are the KIT Program, KENKEN, Science Olympiad, Reading Guides, Lunch Bunch and Odyssey of the Mind. Volunteers are here to help support school wide functions like EOG Testing, Field Day, Picture Day, LunchIn and the Winter Carnival just to name a few. Through the support of volunteers, we receive assistance with performing many of the day to day operations of our school like copying, fixing the flower pots out front, painting our benches, lending a hand on carpool, assisting during center time, shelving books in the media center, chaperoning on field trips, and the list just goes on and on. When I try to imagine how the lives of students and teachers would be different without these helping hands, I see a much less vibrant program where the opportunities for students and the overall experience of every member of the school community are diminished. A luncheon seems like a small token to provide for such a tremendous benefit, but I hope all volunteers will come and enjoy it knowing that you truly are appreciated and that at Underwood you are a huge part of what makes our school a great place to be. Our hats are off to you!

Ms. Jordan

This year we have been so fortunate to have Rhonda Connor and Karen Fichter-Venners lead our extra curricular Science Olympiad Team. This team of 3-5 grade students has met periodically on Saturdays for the past several months preparing to attend the Science Olympiad competition held this past Saturday. During the competition, students competed against other students in WCPSS. They were isolated in rooms during the competition without the support of their teachers or the many parent volunteer coaches that had been a part of this group since the beginning. I dropped by early Saturday morning just to say good luck to the teams and was amazed at the excitement in the air. Hundreds of WCPSS students, parents, and teachers filled the cafeteria at Smith Elementary, all scurrying around making sure their materials were ready and getting last minute pointers from the coaches…all in the name of SCIENCE. So cool! I kept asking the kids, “Are you nervous?” Of course not. They were calm, cool, and collected and most importantly they were having fun. I got a call later that afternoon from a very elated Mrs. Fichter-Venners and Mrs. Connor thrilled to report that Underwood had earned third place overall in the varsity division and varsity and junior varsity had placed in dozens of events as well. Additionally, the junior varsity team had earned first place in several of the events. The full results will be available later today and we will certainly post them on our website. I must thank the teachers who saw this opportunity and volunteered to make is possible for our students. I must also thank the many parent volunteers who have worked alongside them, giving up all these Saturdays. For the adults it was quite a sacrifice of time. For the students, it was something they will never forget and an opportunity for them to feel special. Underwood is a wonderful school and this is another reason why.

Ms. Jordan

Hey everyone,
A quick reminder that Monday night (4-11-11) we’ll be hosting a Math Night. Bring your dinner and eat alongside other Underwood families from 5:30-6 in our cafeteria. We’ll have some desserts for you. From 6-7:30 families will make their ways through stations along the second grade hallway to engage in a variety of math experiences led by Underwood teacher leaders. We are looking forward to this and hope you will come out and join us. It should be an eye-opening experience for parents and a lot of fun!

Ms. Jordan