Emerging.

I am emerging from my blog silence.  A couple reasons for this: 1) my parents are out of the country and I bet they are checking my blog for updates while they are in Peru and 2) I was encouraged to "breathe, then blog" by a colleague at work (who I didn't know knew I had a blog.)  I started this blog as a way to keep in touch with people -- or rather, for them to keep in touch with me -- while I was across the country in Massachusetts.  It's kind of sad to think that my work schedule is such that it has now become a way to keep in touch with people who are across the building.  Bum bum.

Still, it's worth it right now!  Our kiddies started up again this past week and things seem to be going pretty well.  By day two, the kids were looking great walking in the hall, the teachers are on top of their game, and we are already moving pretty quickly towards our goals.  Feels good!

I promise, I'm almost done bragging about our kids and teachers, but I have to get one last one in there.  After all of the District's test scores were released, our Assessment Associate pored over them in order to run some comparisons.

• In the end we found that overall, our 3rd through 8th graders performed over 35% better than the average for all DC public schools and public charter schools.  
• Our middle school is ranked #3 in reading and #4 in math for overall student performance (and that includes schools that have very different or "traditionally high-performing" demographics then ours).
• Our middle school is #1 in reading and #2 in math in overall student performance among the "disadvantaged" demographic.  
• Our 8th graders -- those who have been with us the longest -- are the highest performing students in the city.  (You can't get much better than 100% proficiency.)

I see how hard our students and our teachers work every day and it is the most motivating thing...