Author: Matt Underwood

My ANCS story began about 16 years ago.  I was living and teaching in New York City but still kept up with news about Atlanta from the AJC.com.  One day I read about a terrible fire that had just destroyed the building of a new charter school in Grant Park.  I’d never heard of this…

At tonight’s ANCS PTCA meeting, there will be an opportunity to learn more about the process of updating the school’s multi-year strategic plan.  I’m using this week’s blog post to give you some background and context about this process. First, you may be wondering “Why would a school even have a strategic plan?” Well, here…

This week we are encouraging all families and friends of ANCS to make a donation to our school’s “Gather and Grow” Fund.  All families and grandparents of current students recently received a letter in the mail announcing the start of our annual fundraising campaign, and with Giving Tuesday today, it seemed the perfect time to…

In the fall of 2014, the ANCS Governing Board adopted a multi-year strategic plan for our school (you can find a summary of the plan and what’s been accomplished under it over the past few years on our website here).  Among the priority goals of the plan has been a focus on increasing the racial…

A couple weeks ago, a pair of visitors representing the International Baccalaureate (IB) spent two days at our middle campus observing classrooms and interviewing teachers, parents, and members of ANCS’s leadership.  This visit is the final step in a years-long journey our middle campus has been on towards IB authorization. For those of you new…

As I hope you already know, we are in the midst of voting season on a number of statewide offices and ballot questions that will have a significant impact on Georgia’s future, including education.  Early voting has been going for about a week (and continues for a while longer) and the official election day is…

If you’ve spent any time at ANCS, then you’ve no doubt heard us use the phrase “school family” to talk about the members of our school community.  Drawn from our school’s work with Conscious Discipline, the “school family” emphasizes building meaningful relationships between the people in a school–students, teachers, parents–to create a culture of responsibility…

Yesterday afternoon I attended the regular meeting of the core leadership team of the CREATE Teacher Residency Program.  With representatives from Georgia State University’s College of Education and Human Development, staff members working across the program’s member schools, and consultants who assist in the program’s professional learning for educators, this team has helped to support…

Over the course of the next month, conferences will be held for and with students from both of our campuses.  These conferences offer an opportunity to check in on each student’s start to the school year, to look at the student’s educational outcomes and progress so far, and to set goals for the remainder of…

I’ve been working in schools since 1998 and have spent the past 11 years here at ANCS.  There have certainly been plenty of changes in education and in the experience of young people over that time, perhaps none as striking as the rise in access to and use of computer technology.  When I started at…