Author: Matt Underwood

Earlier this week the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance program recognized our middle school campus as a model for its “Mix It Up” project.  The project is designed to get schools to find ways to encourage students of different backgrounds to interact with one another and engage with issues of diversity, equity, and justice.…

As we enter into the final 8 weeks of the school year, there are several ways we are assessing student learning, in particular how students have grown over the course of the first 75% of the school year in what they know and can do.  One way is, of course, state standardized tests—in Georgia, the…

Next week the ANCS PTCA is helping to sponsor “Teacher Appreciation Week” at our school.  The PTCA always does a wonderful job of finding ways to show appreciation for our faculty and staff—and not just during a designated appreciation week. Outside of ANCS, over the past few years, the general atmosphere around the treatment of…

Yesterday was the deadline for applications to be submitted for our new student admissions lottery being held later this week.  With many new families checking out our school, I thought it would be good to share a couple of my older blog posts to give prospective families a sense of what is important at ANCS.…

Last Tuesday, I took part in the “Shadow a Student” challenge by spending the full day with two of our elementary campus students—Cinque, a 4th grader and Emma, a 5th grader.  The challenge was part of an effort promoted by several organizations to get school leaders to spend a day in their students’ shoes in…

Sorry, but I won’t be posting a blog today as a usually do on Tuesdays because I’m spending the day with Cinque and Emma, two of our elementary campus students.  Why?  I’m taking part in an international “Shadow a Student” challenge along with over 1,000 other educators in the U.S. and 24 other countries.  I’ll be…

The current Georgia legislative session was supposed to be a relatively quiet one when it came to bills impacting K-12 education. Though Governor Deal’s education reform commission presented a slew of recommendations in December to revamp education funding and policy in a number of different ways, in his “state of the state” speech, the Governor…

Over the weekend, my Twitter feed was bombarded with #TFA25 as Teach for America (TFA) held a big 25th anniversary event.  Soon after I noticed #TFA25FactCheck popping up as well, providing counterpoints to the celebration in D.C..  There are few organizations as polarizing as TFA with passionate supporters and ardent critics.  I’ve been asked several…

Back around Thanksgiving, the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE) finally released school level results from the first-ever administration of the new Georgia Milestones tests from many months earlier in April 2015.  While the big lag between testing and score reporting limited the usefulness of the information, there were some highlights for ANCS students which I…

On the heels of yesterday’s national holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. instead of a full blog post from me this week, I’d encourage you instead to read these words from MLK related to education.  His thoughts on the subject–across many different periods of his life and for different audiences–still hold relevance today.