Ask any teacher, and she or he will tell you one of their favorite parts of the job is when an old student comes back to visit. Seeing former students–how they’ve grown, what they’re doing–is rewarding in a profession in which the results often take time to be seen and realized, and knowing that students take their experiences in your classroom with them is an acknowledgment that, yes, you really are getting through to them even when you feel like you are not. As a K-8 school, this is the time of year when we at ANCS often hear from and see many of our alumni. Graduation announcements from high school seniors and visits from college students just arriving home for summer break are all a sure sign of spring.
We strive to stay in contact with our alumni and to track their progress in their schooling beyond ANCS as one of the ways we can assess the impact of our work with students while they are with us. Annually we put together a report on our alumni based on responses from surveys of them and their parents as well as from information on academic performance on high school standardized tests (we are waiting on final data from Atlanta Public Schools on our most recent alumni to publish this year’s report, but you can see last year’s alumni report here). We also host an annual alumni breakfast to let our former students reconnect with each other and their school.
If you are an ANCS alum, we’d love for you to complete this contact form so that we can keep in touch with you. And if you are in your final year of high school or college, please let us know what your plans are post-graduation, as we are very interested in where our students wind up. In a few weeks, I’ll join my colleagues from other local APS schools on the stage at the Maynard Jackson High School graduation, as many of our former students receive their diplomas, and I will be thrilled to see them as they finish this stage of their lives, one started at ANCS many years ago.