In any class, 99% is an A and worthy of celebration. And that\u2019s certainly true at Shepherd Community Academy, where 99% of students demonstrated improvement on reading and math assessments in January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To celebrate that achievement, the two students who showed the highest percentage of growth on the I-Ready Reading Diagnostic were crowned principal for a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPrincipal\u201d Marcelino Rangel, a fifth grader, achieved 292% of typical growth in a year. And \u201cPrincipal\u201d Antony Perez, a first grader, recorded 258% growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Feb. 14, Marcelino led the school\u2019s morning assembly, addressing 150 people on his own. He also answered email from teachers, monitored the lunchroom and even counseled fellow students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMarcelino\u2019s thoughtful problem-solving skills stood out as he tackled teacher concerns with logic and practical solutions,\u201d Dr. Bethany Morford, the academy\u2019s principal, said. \u201cHowever, he soon discovered that being a principal means being constantly interrupted. At one point, after receiving a particularly humorous email from a teacher, he sighed in exasperation and said, \u2018Do they think I have time for this nonsense?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Feb. 24, it was Antony\u2019s turn to lead the school. He observed teachers in their classrooms and offered them feedback. He also helped a kindergarten student regulate his emotions by using deep-breathing techniques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis experience aligns with our school\u2019s mission to empower students to be life-long learners and develop leadership skills in real-world settings,\u201d Morford said. \u201cThe Shepherd community embraced their student leaders, bringing them real challenges to solve, questions to answer and problems to manage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Antony enjoyed being principal of the day so much that he hopes to do it again in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI want to help people all day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In any class, 99% is an A and worthy of celebration. And that\u2019s certainly true at Shepherd Community Academy, where 99% of students demonstrated improvement on reading and math assessments in January. To celebrate that achievement, the two students who showed the highest percentage of growth on the I-Ready Reading Diagnostic were crowned principal for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-shepherd-community-academy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}