On Thursday, February 27, there will be an early-morning Principal and PTA Coffee Chat for Prospective Families, 8 to 9:30 AM in the library of Wedgwood School. Meet Principal Chris Cronas and members of the PTA to ask questions about Wedgwood School and ways to get involved.
A teacher retirement-recognition will be held on Friday, February 28 from 3:35 to 5:30 PM in the Wedgwood School lunchroom. Everyone is invited to come and honor long-time kindergarten teacher Carolyn Murphy as she retires.
Wedgwood School is celebrating its 60th anniversary! There will be a fundraising celebration on Saturday evening, March 8, from 7 to 10 PM. Whether you are a current Wedgwood family, on staff, or an alum, you are invited to join the celebration. The event will feature a heavy appetizer menu, wine/beer, a great DJ & dancing, the “mystery wine wall,” a raffle with several fantastic prizes, sign-up parties, and a raise the paddle. The Wedgwood vault containing school “artifacts” collected over the years will also be on hand. Please send your RSVP at this link.
Civic Educator of the Year Award: Fourth-grade teacher Kelly Clark who has taught at Wedgwood since 1996, is winner of the prestigious “2014 Civic Educator of the Year Award.” The award is sponsored by the Washington State Legislature to honor outstanding instructors in civics education. State Reps. Gerry Pollet and Jessyn Farrell, and State Sen. David Frockt of the 46th Legislative District nominated Clark for the award.
“Every legislative session, Kelly works very hard in preparing her Wedgwood fourth-graders to come to Olympia,” Rep. Pollet noted. “They are invariably our most-knowledgeable school visitors, asking us well-informed questions about the legislative process. Clearly, her class prepares the students to be active citizens.”
“Kelly is everything a teacher should be,” Farrell said. “She’s exactly what’s great in education. And she’s exactly why teaching is so very important in getting everyone on board the civics train.”
Frockt agreed, adding that the honored Wedgwood teacher “developed and teaches an exceptional civics unit for her fourth-grade students, culminating in the trip to Olympia. Kelly’s unit includes a project that demonstrates the students’ grasp of the three branches of our system of government.”
“Civics Education is an important part of our Social Studies Curriculum,” Clark emphasized. “Government is for the people, and students need to know they are a part of it. They, too, have a voice as learned by Wedgwood students when they proposed a bill that became a law naming the Olympic Marmot the Official Endemic Mammal for the State of Washington.”
Hundreds of Wedgwood fourth-graders in her 17 years of teaching have benefited from Clark’s passion for helping students understand how state government works. Every fall she organizes a fundraiser in which students earn money to pay for the charter buses to travel to Olympia. She teaches this state-government unit to all three of Wedgwood’s fourth-grade classes. This year, Clark’s Wedgwood contingent will be visiting the Legislature on Thursday, March 6.