THE YALE SCHOOL celebrated fourth graders’ success with a special pizza party where students received special medals and certificates of recognition.
ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT and Yale School Principal Asha Riley (far right) celebrated the current fourth graders’ performance on their third-grade ELA SBA.
WOODLAND – The current fourth graders at Yale School, a small elementary school serving the more rural parts of Woodland Public Schools, received a perfect score on the English Language Arts (ELA) portion of the inaugural 2014-2015 Smarter-Balanced Assessment (SBA) with each and every student passing the ELA portion of the test as third graders.
Assistant Superintendent and Yale School Principal Asha Riley celebrated the staff and students’ accomplishment with a special pizza party lunch.
Parents and other family members attended a special pizza party on Oct. 14 to celebrate the current fourth graders’ outstanding performance on the ELA portion of Washington State’s new assessment test last year as third graders.
“The district is incredibly proud of the students’ commitment to learning and for their hard work ethic,” Riley said. “The students’ performance is a result of the amazing team effort that our Yale teachers and staff put forth in ensuring every student receives an outstanding education here.”
A small team of teachers, paraeducators and administrative staff serves the students of Yale School.
“This school takes so little support for me because they’re such an amazing team,” Riley said. “The staff goes the extra mile – every single one of them. For example, if there’s a snow day with no school, one of our staff members comes to the school to make sure there are no students who didn’t realize there was no school. Each staff member wears so many hats.”
One of those staff members is Becky Huesties, who has served as a paraeducator at Yale for 36 years, starting in 1979.
“The size of the school makes it feel like a big family,” she said. “All of my kids attended this school, and since all of the students stay together from kindergarten through fifth grade, the bonds of friendship between the students and even the staff are incredibly strong.”
Kyle Niekamp primarily teaches fourth and fifth grade, and has been teaching at Yale for seven years.
“The entire teaching process is truly a team effort and our third grade SBA results are proof of that hard work,” he said. “The students worked really hard on the test by writing multiple drafts, and we’re hoping this pizza party will motivate and inspire the students in the other grade levels to see how important it is to take the yearly assessments seriously.”
Veronica Cortez has been teaching at Yale for four years.
“We have amazing kids here at Yale and we’re very proud of them,” she said. “I moved to Yale because I was always intrigued by teaching at a school like this - the environment and school itself is simply so unique.”
