News & Announcements

The November Community Connections Newsletter is now available. Click here to read more!

Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed a proclamation that November 11-15, 2024, will be observed as School Psychology Week. During this week, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP), along with schools across the state and country, celebrate the contributions of school psychologists and the important role they play in schools and communities. 

This week is an annual opportunity to recognize school psychologists' work to help children thrive in school, at home, and in life. 

NASP selected a theme of "Spark Discovery", which recognizes the work that school psychologists do to help their communities seek out new ideas, effect change, and expand horizons for children and youth. For more information, please visit the NASP website.

A big thank you to all of our school psychologists and the important work they do in our schools and community every single day!

The October Community Connections Newsletter is now available. Click here to read more!

Summer 2024 was unlike any other for Cheney High School’s Avery Mitchell. The senior percussionist was accepted to

the prestigious and elusive Summer Percussion Seminar with The Juilliard School in New York, NY. Mitchell spent two weeks in mid-July working with and learning from some of the best percussionists in the country, and the world

“So many talented people and so much new information,” Mitchell said, recounting her experience. “The whole time I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ Taking in so much information in the whole two weeks. Just a really insane learning experience.”

“I think it’s important to know how much hard work went into this,” said Cheney High School Director of Bands, Josh Wisswell. Mitchell, a Running Start student through Eastern Washington University, takes mostly online classes, freeing up more time during the day to practice. “She can take advantage of the school's instruments that normal percussion students do not have at home, like a marimba or timpani. That hard work and practice is what allowed her to be one of only a handful selected for this opportunity. Not to mention the hours and hours we spent in the auditorium recording take after take of the solos she had to prepare.”

Mitchell was just one of about 18 students in the world selected to attend the seminar, and the admissions process was extensive. She was required to prepare five separate videos—one introductory video with her name and background as a percussionist—and four solos highlighting her skills. This included: one snare drum solo, one timpani solo, one two-mallet solo, and one four-mallet solo.

Hours and hours were spent ensuring each solo was perfect. Weeks passed following her submission for the program, and Mitchell lacked confidence that she would be selected.

“It took like two extra weeks than what they had said, so I wasn’t confident I would get in at all,” Mitchell said. “It was super exciting. I had seen something earlier in the day in my email, but I was on my way home from college classes [so I didn’t look at it]. My mom and I opened it together. It was really fun.”

Four months later, Mitchell was in New York as a seminar student at Juilliard.

“It was crazy,” Mitchell said. “Being in New York was wild, riding the subway and everything. Just to get [to Juilliard] was crazy. We stayed in the dorms at Juilliard and ate in their cafeteria. I had a key to all their percussion rooms. It was very surreal to have that experience of being a student there.”

Each day of the summer percussion seminar was filled with guest artists, master classes, clinics, and rehearsals. There were several performances throughout the seminar, with multiple finale performances at the end of the seminar. Mitchell was exposed to different styles of percussion, like Afro-Cuban and Arabic-style, and new practice regimens. She even worked alongside one of her percussion idols, Haruka Fuji— “It was surreal to meet her”—in a marimba intensive class.

“There are just so many different tips and tricks that I get to implement into my playing now,” Mitchell said. “I get to share with the other people who weren’t there with me, and I get to bring some pieces of that back. [Things like] practice tips and different kinds of repertoire that we haven’t really looked at here. I just feel like I get to share all that knowledge, and it’s really fun.”

Her experience also provided some great connections, expanding her options for post-secondary musical education.

“[At Juilliard], you are exposed to world-class caliber teachers and instructors who really, really know their stuff,” Wisswell said. “Avery had the chance to make a couple more connections and is considering some other options she wasn’t originally considering before attending [Juilliard] and having met some of the professors from other colleges who were brought in as guests to the seminar.”

Mitchell will be taking advantage of her new connections as she works toward her goal of earning a performance degree after high school.

“My plan for the last couple years has been to go get a performance degree, go to music school,” she said. “I have some connections [at Juilliard], and I met professors [from other schools] who were guest artists…I’m planning to meet with some more professors, so it’s looking like auditions in the winter and then music school next fall.”

 

It began as a typical work order from Snowdon Elementary, a request to re-paint the hopscotch, four-square, and basketball courts on the playground. Bored of the usual yellow lines and equipped with some extra paint to use, groundsman Gabe Sady presented an alternate option to Director of Maintenance and Operations Rich Brown: adding a pop of color.

“I had a bunch of excess paint and decided to use it before it went bad,” Sady said. “Rich has built a team he can rely

on, and Travis [Devine], he’s our foreman, he kind of lets us play to our strengths. We had the time, and with [the rest of the team] doing other work, it allowed me to do more complex things.”

The complexities of the paintings surpassed simply a pop of color as Sady took the opportunity to flex his creative muscles. Gone are the days of boring yellow outlines and empty spaces, making way for a new era of polka dots, flowers, and planets.

“The paintings have brought so much color and cheer to the playground,” said Shawna Coerver, Snowdon Elementary Principal. “Kids have said they are more interested in playing on them now, and the games are easier to play, because you can see the newly painted lines.”

“Before, they were just basic lines and empty squares,” said Christian Beal, a fellow groundsman Sady recruited to be part of the playground facelift. “They were pretty faded.

Snowdon’s specialty paintings have generated a bit of buzz among the other elementary schools in the district. Sady’s artistic abilities have now been specifically requested at nearly all of the district’s elementary schools.

“[We received a] workorder from Betz called ‘Hopscotch Snowdon Treatment’,” Sady said with a smile. “[Christian] helped quite a bit with that. We have a brand-new basketball court painted out back, and the key is painted in this really nice blue that matches Betz’s colors.”

The painting process, even basic lines, is multifaceted. It all has to happen outside of school hours, and the area needs to be prepped and cleaned of extra debris—like rocks and leaves. In some cases, like at Salnave Elementary, additional care is required for the decades-old asphalt.

“I went to school [at Salnave], and it was in pretty rough shape when I was there,” Sady said with a laugh. “We’ll do some patchwork and some coverup and get that taken care of before we paint.”

Once the asphalt is in acceptable shape, the taping starts. Nearly all lines painted on the playground must first be taped by hand to provide a makeshift stencil. Some lines are painted freeform, like the center courts on basketball courts.

“It’s a lot of tape,” Devine said. “You have to outline it all in tape, figure out stencils—whether you cut them out, make them, whatever you can. Fight the wind, weather, and fit it all in....Gabe’s dedicated a ton of time on his weekends to doing this stuff.”

Sady and his crew are quite resourceful in what they use for painting stencils. Instead of purchasing expensive pre-made stencils, Sady makes use of everyday household items, like a trash can for planets.

The flowers he painted at Betz Elementary were made from shapes he cut out of an $11 rubber mat; the equivalent stencil online retails a little over $300.

The color and the creativity all support the end goal of bringing happiness to district students. Sady, who has a background in education and was in the middle of his Master's of Education at the University of Washington when his program was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, believes that bringing happiness to students is our moral duty.

“I think we’re morally and ethically obligated to make schools fun and engaging for kids. If we can run them to the point of exhaustion, perhaps they’ll be more compliant in the classroom and make teachers’ jobs a little easier,” Sady said with a laugh. “And you know, a splash of color never hurt anybody.”