AWSP Blog

AWSP’s very own Raquel Martinez, principal of Isaac Stevens Middle School in Pasco, has been named the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ (NASSP) new president-elect. Martinez has been serving on the NASSP Board of Directors as part of the Advocacy and Governance Committees. She is the first Latina president of NASSP.

Belongingness is a big deal for every individual. When people feel like they belong to a place or group, they express, share, contribute, and give their best.  Students are not exempt from this.  Students can give their best when they feel they belong to their school, classroom, playground, sports team, band, cheerleaders club, music, or other clubs or groups. That means the first and most important step that we must take is to create an environment of belongingness for ALL students in all spaces of our schools.

In my third year as the principal at Sunnyside Elementary in the Marysville School District, my goals for my students are to have a voice and to feel a sense of belonging and connection to their school. With those goals in mind, I initiated a student council, that would be voted by and would represent our student body, which consists of 480 Kindergarten -5th-grade students.

If we truly want to put equity into action, then perhaps we should consider redefining time throughout the system. How do we define an instructional “period,” a school day, the week, a month, or heaven forbid, the entire school calendar? We love our 180-day calendar so much that we’ve allowed that alone to drive the entire system for decades (the calendar, funding, collective bargaining, etc.) and subsequently blind us to new ways of thinking and doing. It is deeply entrenched and built around the needs of the adults working in the system, not the families we are trying to serve.

Many people around the country think of Washington as rainy. They may also think of earthquakes. And the beautiful Palouse.  Many people often do not realize that Washington is also the home of five active volcanoes: Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, Mount Baker, Glacier Peak, and Mount Adams. The U.S. Geological Survey tells us that the volcanoes of the Cascade Range are some of the most hazardous in the United States. (USGS)