AWSP Blog

November! We have crossed another threshold. Moving into November, we made it through our first ever COVID Great ShakeOut, and Halloween, had a blue moon, fell back to standard time, and are anxiously (nervously?) awaiting the results of the Presidential election. We will close out the month with a well-deserved long Thanksgiving weekend. So much is happening!

The 59th anniversary of the United States Senate Youth Program (USSYP) will take place in March of 2021. For the past 59 years, two students per state have been selected to receive a $10,000 scholarship and attend a weeklong program in Washington D.C., funded by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. To apply for consideration in our state this year, a student must be a junior or senior and must hold an elected position in student council or school government. If students are unable to hold leadership positions this year due to the pandemic, they can submit the position they held during the 2019-2020 academic year.

AWSP is thrilled to offer its second annual Women in Education Leading and Learning (WELL) Summit. Our WELL Summit for the 2020-21 school year will be a series that is offered in the fall and the spring. Our goals for the summit are to create professional networks for female leaders in education, increase our knowledge of successful leadership qualities and experiences, discuss ways to remove barriers to leadership, and focus on self-care.

Educational gaps have persisted for decades. That question is not for debate. Another point that we need not waste valuable time discussing is the ever-widening gaps across the system with each passing day. We are starting to hear the term, “learning loss” bubble to the surface of educator conversations. Call it what you want. “Learning loss” to me is a nice way of saying “even wider gaps in achievement, access, opportunities, expectations, relationships, and hope.” That’s learning loss. Let’s call it what it is—most of our students are suffering massive unintended consequences of remote learning.

Today, October 27, is National Mentoring Day! 🎉 AWSP would like to offer a well-deserved thank you to the amazing 230 AWSP trained mentors! These mentors offer their support, guidance, friendship, expertise to over 125 new and newly assigned school leaders every year. AWSP-trained mentors are truly “friends of AWSP” as they deeply understand and are committed to impacting the effects of the principal churn rate in the state of Washington.