At Cherry Hills Elementary School, we celebrate a long history of excellence in achievement and community involvement. Being the principal here is a personal joy and professional privilege. Staff and families cultivate an exemplary learning environment with grand expectations for achievement in a loving atmosphere. We collaborate with staff, students, parents, and community members with a commitment to progress and development. We implement research-based, best practices in instruction with state of the art technology to promote high academic achievement and personal growth. Central to our efforts is an emphasis on rigor and relationships. Relationships are the vehicles that get us to the destination of rigor. Our students have interests, passions and talents. What happens in our classrooms has to be linked to student experiences, dreams and aspirations. It is my expectation that all teachers will engage students in rigorous and meaningful classroom instruction.
We accomplish our goals by developing personal and academic relationships with every individual. This requires genuine relationships—both between teacher and student and among groups of teachers working together. Our smaller learning communities are structured collaborations among a group of teachers examining the content areas and assessment as well as SMART technology and thinking maps. As a professional learning community, we work together to build relationships that motivate our students to learn at the highest level, and empower our parents and community to support our efforts. The culture and climate of our school is reflected in the positive relationships formed between children and adults, as well as school and home.
The work ahead is always challenging, but as Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “Only in the darkness can you see the stars.” We have many bright lights among us. I welcome the challenges and look forward to celebrating the successes we attain in our quest to improve student outcomes at Cherry Hills Village Elementary School. We need to be diligent not only in providing for and measuring academic rigor, but what Dr. King called the content of character. Together, we embody the Cherry Creek School District mission: “To inspire every student to think, to learn, to achieve, to care.”
Together in education,
Molly Drvenkar
Principal