• FranklinCovey's "The Leader in Me" program has awarded a Fayette elementary school its highest honor. Spring Hill Elementary is the first school in the county, and one of just three in Georgia, to earn the "Leader in Me Lighthouse School" designation. Only 151 schools in the United States and 174 worldwide have been awarded Lighthouse School status, for having a well-rounded leadership model that incorporates certain criteria critical to developing a leadership culture.
• Philemon Maliro, a parent of a student at Meadowcreek High School, has been named a 2016 Georgia Parent Leadership Award winner by the Georgia Department of Education and Georgia Parent Teacher Association. The award was created to recognize parents for their outstanding leadership in creating a foundation of support for student achievement and success.
• These three Upper School students at Woodward Academy recently won the National Chinese Language Association of Secondary Schools Chinese Essay Contest: Neel Edupuganti, Silver Apple Award at Regular-Beginner 9-12 group; Lifeng Tang, Golden Apple Award at Heritage-Intermediate 9-12 group; Sabrina Zhao, honorable mention at Heritage-Intermediate 9-12 group. CLASS is a nonprofit professional organization that represents all Chinese language educators from elementary to secondary schools to promote teaching and learning Chinese language and culture at PreK-12 schools in the United States.
• Marta Palombo, a senior at Fulton County's Cambridge High School, recently received two awards recognizing her for musical excellence. Palombo won the high school category of the Georgia Music Educators Association Composition Competition for her musical composition 'I Am.' The piece was performed at the GMEA In-Service Conference in Athens, Ga. on Jan. 29 by a hand-selected ensemble from the Cambridge Mastery Women's choir. Then, on Feb. 27 at the GMEA All State Chorus event in Athens, Palombo was awarded the first-ever American Choral Directors Association scholarship for being a six-year All State Chorus student and three-year ACDA honor choir participant. Palombo will graduate from Cambridge in May and plans to attend either Belmont College in Nashville or the Berklee College of Music in Boston to study commercial music and performance with an emphasis in songwriting.
• Fifth-grade teacher Leigh Anne Borders of Peeples Elementary in Fayette County was selected by Mercer University's Tift College of Education to receive the first Outstanding Cooperative Teacher Award. The award was given for the first time this year to recognize classroom teachers who take on the additional responsibility of supervising student teachers during a semester. Borders received the award for the fall semester in 2015 for her work with student teacher candidate Kim Anderson, who nominated Borders for the honor. Nominees must demonstrate effective mentoring, teaching abilities, professionalism, and advocacy for students and the profession.
• Paideia School is the Georgia nominee for the national Green Ribbon Schools award in the private school category. The award is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to highlight promising practices and resources everyone can employ, such as reducing environmental impact and costs. A federal review will determine the national honorees, which will be announced on Earth Day, April 22.
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