Lately I have been asked many times what we did to be an "A" school. My predicament is how to limit my words. We are Vipers and as a community we know that Varela is not just that high school in the middle of West Kendall by Target and Walmart, but it is a place where the love of learning and the desire to make children believe in themselves is the heart beat of the school.
What magic formula did we follow ? My answer is a simple one: we worked together and we worked HARD! We did what every high school did, we adopted district initiatives in Reading, Math , Writing and Science and opened Reading labs, created "pull out's" and "push in's" and implemented focus calendars and crunch time materials. We did this together and committed ourselves to this quest Varela-style. Teachers came in on Saturdays to facilitate workshops, students spent endless hours attending after school tutoring, and the first ever FCAT pep rally was organized where the entire administrative team donned green wigs as a challenge to students to reach for the "A". Data became the language of the day- data chats with students, with the administration were held. Each administrator adopted an AYP group. Students stayed after school, came in before school, attended Saturday sessions, and kept at it and the results has been simply wonderful ! No stone was left unturned and no detail was ignored.
We are an "A" school and as Henry David Thoreau stated many decades ago. "Do not worry if you built your castle in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." That is what we did at Varela, we dreamt of becoming an "A" and we laid the foundations underneath that dream. On December 7th, our dream came true !!
