Willow’s school year begins with cheer

WILLOW — Many were still rubbing sleep from their eyes Monday morning, but the students at Willow Elementary School could still belt out a strong Willow Wolverine cheer.

Assembled in the school’s gymnasium just after 8:30 a.m., the whole of Willow’s student body greeted their new principal, Sheela Grennan-Hull, and said hello to familiar and new faces seated around them.

Like their peers throughout the Mat-Su Borough School District, Monday marked the first day of the 2008-2009 school year for Willow students.

The start of school this year at Willow comes on the heels of a school year marred by vandalism that caused nearly $130,000 in damage to the school and its contents. After the April vandalism, Willow Elementary lay mostly in shambles, with computers smashed, windows broken and a heavy coat of fire extinguisher dust lying everywhere, among other damage. The event sent shockwaves through the tight-knit Willow community, bringing out parents and administrators doing their best to get the school back into shape for this year.

The challenge after the vandalism was mostly to replace expensive technology and make sure conditions were healthy for students.

But walk into Willow Elementary now and it’s hard to tell anything ever happened.

That made the first day even easier, said Grennan-Hull, who made the jump being assistant principal at Palmer High School to Willow principal this year.

Sitting in her nearly spotless office Monday morning, Grennan-Hull might have been the giddiest person in the building.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to be back in elementary,” Grennan-Hull said. “Working with children just gets me jazzed.”

She added that being in Willow at a smaller school with younger students is exactly what she’s been looking to do for some time. One of the first things Grennan-Hull said will happen at Willow is a school-wide citizenship program — aptly called Wolverine Character — to promote strong values in students.

Other than that, Grennan-Hull said things will remain mostly the same at the school.

Opening day went smoothly all over the school district, Superintendent George Troxel said. Besides a small timing glitch with some buses, Troxel said he has no complaints and is ready for a new school year.

“I’m looking to forward to students learning,” Troxel said.

He added this year the district will implement a plan in response to annual yearly progress (AYP) results released by the state recently. As part of those results, three out of the four major high schools in the Borough — Wasilla, Palmer and Houston — failed to make AYP.

“It sure lines out a lot of work we have to do,” Troxel said of the progress reports and the districts plan, adding the first day of classes is always exciting. “No matter what anxiety you have leading up to it, you can count on one thing and that’s the kids showing up on the first day.”

For Skip Davenport, a fifth- and sixth-grade teacher, the first day of school came a bit quickly.

“Do we have an extra week?” Davenport joked as the school’s first assembly began.

As for his students, who marched in a single-file line holding their own chairs, they seemed about as ready as Davenport, he said.

Davenport said he had been admiring the cleaning and repair job undertaken around the school by parents and janitors.

“They did such a good job cleaning up from last year,” Davenport said.

Following Grennan-Hull’s assembly — where she put to good use what she calls her “coach’s voice” — students ambled back to class.

The simplicity and awe of elementary school that many come to cherish in their adult years immediately began to take place in Teri Anderson’s first-grade class.

Gathered around a fish tank, pint-size students stared in amazement as Anderson showed how to properly feed the class fish.

Tyler McDonnell received the first chance of the year to pluck a bit of fish food from a bottle and sprinkle it on the top of the water.

As the fish ate, cries of “wow” and “awesome” reverberated through the classroom until Anderson said it was time to get on with the day’s lessons.

For Grennan-Hull, that’s the beauty of elementary school.

“There’s a lot of positive energy,” she said.

Contact Michael Rovito at michael.rovito@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.