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Dear Maya Family: Letter from CEO

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December 2014

Dear Maya Family,

There are days that try our patience, our stamina, our resiliency and our resolve. However, amidst the discipline problems, construction noise, and other stress-inducing challenges, our staff and colleagues have persevered.  As our namesake Maya Angelou would say, “Try to be the rainbow in someone’s cloud,” and the teachers and staff of Maya Angelou Schools do so every day. It is not an easy job, but together, we can be a mighty force of change.  We can change the lives of the students we seek to serve.

Just a few weeks ago, the high school staff moved to the upper-level floors of the newly renovated Maya Angelou Learning Center. These sun-drenched classrooms will serve as the home base for our wonderful team of teachers and administrators. There is no doubt that the construction has been a period of endurance for us all, but we anticipate great transformations this year.

Even amid the renovation and transitions, Maya students continue to surprise and behold me. In this issue of See Forever, read about Omar Mobley, one of the four Young Adult Learning Center graduates who was chosen to intern with Forrester Construction on our renovation project. Also included in the newsletter is the essay of Shakira Hawkins, a senior at the high school who won a prestigious opportunity to study at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia through OSSE’s Summer Scholar program. And finally, our scholars at the Academy competed at yet another spectacular Speech Competition with incredibly moving and impassioned deliverances on the topic of power. You can read the top two speeches here.

We hope to make this a year of transformation and collaboration, not only with our partners, but also with our supporters and parents. Please come by and see the new space we will call home, meet our administration and teachers and experience the Maya Way.

We wish you a wonderful holiday season and look forward to celebrating the last month of 2014 with you!

Warm Regards,

Heather Wathington

 

YALC’s First 2014 GED Graduate: Chanaya Wheeler

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YALC's first 2014 GED Graduate

Please join us in congratulating the Young Adult Learning Center’s first 2014 GED graduate, Chanaya Wheeler!  Ms. Wheeler came to the YALC in April of 2014 reporting that she had way too many credits to make up in her traditional high school and wanted to try the GED route instead.

The new GED is a very rigorous test with an emphasis on critical thinking, but Ms. Wheeler was able to gain the skills she needed to be successful and even helped tutor her classmates along the way. Ms. Wheeler started taking sections of the test early this fall after she turned 18. Last week, she passed the final section of the exam making her our very first graduate of the year.

She is enrolling at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) for an associate’s degree in business and technology and plans to go on to earn a bachelor’s degree in accounting.  We know her journey will be filled with continued success.

Way to go, Chanaya!