MMS receiving state honors

By Michael Carter

Enter­prise Editor

clydenews@bizwoh.rr.com

The McPher­son Mid­dle School is hav­ing a pretty amaz­ing year. The Ohio Lot­tery has not only selected one of its stu­dents as stu­dent of the month, the lot­tery also selected two MMS teach­ers for teacher of the month honors.

Heidi Mar­shall, a sixth grade MMS stu­dent, was selected as the Ohio Lot­tery Region 2 stu­dent of the month for Novem­ber. Then in Decem­ber, MMS sixth grade sci­ence teacher Ryan Carter was selected as the Lot­terys’ teacher of the month.

It was also just announced that MMS social stud­ies teacher Bill Young was selected as the Region 2 teacher of the month for Jan­u­ary. It was his third such honor.

“These selec­tions just prove the char­ac­ter of our build­ing,” said Prin­ci­pal Jon Detwiler. “We have such an amaz­ing build­ing that pro­motes such a pos­i­tive atmos­phere,” he added.

“There is not a more deserv­ing stu­dent than Heidi to receive this award,” said Detwiler. “She is one of the most pos­i­tive young peo­ple I have ever seen.”

“Ryan is one of my teach­ers that just does what he needs to do. You don’t have to ask him to do his job,” he con­tin­ued. “Bill Young is a leg­end. For him to receive this honor in his final year of teach­ing is just amazing.”

Detwiler has seen the good and bad as mid­dle school prin­ci­pal. He has been with the dis­trict for six years now and started out in the old mid­dle school build­ing on Vine Street. “I have been very blessed. Most admin­is­tra­tors work their entire career and never get the oppor­tu­nity of hav­ing a new build­ing,” he said.

“I really believe that we have as good of a pro­gram as we pos­si­ble can for our kids,” he stated.

“With this design set up with our teams and grades divided into sep­a­rate pods, it’s just an amaz­ing envi­ron­ment to learn in,” he continued.

Detwiler as well as sev­eral other dis­trict admin­is­tra­tors had direct input on the design of the new build­ing. “Our board was very aggres­sive in their selec­tion of build­ing designs,” he said. The mid­dle school, for exam­ple, was the first in the state to uti­lize both nat­ural light­ing and chilled beam con­struc­tion in it’s design at the same time.

“Our dis­trict is at the top of the charts in every aspect,” said Detwiler. “ We have had great suc­cess in our vocal and drama depart­ments, or Aca­d­e­mic achieve­ments are at the high­est level and our ath­let­ics are top notch,” he added.

Detwiler does have one con­cern how­ever. “Our future is very uncer­tain; that does bother me a lot,” he said about the district’s inabil­ity to pass their oper­at­ing levy.

Posted by Michael Carter on Feb 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.