About Us

About Us

 

Mission:

We want Cedarcrest to become a school that represents (empowers, enhances) the community it serves by working to understand and meet the needs of the community and actively engage families, students and teachers in the educational process.

Vision:

• We want all teachers to engage in deep learning utilizing the PLC Cycle to develop our students’ skills in literacy, numeracy and language acquisition.

• We want all teachers engaging in a student centered instructional delivery system by making student thinking visible through projects and audible through discourse, pressing students to extend their understanding of their own identities and helping students develop a critical lens as curriculum is applied to the larger socio-political context.

• We want all members of the Cedarcrest community to feel a sense of belonging and connectedness every time they visit Cedarcrest.

 

Principal's Message:

Welcome to Cedarcrest Middle School, where our commitment to enhancing the community we serve is at the heart of everything we do. At Cedarcrest, we believe in the power of understanding and meeting the needs of our community, and we actively engage families, students, and teachers in the educational process to achieve this goal. We know the relationship families have with their school is a critical component of any thriving community and hope as you get to know us we are able to build a strong connection that puts serving kids at the center of our focus. 

As we continue to think about how we can make our community just a little bit better, our team has zoned in on 3 specific buckets of work: 

• Creating a space where everyone feels a sense of connectedness and belonging

• Developing student skills in literacy, numeracy, and language acquisition

• Providing student-centered instruction that helps kids make their thinking visible,

• develop and understand their unique identity and build critical thinking skills

 

We believe it’s human nature to seek belonging wherever we go and know that our community members step into Cedarcrest with a wide variety of experiences and histories with schools. Thus, we are committed to making sure that everyone who steps foot into Cedarcrest feels like this is the place that they are supposed to be. What we know about adolescent development is that feeling a sense of belonging is absolutely critical to being able to learn so if we are hoping to make a positive impact at all, belonging must come first. 

Once belonging is established, we can set in on developing foundational skills that will ensure kids are ready to transition into high school. Skills in reading, writing, and math will be critical to finding academic success in high school. We do this through targeted interventions built into the school day and pushing kids to more rigorous course offerings like honors classes earlier in their educational careers. We also know that while we can provide kids access or get them a seat at the table, much of their ability to hold or keep that seat at the table will be determined by their access to language which is why you see an explicit focus on language acquisition.

Finally, we focus on student-centered instruction as a means of providing instruction that is responsive to the students in the class. This means student thinking is visible to allow the teacher to make adjustments to instruction. It also means we should be providing opportunities for students to investigate and understand identity as a regular part of instruction; while also coaching students up on critically analyzing the content in their classes. 

It is truly a pleasure to serve this Spanaway community and we hope you’ll join us as we work to align our efforts to take care of kids and make our already great community just a little bit better. 

Warm regards,

Hans Nelson 

Principal - Cedarcrest Middle School