This time last year, I wrote a short post my weekend at the SDP High School Fair. Last year, I worked the booth with the folks from the Development Office and two Beacon grads who were (are) at Drexel. We were talking about an idea, a dream… and we were very early in the process of developing that dream. It was a really exhausting and fun weekend, and I do think we represented the dream well. I’m pretty sure the kids we met that weekend who ended up coming to SLA feel like they got the school that we promised.

This year, we’re talking about a dream that is well on its way to reality. We had about twenty different SLA students working the booth at one time or another over the last three days. We had teachers talking about their role in starting this school, and we had real student projects to show off. (And real students!) And the booth was packed. There were times where we had six or seven people in working in the booth, and we still were three and four deep in the aisles. It helps that we’ve visited around thirty schools on recruiting visits… the press helps… but what really is starting to make me happy is that parents and kids came up and said, "My friend goes to SLA and loves it!" I really do think we’re doing it well.

But the best part of the weekend was listening to our 9th graders, two months into the SLA experience, talk about the school. They get it. They were able to talk about why SLA is different, what project-based education means, how getting a laptop isn’t the point — it’s the way we use them that matter. Hearing our message, our vision in their voices was one of my proudest moments in education. It’s only been two months. We didn’t have the right to expect them to be such eloquent spokeswomen and men for SLA, for our dream. But, on the other hand, of course they are. They are taking this journey with us, and it means as much to them (maybe more) as it does to us.