Nysmith Students Take Odyssey of the Mind Honors - District 13

This week's Odyssey of the Mind competition for District 13 (Western NOVA) featured some pretty incredible displays of teamwork, ingenuity and downright hard work on the part of the students, coaches, and supportive families. Nysmith School in Herndon sent 3 teams to the State Finals, and 2 teams received 3rd place finishing honors. The teams ranged from Elementary to High School students, from very experienced to first-timers - like the Nysmith 6th grade team pictured below (comprised of students from both Loudoun and Fairfax Counties). This team, coached by Jen Hogan and Kelly McLaughlan, truly reflected the spirit of comaraderie and inventiveness of the program, and all the children thoroughly enjoyed working together - and are looking forward to next year!

#fail Washingtonian - Why You Should Love This School - Thomas Jefferson

Our blog title is actually a carefully chosen phrase, since we're prone to using Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization techniques around here in Northern Virginia. This latest issue of The Washingtonian features a really good, insightful and factual writeup of the very best high school in America, Thomas Jefferson. But the magazine's front cover is a horrid, nasty and insulting dig at the greatness of the school and its hard-working, motivated students - for which the editor quite literally should be fired (or at least counseled on the impact of search engine marketing).

While the reviews of fascinating, very likeable students and the world-class opportunities made available to them are motivating reading for all those parents in this area striving to offer their children educational opportunity, this stupid attempt at politically-tainted humor simply squashes the hard work and sacrifice these students and parents have made to rise above the sludge that is our local and US public educational system and politics. The magazine content is an incredible dichotomy of the inane and vapid vs. intellectual, with the TJ article immediately following some pure DC fluff and flotsam about "the most stylish people"....something we sincerely hope none of our children or those in great schools around the region ever aspire to.

From a Northern Virginia online advertising, marketing and reputation management perspective, this is a pure slam-dunk for the Washingtonian, and pure horror for TJ and its students....the article has generated plenty of controversy and reader reaction, probably selling many more copies and generating increasing traffic to its site (we're guilty of supporting this, simply by posting this blog...though we'll not include any page-rank enhancing backlinks). The online marketing inanity comes from the search engines....simply search in Google for "Northern Virginia Most H$%ed High School" - you'll see what we mean (again, we're not going to actually post these despicable phrases).

As the tweeters say, #fail Washingtonian.

Local School Runs the Board with Regional and National Teams, Individual awards...

After many months of training, warm-up competitions and local contests, athletic dominance was achieved by our local school in several categories of regional and national competition. Following successes at the early Spring Regional Invitational meets, both the boys and the girls tied for 1st among 275 other school teams at nationals. The competition was intense, but several of our athletes maxed their scoring with perfection on the courts, in the Gold divisions. This regional powerhouse ended another very strong year of superior Olympiad performance, in all categories...

...of 4th-8th grade academics, of course. (Which sport were you expecting?)

This year's awards ceremony at the Nysmith School for the Gifted, in Herndon, was a virtual cavalcade of honors any area high school or college would be hard-pressed to match. It was amazingly refreshing to witness cheering students, a packed audience of family and friends, very proud teachers and absolutely beaming children accept the very top honors and awards from regional and national competitions (like Odyssey of the Mind, Mathcounts and the Thomas Jefferson Math Open, Wordmasters, Science Fairs) along with individual honors bestowed on exceptional students in all grades, all subjects.

Where most local papers, discussion boards, media and parents are consumed with school sports team successes, this very close community is consumed with athletics of the mind, and nationally competitive results in spelling and geography bees, mathematics, science, music and art, logic and critical thinking are absolute proof that this school does right by its students. We desperately need more acknowledgement in this area of the country, like the example Nysmith sets, that academic excellence is truly the objective of the educational system, and is how the US will generate its future scientists, inventors, philosophers, business creators and other world leaders.

For reviews of other great Northern Virginia Private School Reviews, see I Am Modern, a Women's Lifestyle Magazine and Social Forum.