HOUSTON COUNTY, Ga. — Some students turn away at the thought of math, but Quail Run Elementary School 5th grader Lizzie Stewart takes on the subject head first.
"I really like to do multiplication problems at my desk with expo markers," says Stewart.
She says it was a little hard at first when she started learning multiplication, but she credits her teacher, Martha Martin, for helping her learn her way around numbers. From conversion to division down to multiplying, Martin has a lot of tricks up her sleeve to help students remember how to make math easier.
That's just part of what sets them apart from other schools and why they were one of five Georgia schools to be named a National Blue Ribbon School. It's a program part of the U.S. Department of Education that recognizes outstanding schools based on their academics or their success in closing the achievement gap among diverse groups of students.
The Houston County school credits commemorative assessments and teacher collaboration as a reason for gaining Blue Ribbon status.
"Teachers come together they create the assessments based on the essential standards. Every child gets that in the grade level. Then they come back and look at the data, then compare it and teaching strategies. That's what helps us to better," says principal Amanda Miliner.
While being 1 of about 300 blue ribbon schools across the nation is nice, at the end of the day, they know what it's about one thing: the kids.
In November, the principal and teacher of the year will represent Houston County and the school in Washington D.C. There they will recognize the 2023 Blue Ribbon schools.