Cameron Elementary School has a new color to go along with its renewed school spirit. It's gold.
It seems everyone visited Cameron last week to see a special presentation celebrating the school's status as a fully accredited Gold Medal School.
Christian Braunlich, Lee District representative for Fairfax County School Board, was there. Betsy Fenske, Cluster V director, was there. Sally Todd, representative from American Federation of Teachers (AFT) came, as did Barbara Allen, president of the Fairfax Education Association (FEA). David Sayed and Teresa Hall represented Burke & Herbert Bank. Mary Carter came from Springfield Women's Club, and Capt. Otis Young represented the mentoring program.
Dr. Veronica Bryant said that they had received the Gold Medal twice before but that this was the first time they were fully accredited.
An hour-long celebration was held in the morning with presentations by all of the above, and there was plenty of enthusiastic applause to go around.
To celebrate even further, the afternoon was full of activities for the students. For the last hour and a half of school, they were treated to puppet shows and sock hops. At 2 p.m., George Towery, principal of Cameron, could be heard on the loudspeaker informing the children of the afternoon's events. The announcement that the children should leave their shoes in their classroom (unless they were in the auxiliary buildings) was met with shrieks of delight.
The next 10 minutes, the halls were filled with children as they made their way to their designated spot. The pod was then filled with the laughter of children from Head Start and kindergarten as they watched the antics of puppets from Kaydee Puppets.
The gym started howling with the sounds of third-, fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders dancing away. The cafeteria was a little more orderly with the first- and second-graders, doing the Electric Slide and other fun dances.
Dr. Bryant, a third-grade teacher at Cameron Elementary who helped organize the event, said, "Everybody said that the children's behavior was excellent. It was a wonderful day enjoyed by all — a good time and very celebratory. We are so proud of finally becoming fully accredited and of course, Gold Medal. It couldn't have happened to a nicer school."
She went on to thank all the hard-working teachers, staff, volunteers, parents and community contributors.