Darrell is a 30-year-old STAR

Anyone who has gone to Portrait Innovations for pictures will find the following picture funny! And I'll just let you guess whose idea this was!?! We went Saturday and had Jasper's two year pictures taken along with a family picture. Jasper was the normal active toddler but there are a few good ones in there. Link to the good photos along with some of the silly ones is on the right. Or you can click on the photo below.I did want to honor Darrell and his latest award in this post. Every year a high school chooses a STAR student, which is the student who scores the highest on the SAT. That student chooses his or her most influential teacher and honors that person as their STAR Teacher. Darrell was chosen as a STAR teacher this year and I went to the luncheon with him where all county STAR students & teachers were recognized. His student won for the county and goes on to 'compete' at region. We thought it is kind of funny they used the word compete since the winner is based on a single test score. If the student wins region, then he goes onto compete at state against the other 11 region winners. At state other criteria are used to determine state winners since at that level, there are several students with perfect scores. Darrell googled (Side note: He was the #1 google user in the Hall County school system afew years ago. His friend at the Technology Department informed him of this title, which surprised the tech folks because the other top 10 users are all from the Technology department!) about awards for STAR teacher winners and found the state winner's teacher got a $3000 cash award last year. That would be pretty sweet but not likely to happen.

This is a really exciting honor for Darrell with fun press coverage. Darrell told me about the interview with the Gainesville Times newspaper and how the reporter asked questions then was writing down their answers. However, the only direct quotes in the paper were the side comments Darrell and his student were making to each other. The article about other county winner (from the city system) is quite intellectual and serious. And here is Darrell quoted as saying, "You put the math back in Matthew." I guess I should know a serious article would not be fitting!