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Virginia’s state superintendent for public instruction, Dr. Lisa Coons, visited Lexington City Schools last Thursday, getting a firsthand look at the district’s teaching methods, classroom culture, and student engagement.
Invited by LCS Superintendent Rebecca Walters, Coons toured Waddell Elementary School and Lylburn Downing Middle School alongside Dr. Jeremy Raley, chief of staff for Virginia Department of Education.
Their visit allowed school staff to highlight the district’s instructional strategies and offered state education officials a window into what’s working on the ground in local classrooms.
“Dr. Coons and Dr. Raley travel frequently to school districts across the state to see the great things happening in our public schools, and I wanted to extend an invitation for them to visit our schools,” said Walters in an email to The News-Gazette.
At Waddell Elementary, The News-Gazette joined the superintendents as they stepped into a second-grade classroom, where students were practicing phonemes and graphemes under the guidance of their teacher. Coons sat on the floor with the children, watching them decode sounds and blends, and then moved around the room, chatting with individual students as they worked through questions on their handheld whiteboards.
According to Walters, the goal of the visit was to showcase the breadth of learning experiences that define Lexington City Schools.
“I invited [the officials] to visit our schools just to showcase the amazing instructional programs and people contributing to the success of our Lexington City schools,” Walters said.
During their tour at Waddell, Coons and Raley observed not only reading instruction but also a morning meeting activity, an art class, and even a collaborative session that blended P.E. and music — an unconventional way to engage students’ bodies and minds that shows off the unique approaches to learning at Lexington’s schools.
Across the way at Lylburn Downing Middle School, the pair visited with students during lunch, observed the school’s academic lab, sat in on a Spanish class, and took in several elective courses. One of the highlights was watching the district’s selfselected reading time, where students explore literature that interests them.
