Flowery Elementary School names Students of the Year

Remy Harrison, daughter of Heather Harrison and Michael Bendik, has been named Student of the Year for Flowery Elementary School. According to school staff, Remy was chosen for her stellar academic achievement, outstanding character and passion for learning. She is an excellent example of what a dual-immersion student can be – someone who can communicate and learn effectively and comfortably in two languages. Whether it was challenging herself with Spanish novels well above her grade level, as an author writing stories, or her keen number sense that allowed her to model her out-of-the-box thinking with problem solving, Remy always gave her best effort plus a little bit more.

Remy is described as a well-rounded student with a passion for learning who demonstrates her skills in a way that inspires other students to also grow academically. As a fifth grader, Remy shows her enthusiasm as a learner every day in the classroom, with the quality of her work and her eagerness to participate.

Remy participates fully in the educational program at Flowery. She participates in GATE, serves as a Safe School Ambassador, and is a member of the fifth grade chorus. She has earned Honor Roll every trimester since the beginning of fourth grade and consistently receives the Bilingual Reader Award for achieving her reading goals in both languages.

Outside of school, Remy enjoys swimming and art. She is a part of the Sea Dragon Swim Team. Her future goals include becoming an Olympic swimmer, architect, artist or perhaps working for NASA to study space.

Joshua Hernandez, son of Luis and Maribel Hernandez, was chosen as Student of the Year “for his outstanding academic achievement, integrity driven character, and exemplary commitment to his education.”

Joshua entered Flowery as a first grader. Although he was one of the highest achievers, his teacher says he was very humble and unassuming. Even in first grade he was bilingual and a great language model for all students whether speaking Spanish or English. From a very early age, he modeled the type of engaged scholar that teachers would love to have filling up their classrooms. His third grade teacher shared that he loved to learn and consistently displayed the characteristics of a real “thinker.” She said that he constantly takes in information, evaluates, synthesizes it and shares it with others. In addition to his enthusiastic approach to learning, Joshua is very creative. He approached his third grade teacher and asked if he could teach the class origami, which she happily answered with a loud “of course!” He taught the entire class how to make an origami creation. Joshua Hernandez is the type of student that every teacher would love to teach 365 days of the year.

Now a fifth grader, Joshua’s teachers describe him as self-motivated and hardworking. He is a role model for his classmates and socially gets along with all of his peers. Academically, Joshua excels and pushes himself to always do his very best.

Joshua participates fully in the educational program at Flowery. He is a GATE student and is a member of the fifth grade band. He has earned honor roll every trimester since the beginning of fourth grade and consistently receives the Bilingual Reader Award for consistently meeting and exceeding his reading goals in both languages. Joshua’s favorite subject is math because he says it’s exciting and makes him curious.

Outside of school, he enjoys baseball, swimming, and reading fiction. His future goals include going to college and learning more about coding and computer science.

This article is the fourth in a series featuring the Students of the Year at each Sonoma Valley public school campus in the 2017-2018 school year.

Future Scholars ?n