Alexandria Teacher Receives Accolades

Kathleen Fitzpatrick, a teacher with the Northern Virginia Juvenile Detention Home School in West Alexandria, has been awarded a 2013 Agnes Meyer award, according to The Washington Post, which grants the awards.

The center is an alternative school serving kindergarten through 12th-graders whose needs cannot be met in regular, special education or vocational schools.

Fitzpatrick has been a teacher for nine years and has been with ACPS since 2003, according to an ACPS statement. She holds a master’s degree in education from the University of New Mexico and a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Clarion University of Pennsylvania. She first joined ACPS as an art teacher at William Ramsay Elementary School before serving two years at the American International School in Cairo, Egypt.
 
She started teaching at the Northern Virginia Juvenile Detention Center in 2006 and has developed an art curriculum and an innovative afterschool program fusing art, meditation and yoga to help students channel their energies in a positive manner.

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Alexandria City Public Schools provides teachers for the juvenile center's education department, which consists of one principal and eight teachers in the areas of math, English, history, science, art, post-dispositional, music and health and physical education.

“Thirty years ago, The Post introduced the Agnes Meyer Award as a way for our community to spotlight local teachers who, through their work, exemplified Meyer’s steadfast commitment to education and, most importantly, our local students,” said Katharine Weymouth, publisher of The Washington Post in an article in the newspaper announcing the awards.