Coan Middle Artist Showcase on Thursday Night

The Atlanta Cluster of The Links, Inc., will host the annual “Showcase of Coan Middle Artists, Musicians, and Poets and Atlanta’s Top Professional Artists” at Coan MS on Thursday from 6-8 p.m.

Coan Middle Orchestra to Show Off Skills at Annual Fine Arts Festival

Coan’s String Orchestra Concert will be February 21.

EAST LAKE — Coan Middle School orchestra students are eager to show off everything they have learned since receiving the Atlanta Music Project grant through the Zeist Foundation last fall. Students received instruments, but the grant also paid for teaching artists to come into the classroom once a week.  According to the Atlanta Public Schools blog, "these professional musicians also select students for sectionals and provide group lessons after school." With their new instruments in hand and with the benefit of working with working musicians, the students are excited for the Annual Fine Arts Festival which will take place at the school Feb. 21. The Atlanta Music Project, a nonprofit organization founded in 2010, has grown to serve more …

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Stressing Colleges, Careers and a Future

Coan Middle School focuses on building the foundations for the future.

EAST LAKE — One of the philosophies that Coan Middle School Principal Betsy Bockman has is that children should have a clear understanding about their choices and how their actions affect their futures. It's one of the reasons she instituted year-long one-on-one conferences with parents, teachers and students to get the kids to understand their success and achievements here help build the foundation for a successful future. Part of that also is showing what success looks like and the importance of — even at a young age — of setting goals and personal benchmarks. Yesterday was College Day for staff to show their college spirit.  Here is picture of some of us.   On Friday, Coan hosted 30 Junior Achievement speakers who spoke to Coan students…

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Christmas Comes Early to Coan Middle School

Teachers honored with gifts taken from their wish lists.

Teachers at Coan Middle School got a nice little surprise Tuesday. After school was over for the day, they gathered for a holiday party in the school's media center for cake and and soft drinks. Scores of wrapped presents were placed under a decorated Christmas tree. What they didn't know was the presents were real and for them. Coan principal Betsy Bockman got them supplies and items each said they needed for their classrooms. She fulfilled the wish list by reaching out to parents and local business community as well as teachers and schools from other parts of Atlanta. She said the greater community was more than willing to help. "It really took on a life of its own," Bockman told the teachers, explaining she wanted them to know that she …

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Planting the Seeds of Success

Students from Coan Middle School and across Atlanta ready a garden for Edgewood and East Lake.

by Miranda Bryen We want to recognize students who prepared to plant a fruit orchard in a under-served community here in Atlanta, and thank you all for making this possible. On Saturday, Dec. 1 — on a day that felt like spring — a group of volunteers, students and educators worked together to revitalize the edible school yard in the Edgewood and East Lake communities. Fifteen students from Coan Middle School, Carver High School, North Atlanta High School and Sarah Smith Elementary school joined with other community volunteers to prepare unused land at Coan Middle School for its Dec. 12 fruit tree and fruit bush planting. The volunteer event, made possible by Mayson Avenue Cooperative, Coan Middle School and private foundation support, was …

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At Coan Middle School: An Education in Personal Responsibility

Getting children to take ownership in their own academic success.

Scores of parents funneled through the doors of Coan Middle School last week to meet with teachers and get an update on their children’s' academic progress. But the twist on these familiar, mid-semester parent-teacher conferences was that at Coan, the students were included in those meetings. In fact, the multiday conferences held last week for each of Coan's 325 kids were really centered on the students themselves instead of the parents. The 20-minute meetings were designed to help each student gauge his or her progress, establish goals for academic achievement and develop a blueprint on how to meet them. Moms and dads were there to listen in and offer their input. "It went well," Latwain Butler, who attended the one-on-one meeting …

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Real Atlanta Housewives Alum to appear at East Atlanta Book Signing

DeShawn Snow event to benefit Coan Middle School Parent Teacher Students Association.

by Patch Staff DeShawn Snow, a former Real Housewives of Atlanta castmate, is scheduled to come to Bound To Be Read Books in East Atlanta Village for a book signing and reading on Saturday, Aug. 11 from 4 pm. to 5 p.m. Snow will be reading and signing copies of her new children's books series, Lil Shawnee. The book series is aimed at tween girls from third to sixth grades. The central themes: giving them empowering and encouraging messages. This event also is a benefit for Coan Middle School's PTSA and 10 percent of book sales will proceed the school. For more information about the event, please read here. If you go: Bound to Be Read Books is at 481 Flat Shoals Ave. SE, in East Atlanta Village.

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Communities Come Out For Coan Middle School

Volunteers spend the day fixing up the former East Lake Elementary School for incoming Coan Middle students.

If there was one positive thing that came of the angst and drama that was the redistricting of the Atlanta Public Schools, it was the how the various communities rallied around the schools threatened with closure. That level of interest and involvement was something that APS Superintendent Erroll B. Davis took note of in a recent meeting with parents in Southeast Atlanta. Indeed, parents, non-parents and retirees in a number of communities including Edgewood, Peoplestown, Kirkwood and East Atlanta, among others, rallied around their neighborhood schools to keep them open. The big question: Post-redistricting, would that momentum last? A lot of parents, parents-to-be and non-parents in East Atlanta Patch communities promised that interest …

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Davis' Final APS Redistricting Plan: Keep Coan Middle And Whitefoord Elementary Open

Among the casualties: D.H. Stanton Elementary and Cook Elementary schools.

Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Erroll B. Davis Jr. released his final recommendation for the district's massive rezoning, which calls for 10 schools to shut their doors at the end of the school year. The plan, released late Saturday night, calls for East Lake Elementary to close. That closure was widely expected since the seven preliminary plans called for it to shut down. But Davis' proposal has a few surprises, too. Among them: Whitefoord Elementary and Coan Middle schools — both in the Edgewood neighborhood — are spared from closure. Supporters of both Coan and Whitefoord fought bitterly to keep those schools open. Though Coan stays open, its middle schoolers will go to East Lake Elementary for the 2012-13 school year. That's …

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APS Redistricting: A Counterproposal To Closing Coan Middle School

East Lake, Edgewood and Kirkwood communities develop plan in the hopes of saving Georgia's first Middle School.

Editor's note: Since APS Superintendent Erroll B. Davis Jr.'s March 4 recommendation that Coan Middle School be closed, the Edgewood, East Lake and Kirkwood neighborhoods — three of the four communities zoned to attend the school, have mobilized to save it. The communities developed this proposal to present to Davis today. They shared their proposal with East Atlanta Patch. by Earl Williamson The following is a proposal to keep Coan Middle School open for the students of it's core neighborhoods of Edgewood, East Lake and Kirkwood. It was developed in response to Atlanta Public Schools Superindent Erroll B. Davis Jr.'s plan to close Coan and his repeated suggestions to the community that a viable plan would be needed to reverse that …

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