Stop by the Bloomingdale Farmers' Market this Sunday, Sept. 16th from 9 AM - 1 PM for lemonade, baked treats and information about your neighborhood school, Langley Elementary. This is a great opportunity to familiarize yourself with the school and the process before the busy winter season begins. Principal Drumm-Canepa and parents of Langley students will be on hand to share their positive experiences. We look forward to telling you about Langley's exceptional social-emotional program over some home-baked brownies!

New members of our Langley Elementary School family: Join us for a playdate tomorrow morning, Saturday, May 5, from 10-noon on the playground in front of the school. If the weather's wet, we'll move the fun indoors. We can't wait to meet you!

Hello new Tiger families!

Due to the cold and snowy weather forecast for Saturday, the Early Childhood Education playdate has been postponed until May. Current Langley families look forward to meeting you and your young students - join us for one of these upcoming events:

• Open House on April 10 at 9 AM - meet fellow parents and tour our beautiful building
• Community Clean-up and Enrollment day on April 21 from 9 - noon at the Harry Thomas Jr. Rec Center park - pitch in with Langley families to spruce up our park and drop off your child's school enrollment papers too

​Stay turned for the rescheduled Early Childhood Education playdate. 

Welcome New Tigers!
 
Hello to all our new Tiger families!  We can’t wait to welcome you into the Langley family, especially our brave PK-3 Tiger Cubs!
 

Welcome Playdate
Our first get-to-know-you playdate will be on Saturday, April 7th, on the school playground from 10 AM to noon.  School leadership and current parents will be there to welcome you and answer questions.  Waitlisters, please come!  
 
 
Rec Center Cleanup and Enrollment Saturday
Langley will be accepting Enrollment Packets at the front desk during school hours each weekday.  As a convenience for busy parents, Langley will also be open on Saturday, April 21, from 9 AM to 12 PM, to collect your enrollment forms.  At the same time, the PTSA will be sponsoring a Rec Center Cleanup and Parade on Harry Thomas Rec Center playground, adjacent to the school.  The bike and scooter parade around the track will begin at 11:30 AM!
 

PTSA Meeting
The next PTSA meeting will be Tuesday, May 15th, at 6 PM at Langley.  If you can't make the meeting but still want to join the PTSA, just send a quick note to LangleyPTA101@gmail.com.  Please reach out with any questions, or just to say hi!  

     I wanted to share some thoughts on our family's experience at Langley Elementary School.  I am the parent of a student in Pre-K-3 at Langley, so this was our first experience with DCPS.  Everyone at Langley has been incredibly open and welcoming, which confirmed that our decision to send our son to Langley was the right one for us.  That welcoming attitude starts from the top down; Principal Drumm is just in her second year at Langley, but it is clear that she has worked hard to create a real sense of community.  Principal Drumm and Assistant Principal Jennings are out in front of the school each day to greet students as they enter, whether by fist-bump, high-five, or hug.  But it seems like all the staff are excited to see our child every day, and he'll run up to give them hugs as well.  And since Langley is our neighborhood school, we see the other parents at pick-up and drop off, but also at the farmer's market, local restaurants, and just walking around Bloomingdale and Eckington.  Our son's teachers have been great - willing to give feedback before or after school and even scheduling a one-on-one appointment within two days after we asked for a meeting.   Langley has made such good progress in creating a positive culture that DCPS is using Langley as a showcase for its  social-emotional learning program, bringing in outside teachers and administrators to observe and take the lessons learned back to their own schools.

​This morning was Langley Elementary School’s first open house for prospective students of the 2018-2019 school year. I served as a parent volunteer, on hand to welcome visitors and answer questions from my family’s perspective.
 
More than 30 parents showed up to learn more about Langley and I looked around the room, excited about the possibility of these men and women joining our community. Two women bopped and swayed in the back of the room with their babies strapped snuggly into front carriers and it took me back to the winter I wore my son all over town as I attended one open house after another, facing my daughter’s first year of preschool.
 
I was resentful that I had to wrap my brain around yet another completely foreign world (alas, what is parenthood but that process repeated infinitely). I had just conquered potty training, no small feat. I was only a few short months into the monumental adjustment of going from being a one-child family to a two-child family. Again, kind of a big deal. I was a new resident in Washington and was totally blindsided by the whole concept of universal preschool.