Minnieville Elementary School Principal Nathaniel Provencio was named the 2017 Washington Post Principal of the Year.
According to the Washington Post’s website, principals that go “beyond the day-to-day demands of their position” are the educators that intend to highlight through the Principal of the Year award.
“The visionary leadership of Nathaniel Provencio continues to boost the performance of students at Minnieville Elementary School, making it a model for the region…Provencio leads his staff in promoting parent involvement, student goal-setting, laser-focused instructional teams, school partnerships, and daily monitoring of student progress that drive Minnieville’s success. Parent and school volunteer hours rose from 500 hours in 2010 to 4,500 in 2015-16 under his leadership,” stated a release.
More on Provencio, from a release:
Provencio is recognized as an exceptional, innovative, and influential instructional leader. The school has paperless classrooms, yoga classes for students with behavior challenges, and flexible classroom seating on exercise balls. Students keep ongoing personal data on their academic efforts and set instructional goals, gaining greater understanding of their potential and strengths as learners.
Initiating a full press on literacy when he took over the school in 2010, Provencio put multiple highly trained teachers and specialists to work with small groups of students each day. The success of this model spurred ten other PWCS schools to follow suit. Provencio works with grade level teams and support specialists to craft intervention plans based on student performance data, and he frequently creates lessons. To take the pulse of how students are doing, Principal Provencio frequently assists in classrooms and with cafeteria duty.
Provencio raised identification of second language learners who are gifted, resulting in 20 percent more gifted learners. Minnieville currently has the highest rates of gifted student referrals and identification of any Prince William County Title I school.
Joining PWCS as a third-grade teacher at Montclair Elementary in 2001, Provencio served as assistant principal at McAuliffe and Bel Air Elementary Schools before being named principal at Minnieville Elementary in 2010. He earned his M.Ed. in education leadership at George Mason University and his B.S. in elementary education from University of North Alabama.
