Mill Creek community excited to build its identity
Aaron Cedeño | Staff Writer

Mill Creek Principal Tim Drake kept waiting for the excitement to wane.

At the beginning of the 2007 school year, it was to be expected, he said. Mill Creek Middle School had opened, and everything was fresh as the DeSoto school district’s newest school.

The staff and administration were getting to know each other as the first day of school approached, Drake said, all while preparing coursework and quelling their own excitement and anxiety.

The first day, came and went — followed by the first month, quarter and semester.

Before they knew it, the school year was over, but the excitement within the halls had not waned.

With the level of support he’d seen from the Mill Creek community, Drake said, he wasn’t surprised.

“I’m not sure that you could have scripted a year to have gone as well as it did,” he said. “I was very pleased with the students, not only in terms of their academic performance but in the choices they made in terms of citizenship and those kinds of things.”

While Mill Creek is well on its way to crafting its identity, Drake said, it wasn’t there yet, though the necessary elements were in place for something special.

It bodes well that perhaps the most impressive element about Mill Creek’s first year was the students. Drake pointed to the school’s motto of “Enter to learn, go forth to serve,” and how completely each class bought in to that message.

He recalled one group of sixth-graders that developed a community service project on their own time, raising nearly $700 for charity in the process.

With Aug. 18 and the first day of school drawing near, Drake and his staff are putting what they learned in 2007 to good use. The most important thing they’ve gained, he said, may be a point of reference to help guide them in the future.

“I think there was a lot of learning at a lot of different levels in that first year that we’re now applying to make this in some ways a smoother year,” Drake said.