Montverde Academy

December 18, 2002

    During the past year at Montverde Academy, Daria has worked diligently in both her academics and extra curricular activities. I have had the pleasure to teach her in American History and Govemment. She has been very successful in her transition here and excelled in her studies. Daria was very outgoing and seems to thrive when challenged. I believe she posses the positive attributes essential to succeed in her professional development.

Mr. Daniel Thompson

January 20, 2003

    This letter is regarding Daria Chentsova. Daria is a student in my advanced placement studio art class. She is a very talented and undividual who has excellent drawing and painting abilities, a good eye for detail, and is very creative and enthusiastic about learning. Daria is pleasant, easy to get along with, cooperative, and eager to please.

Peggy Dawson
Art Teacher

I did not have a great deal of contact with her because she was in the ESL program for only a short time. Nevertheless, I do remember her as being bright, cheerful, and extremely dedicated.

Upon reflection there are two incidents concerning Daria that I could relate, and you might find interesting. One is academic, the other athletic.

Daria was a student there are at Montverde Academy at a time when the technology program was just becoming an important part of the academic program. Students had their own computers and did amazingly good composition work on them. There was a problem in getting work printed because there was only one lager laser printer in the teacher’s room. For a student to get his work printed, he had to run it through the computer assigned to each teacher which was in turn hooked up to that printer through a network system. This worked well except that some students were printing useless material downloaded from the internet, thereby consuming huge amounts of paper. The assistant headmaster was mindful of this and was monitoring paper use.

Early in the year we had a composition assignment. Daria completed the assignment with her usual dedication, and was ready to print it. I let her at my computer. She loaded the composition and clicked “print”. She sat looking at the monitor apparently waiting to see the paper come out. Of course it did not. She clicked “print” again, again, and again. All this time copies of her paper were being spewed out in the printing room. Suddenly the assistant headmaster came bursting into our classroom. “What’s going on here”, he demanded to know why so much paper was being used.

That’s how Daria learned to use our computer network.

The second incident is related to Daria’s experience on the girl’s golf team. We encourage every student to play a team sport. Daria decided she wanted to try golf so I put together a set of clubs for her. I gathered that she had never played before.

We began practice and I noticed that she had a great ability to strike the ball. We continued to practice, she never missed a practice, she brought to golf the same dogged determination with which she attacked her classroom assignments.

Golf is a fall sport in Florida. Unfortunately September is still a summer month and we are subject to afternoon thunderstorms.
The team had a match one afternoon. The girls teed off under hot and humid conditions. Play progressed, but as it did the skies became more dark and threatening. Finally it began to rain. I went to Daria and asked if she wanted an umbrella – she said no. I checked on the other girls then came back to Daria. She was soaked with rain dripping off her face. I told her it was time to quit, but she refused, she was determined to complete the round.

Finally we had to pull all the girls off of the course, but I will never forget her determination.

John Cook