Two Blair students are blogging for the Voice.

Pete Volk began writing about the Thunderbolts this past summer and has continued to follow the Blazers during the school year. If you want to find out the latest game stats and read expert analysis, go to http://www.silverspringvoice/takomasilversports.

Pete is a Blair senior, currently puzzling over which college has the best program for a budding sports reporter.


Gemma D'Eustachio has taken over "Inside Blair," the column that has been a franchise of the Kohn and Wolf families--until now. You can read Gemma's thoughts on high school and beyond at http://www.takoma.com/insideblair.

Gemma is a junior at Montgomery Blair High School. In her sophomore year, she joined the Voice team and has filed several impressive articles already. We look forward to reading her blog.

Three years later and we triumph at wacky hair day.

My eldest is in her third year of public school. The public schools here are a massively organized thing, and it takes a while to learn all the ins and outs. They have something called "spirit week," which I only experienced in high school when I was growing up. But things have changed.

In kindergarten, I didn't realize that it was wacky hair day until alas too late, and we didn't have hair that was at all wacky (well, I put in a largish prime number of pig tails, which lasted about 10 minutes). Last year, I tried hard for wacky hair that did not stay wacky very long at all (probably about 10 minutes, but her hair was combed very well, and my pig tails had gotten a bit tighter in the intervening year). In first grade, I did have a brief epiphany where I realized that getting ready for wacky hair day was more like getting ready for a wedding than our normal morning hair brushing routine is.

I went all out this time buying hair care products in the days leading up to wacky hair day. I even had to turn back from the temptation to buy various serious hair dye products, as I knew that somewhere in there was a line between wacky and excessive.

My daughter's hair was spiky when I dropped her off, and when I picked her up, she smilingly showed me the still standing spikes.

Credit to her for the the realization that cute is part of wacky.

Honor one of your favorite educators by voting online for the upcoming Azalea Awards– TP's version of the Oscars, if you can fathom such a thing.

Many staff members and some parent leaders representing Rolling Terrace, TPES and PBES are nominated this year. And you can always write in someone you believe was overlooked.

Voting ends May 10th and doesn't require you submit your email address.

The Voice has a new columnist, Sue Katz Miller, a journalist who has been very involved with local schools as a mom and has written about education professionally for a while now, from what I know. This is the first piece she's written for the Voice and I found it very informative.

I think it's a great starting point for a discussion about neighborhood schools. Check it out: On Walking to School.