Magruder Coach Ray Fowle was at his home watching Clemson play Syracuse on Saturday night when his senior captain, Jeremiah Baxter, texted him. “Hey, Coach, what’s the game plan?” Baxter wrote. “We got Damascus this week.” “I’m like, ‘Hey, man, we’re still watching film, breaking it down,’ ” Fowle responded. “Give me a second to set the game plan before you even ask about it.” That’s the kind of excitement and leadership from players that sets this year’s Magruder team apart from those of years past, Fowle said.

Jacqueline Moore’s fourth-grade class at North Chevy Chase Elementary School in Chevy Chase, Maryland, is the September Class of KidsPost. This class of 26 is kicking off the school year by sharing their love for reading Jeff Kinney’s books, eating pizza and planning to save the planet.

At Northwest High School in Germantown, Kayla DiCello is not your typical sophomore navigating the rigors of science, math and foreign languages. She is more widely known by her peers as “that gymnast girl.” The 15-year-old Boyds resident who capped her meteoric rise in gymnastics by capturing the gold medal at the U.S. junior national championships last month in Kansas City.

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced the semifnalists in the 2020 competition Tuesday. 138 Montgomery County Public Schools students are National Merit semifinalists. The semifinalists will now go on to compete nationally for scholarships that will be awarded in the spring. The schools with the most finalists are Richard Montgomery (39), Montgomery Blair (36), Winston Churchill (17), and Walt Whitman (13).

A pilot program at Richard Montgomery High School is pairing upperclassmen with incoming freshmen to help younger students acclimate to high school. Twelve juniors and seniors are available as mentors to help freshmen with their transition from middle to high school, often an emotionally stressful time for students.

Madeline Hanington, a staff development teacher at Hallie Wells Middle School in Clarksburg, is a finalist for the 2019-2020 Maryland Teacher of the Year Award. Hanington, named the 2019-2020 Montgomery County Public Schools’ Teacher of the Year in April at the annual Champions for Children celebration, is continuing to earn recognition as an educator, as the Maryland State Department of Education has selected her and six other Maryland educators as finalists for the prestigious award.

School bells will be ringing for Montgomery County Public School Students on Tuesday. Yolanda Allen, who is the principal of the newly opened Snowden Farm Elementary School in Clarksburg says they expect about 650 students this year. The school will come with a lot of cool features, all of them geared towards encouraging students to learn.

There will be more than 1,000 new staff members in Montgomery County schools when classes begin. As of Aug. 29, 1,042 new teachers had been hired in MCPS, 289 of whom are graduates of MCPS schools, according to school system Chief Operating Officer Andy Zuckerman.

MCPS students brought in their first day of school with lots of excitement. Superintendent Jack Smith, and school board members say they are also looking forward to this year and all the new things it has to offer.

Students in Brown Station Elementary School’s Two-Way Language Immersion program receive their instruction in two languages every day: 50 percent of instruction is given in English and the other 50 percent of instruction is given in Spanish.