John Colemon Elementary School has been nationally recognized as an Imagine Learning Beacon School.

John Colemon is one of only two schools from Tennessee and one of 63 nationwide to receive the honor, which is based on four specific sets of criteria in assessing schools who have implemented the Imagine Learning resources in their classrooms.

Yvonne Parrish, an area partnership manager for Imagine Learning, nominated John Colemon.

Parrish specifically noted the school’s principal, Ann Haley, as a welcoming yet strong communicator, who “knows what she wants from her faculty and is determined to get it.”

“She knows every single child in that building and something about them,” added Parrish, who has experienced an “open door policy” since Haley’s arrival. “They’ve done a good job of creating awareness for the program in their building.”

Considerations include usage and implementation of the online program, the partnership and teamwork between teachers in the classroom and the assigned program manager in their area, the educational culture of the school and the innovation they bring to implementation and usage process.

There are 644 schools in Tennessee that use the Imagine Learning program as part of their teaching process and more than 30,000 schools throughout the United States.

Less than 1 percent of all schools — at the state and national level — have been honored.

John Coleman, which is located in Smyrna and serves a large student population of English learners, uses the program for early literacy in grades K-2 alone with ELA programs in higher grades.