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Fulbright Orientation

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“I am at a particular point on my journey. I have no clue if anything I think is right, but it’s the truest answers I have found thus far” - Tom Rademacher, It Won't Be Easy Fulbright swag! I started to write this post on the Amtrak down to Washington, D.C. As I sat on the train, I could not help but be contemplative about the next major step in my life while simultaneously being reflective of the incredible journey thus far. This Fulbright orientation has been over a year in the making – I applied almost a year ago today, and found out that I was accepted into the program in April. As I read through the list of Fulbright grantee’s from around the world and their inquiry project proposals, I became increasingly excited to meet some of the best educators our world has to offer. The orientation itself was genuinely one of the most inspirational weeks of my life. I was able to network with teachers from Morocco, principals from India, and counselors from New Zealand. It
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Columbia Graduation and a Special Announcement

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This past May was my official graduation from Columbia University . Even though I finished SPA last summer and officially graduated in October, Columbia only has one graduation each year, so here we are! As it has been said, " the hardest things in life are the most difficult to say, because words diminish them;" i t is honestly hard to articulate how incredible these last two years have been. I feel like it was just yesterday I was packing up to move to Teachers College for Summer I . These past two years have arguably pushed my thinking more than at any other point in my life. I am so honored to have made so many lifelong friendships, obtain some awesome  memorabilia for my future office , and even design a new school ! We were only given three tickets for graduation (or convocation , if you want to get technical), but I was able to get two additional tickets through my Columbia network. Invited were my parents, my sister, my mentor Marist Brother Seán Sammon ,
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New School Design

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As I alluded to in my  last post , three months after finishing, I am not sure that if it has hit me yet that we are officially graduates of the  Summer Principals Academy  (which we often nickname as SPA). Our degrees were conferred last month, meaning that we are all officially alumni of Columbia University! Even though we finished our program at the end of July and got our diplomas in October, Columbia only has one graduation a year, so we will “walk” this upcoming May.     The main Columbia campus  To earn a Masters from Columbia, one must either write a thesis, pass a cumulative test, or complete a capstone project, depending on the specific requirements of the program one is enrolled in. For members of SPA, we needed to complete the famous  New School Design Project . Taken from the SPA website, New School Design teams are “challenged to develop a new school that reflects the domains of knowledge, skill, and habits of mind, and is relevant to the challenges faced by chil
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You don't do the right thing every once in a while...

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It is hard to believe that we are officially graduates of Columbia’s Summer Principals Academy ! It has been such an incredible two years , as I have learned so much and made friends with some of the most transformational educators our country has to offer. The last week of our program was exhilarating to say the least, but more on that to come in a future post… Two weeks ago, in my Ethical and Legal Issues in Education Leadership class (ORLA 4033), we had to develop a personal code of ethics. We were instructed to consider the ethical principles that will guide our work as educators and reflect on how we can apply the concepts from this class to make morally, ethically, and legally-sound choices regarding future decisions. One of our professors, Dr. Mario Torres (a visiting professor from Texas A&M), encouraged us to start our assignment with a quote that resonated with us, and I immediately thought of a story from three years prior. A full year before I even applied to C
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