Don't Pump the Brakes

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 releva...

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...

I just had the absolute pleasure of getting back from Hawai’i. Visiting the aloha state was always high on my bucket list, and I was so excited to visit the Paradise of the Pacific with my family for winter break. Where should we begin? Our first full day there was Christmas, and it was actually the first Christmas we spent as a family outside of our home in New York. During the morning, we were all a little jet-lagged, and walked along the beautiful beach to celebrate Christmas. That night, we went to an incredible luau at Germaine’s Luau and enjoyed some delicious Hawaiian food. (Check out some of the footage from the luau in the linked video below). Celebrating Christmas in Hawaii with the Paulsen family Speaking of food, the food I had was some of the best I have ever had in my entire life. The dumplings from 7-11 were great, the Asian food was fantastic, and the poke (Hawaiian sushi) was even better. We even had incredible shaved ice from Matsumoto's , a ba...

Wow. I honestly cannot believe that we are already finished with Summer I of Columbia University's  Summer Principals Academy  (SPA). These last six weeks have been such an incredible learning experience, and I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with some of the best educators across the country. It was a much-needed break from the horrendous end of the school year I just went through. Between all of the student walkouts, teachers quitting daily, and (in my perspective) terrible leadership, I asked myself for the first time in my life whether there is a point when education reform goes too far. To be honest, the last four months of this past school year were the hardest four months of my career, and I was ready to put this year behind us.  The main reading room in the Butler Library "In some cases, you can fake it until you make it. You cannot fake it in SPA." A map representing our cohort by region. During our orientation in May, I genui...