It is an honor to serve and support the Shadow Hills Engineering and Design Magnet Academy school community as their Proud Principal. As a seasoned educational leader with over 17 years experience as a veteran Teacher and over five years as an administrator, I continue to be relentlessly committed to diminishing the predictive power of demographics by collaborating with educators, community stakeholders, policy makers, students and their caregivers to spark, sustain and heighten students' intellectual curiosity. I am in a relentless pursuit to consistently launch accomplished, resilient student leaders who know their university-destiny and are empowered and prepared with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to boldly walk into and succeed in rigorous A-G high school coursework leading to acceptance from a four-year college or university. Irrespective of a student’s gender, cultural background, language proficiency, family income level, the educational label -- special education, GATE, foster youth, alternative education, or “below basic” I am passionate about empowering and supporting students, and the adults who support them, to reach and exceed what they believe is their potential.
LaSalle and Johnson (2019) remind us that every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. It is paramount that educational leaders focus on the right work to improve educational outcomes for all students. I have come to learn that the themes to improve schools seem consistent -- maintain high standards for all students, consistently engage in collaborative and continuous cycles of inquiry, use data to inform decisions, get precise on pedagogy, and commit to continuously rooting out inequities to improve schools for all students. We cannot change history but we can set a new course to create a future that no longer resembles our past by doing what we know to be right for all students.
Yet, we do nothing great alone. Education requires resonant leadership as defined by McKee et al. (2006) the ability to mobilize energy in people, teams, and other groups; to inspire and motivate through hope, vision, meaning, and purpose. Transforming schools to improve educational outcomes for all students requires school leaders that can speak to the heart of people, unleash their talent and creativity, inspire and support them as they develop an inquiry stance to collaboratively address equity gaps and resilience to keep pushing forward to our “end-game” -- improved school culture, refined teacher practice, transformed school experiences and improved learning outcomes for all students. I am not only willing, but enjoy learning how to systematically work to improve learning outcomes for all students, alongside my colleagues. As important, I have the courage to act because our children and the adults who support them are worth it!
