Next Steps

My self-portrait from kindergarten depicts me as a teacher, the grown-up I always knew I would be. As a fourth-generation educator, I’m proud to be continuing a family legacy that has been wrought in one-room schoolhouses, special education programs, and multicultural classrooms for the past 90 years. My great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother have each wholeheartedly invested themselves in the lives of their students, as elementary school teachers are wont to do, and I’m inspired by the hard work, generous spirits, and feisty nature of these women who have come before me.

I love school. I always have. I’ve been living within the rhythms of the school year—beginning with crisp fall mornings and ending as the June ocean breezes bring in tourists and the sounds of summer—since I was five years old. There is something magical about education, and I’ve never quite been able to leave its spell.

Education is proactive. It is an incredible agent of change, and it is the greatest and most effective tool for achieving social justice that I have encountered. Education changes lives—I’ve seen it alter the paths of countless students’ lives.

I know it has changed mine, and it will this autumn when I become a student once again.

Two weeks ago, I received a letter:

“Dear Julia,
Congratulations! I am pleased to inform you that you have been admitted to the Master of Education program in International Education Policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to pursue full-time study for the 2012-2013 academic year. […]”

CAMBRIDGE, HERE I COME!

I have always loved the Boston/Cambridge area, and I can’t wait to try life on the East Coast. I am excited, overwhelmed, honored, …but mostly just excited.

And so, here’s the Oscar speech…

Thank you to Chris, Kathryn, and Kristin for writing letters of recommendation for me. For your support during our time working together and now in this new endeavor, I am forever grateful.

For being my biggest cheerleaders in the beginning—especially over our Thanksgiving meal of 2008, Michael and Densil, you rock.

For reading my personal statement, offering astute feedback, and assuaging my fears that it was all a bunch of fluff…Erinn and Jason, asante sana!

And for my family, who has already looked up the Hampton Inn nearest Harvard so they can come visit (twice), I love you so much!

Orientation begins on August 27, and then I have ten months to “suck out all the marrow” of this incredible experience.