For the past twelve years, I have dedicated my professional career, time and energy wholly to ensuring that children – all children – received the finest educational, nurturing and guidance I could possibly provide. Yet, I have only been left wanting to give more, and on a greater scale, to bring to focus my passion for educating our special needs children and address omnipresent, even growing needs that I have seen and want to address in my school district. In order to affect the changes needed, I am finding that at my current academic level, and professional exposure, this is simply not feasible. Turning to your post-graduate program at the College of XXXX, and CITE is more than a logical choice or progression for my future career, but a natural choice given my sensibilities, goals, ambitions, and indeed my dreams.
Earning my administrative certification will enable me to increase my professional exposure, laying a positive foundation for eventually serving New York City’s School District 75, where I presently teach, as an educated, experienced and visionary principal within a special education school. We need to consider the educational, physical and developmental needs of all children, including those with emotional and behavioral disorders, ADD/ADHD, pervasive developmental disorders, learning disabilities and speech impairments. What greater display of our humanity could we possibly offer than to include all of our children’s needs in our educational system?
I bring with me to the student body and post-graduate program a solid academic grounding in both Psychology and Special Education. What is more, I bring four years of direct instructional experience earned in the field, working with children with emotional and behavioral disorders. Moreover, I feel that the leadership skills I developed, utilized and proved as Coordinator for Special Education Religious Education will prove invaluable in my future work. Having interviewed, trained, observed, and supervised volunteers, and paraprofessionals in addition to designing and implementing individualized lesson plans for each child autonomously and with my colleagues, utilizing and adapting different teaching methods, my skills are both in teaching and in effective administration. Furthermore, my skills are based on an understanding of what needs to be accomplished in the classroom, promoting educational, physical and social development of my students, as well as in the school as a whole, as an entity. Observing and evaluating students’ performance, interacting with parents, administrators, testing specialists, and social workers has developed my ability to communicate effectively with people from all walks of life, socioeconomic backgrounds, and even cultures, an ability that school leadership requires and yet is probably the hardest to grasp, coming only with experience and not from a lecture hall.
I look forward to serving my community and school district at a higher level with great eagerness, within the only field that has ever brought me the greatest personal and profession satisfaction. While I have strived to inspire each individual student to believe in themselves and their ability to learn, I am convinced that my future is in developing a body of like-minded educational professionals, nurturing, guiding and rewarding them for the benefit of my community and the extended community my students will go on to be contributing members within and beyond.
Thank you for your time and consideration.