Other New Leaders inspired Sam to become a principal

Thank you all for supporting the New Leaders Giving Tuesday Campaign. Your donations support  Sam, a charter school principal in California’s Bay Area.

Sam says that Tatiana Epanchin-Troyan and Emily Murphy are the “two best principals” he has ever had the opportunity to work with during his career. They are also both New Leaders and they are the reason that Sam decided to become a school leader himself.

Sam worked with Tatiana (Cohort 4) and Emily (Cohort 7) as a founding teacher for an academy in Oakland. During his time there, students in Sam’s classroom gained an average of a year and a half in reading progress and more than 80 percent were ranked average or above on the end of year math assessment.

While Sam is proud of the gains in student achievement, he believes that some of his greatest successes with students have not shown up in data. Rather, they have shown up in a change in students’ beliefs that they can accomplish more than they had previously been told or thought. He has heard students who said “I can’t” in the beginning of the year say “I can” by the end. This has given him a genuine sense of accomplishment that these students will continue to seek academic achievement and personal success long after they have left his classroom.

During his three years in Oakland, Sam saw the influence that his principals had on students, staff and families, and he knew that he wanted to have that opportunity as well. He is ready to translate his experience, passion and dedication to building a successful and effective school community the students and families of Oakland deserve.