Matt Holzer
Ed.M. SLP '02
I ended up applying to graduate school because I simply couldn't put it off any longer. I basically had to be dragged kicking and screaming into applying. New York State even threatened to revoke my teaching license unless I got an advanced degree and I still tried to get out of it. But, as with most things, that which I resist the hardest is usually best for me. That's how I became a teacher in the first place and that's how I came to be at Harvard in the School Leadership Program. Neither were initial goals but both have turned out to be the best things that could have happened.
Despite my resistance to academia, after five exhausting but amazing years as a social studies teacher at a brand new public high school in New York City, I was longing for some time to think. After I graduated from Brown University in 1996, I was lucky enough to receive a Teachers for Tomorrow Fellowship which placed me with a small group of teachers running an alternative dropout prevention program within a large high school in Manhattan. The program was called Humanities Preparatory Academy and was aimed at turning around students who were not succeeding in a traditional school environment and preparing them for college. The teachers were applying for a grant to become their own school and so I spent my first year learning how to teach as well as being a part of their planning efforts. That effort succeeded and we opened as a new small high school in 1997. I spent the next four years spending about 12 hours a day and most of my summers involved in the birth and growth of this new enterprise. It was incredibly rewarding, unbelievably challenging, and life-altering for me. The kids were wonderful, the staff was talented and dedicated, and the school was a progressive community dedicated to democracy and intelligent work. At least that's how it felt most days in between the inevitable daily crises that occur when a new school is created. I strove to improve my teaching over time, writing my own curriculum, employing performance-based assessments, and serving as a college counselor, technology coordinator, and liaison to the notorious Board of Education bureaucracy. My school's small nature and my principal's great support enabled me to learn about the workings of both the classroom and the school system simultaneously. It was a rare vantage point which, although all consuming, was ultimately rewarding.
By the fall of 2000 I knew I loved working in a school like Prep but felt the need to broaden my perspective on how schools were run and how teaching was practiced. Many at my school became frustrated by how often we reinvented the wheel or suffered from tunnel vision when there were so many other schools around in similar situations. These issues acquired a new urgency when the State Education Department moved to force our school to give the high-stakes statewide Regents exams and abandon our performance-based assessment alternatives. We had to fight for the survival of our alternative nature and ultimately sued the State along with thirty other alternative schools. I became very aware of the importance of leadership on many levels to the development and protection of innovative schools. And all this greatly influenced my priorities when looking for a graduate school.
I wanted a program that would allow me to think creatively about schools while never being far from them. I wanted an experience that would make me useful to efforts to fight standardization and high stakes testing in New York and elsewhere. I wanted to study how to create, support, and defend new schools, and innovative public schools in particular. I wanted to be with other teachers, sharing our experiences, and looking at different models of leadership and reform. And most of all I wanted to be in a city and at a university that supported school innovation but that was not New York, lest I become one of those people for whom the country's biggest district is the only context for their experience.
While I had assumed that Harvard was the epitome of a removed ivory tower, I was amazed to find that the Graduate School of Education offered the only program that even remotely offered something that addressed my interests. The School Leadership Program focused on both school reform and leadership, a rare combination for a master's program. It had an internship component that would allow me to visit schools and keep one foot in the "real world," a very attractive option. And the School Development strand focused on the creation of new schools and leadership from nontraditional positions. This was an area that no other graduate school program was focused on at all to my knowledge. While other schools offered some interesting courses or had notable faculty, Harvard had a combination that was much more sophisticated in its perspective than any other school. Despite my predisposition against Harvard, it seemed like the clear option for me.
After visiting the school, meeting with Professor Tom Hehir, the School Leadership Program Director, and talking with some former students, I became convinced that this would be a great place to spend a year reflecting on my experiences and preparing for whatever would come next. After I was lucky enough to be accepted, I'm happy to report that my hopes have been realized. The staff is accessible and accomplished, my fellow students are friendly and talented, and the focus and flexibility of the program have enabled me to address my varied interests. My internship at the Center for Collaborative Education in Boston has been wonderful so far. It has kept me in touch with schools similar to my own but still different enough to challenge my assumptions about how school reform should be accomplished. While the School Leadership program has some natural growing pains, the students have been deeply involved and respected as colleagues in helping the program to evolve. While I don't know quite what I will do next (perhaps a mix of teaching and administration in a public school that is restructuring, if such a thing is possible), I'm very happy with the preparation that the School Leadership Program is giving me. If I had to be dragged kicking and screaming anywhere, I'm glad it was here.
