Thank you... (and one last video... :) )

So this is it… It’s the last Friday in June and I am all packed up and ready to leave the office for the last time… I have so many thoughts, memories and emotions running through my mind…

First of all, thank you for encouraging me ever since I found out that I was moving to BHBL. The number of people that have wished me well and supported me in person and in writing over the past few weeks has been overwhelming. If I started to name people I wouldn’t know where to stop.  Please know how thankful and happy it  has made me. Please stay in touch. My contact information is pmcgrath@bhbl.org or patrickmcgrathjr@gmail.com.

A parting thought.... I recently heard a speaker at a graduation talk about a short story called Eleven, by Sandra Cisneros. The story starts out…

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven.


The image struck home to me. Here at Mohonasen, when I was Assistant Principal at the Middle School, I still felt like that teacher back at Niskayuna… in fact… I still was that teacher. Then I became principal, but the layer of me that was the AP never went away. I took my Middle School Principalship (minus Quiet Zone...) to the high school. I built on it, of course, but underneath it was still there. In District Office I feel like I have been able to draw upon all of those layers…student, teacher, principal... to learn and grow.


On Monday, I will open up my eyes and expect to feel like a superintendent. But I won’t feel any different. I’ll feel like I am still a kid, still a student, still a teacher, still a principal, still an assistant superintendent… still Mohonasen Proud… And I will be. 

Until we meet again…

Patrick