I’m back! And I’m officially Dr. Hester now.
It’s been 398 days since I last shared a blog post here. That’s a long and lame delay! My apologies. Turns out that the third year of my doctoral degree program was busier than expected.
I spent the past year here in Stockton, California. All the folks who complete my doctoral program spend the third year of the program away from Harvard, working in some organization in the education sector. During my year here in Stockton, I worked closely with the superintendent and served on the leadership cabinet for the district. I learned an enormous amount about what’s involved in leading a school district. I also helped to lead elements of the district’s talent-related work in the Human Resources department. Last but not least, I implemented a district-wide version of a program to improve educator well-being, which went really well. Along the way, I wrote up and defended my doctoral capstone.
As is the case for many people these days, our graduation was on a combination of Zoom and YouTube (the little portion about me is here). So it definitely wasn’t your typical graduation experience. But still, I’m so grateful. Grateful for the past three years of learning. Grateful for the people I had the opportunity to meet and learn from along the way.
I’m planning to write posts in the weeks and months ahead to share more about the work I did this past year, the results we saw, and my post grad school plans. For now, though I just wanted to say that I’m still at it. And that I’m officially a fancy Doctor of Education Leadership. :-)
Hope that you and your family are safe and sound.
All the best,
Tyler