Leadership

Brandon Cardet Hernandez, Principal

      Brandon began his career in education as a community organizer with various national organizations. As a community organizer, he trained students to mobilize their communities around various issues impacting their lives, developed curriculum on community mobilization and lead grass-roots work that aimed to reduce minority isolation. Social justice work is at the core of his work as an educator. Following his experiences in organizing, he served as College and Career Counselor at The Hetrick-Martin Institute and Harvey Milk High School, supporting high-needs LGBTQ students and their families as they navigated college and career, while also leading a Young Men of Color Initiative. In the classroom, he worked as a high school special education teacher across content areas and focused curricular development on performance based assessments and authentic tasks. Following his work in the classroom at the Facing History School and Lower Manhattan Arts Academy, he was asked to join the Department of Education where he worked as the Director of  Strategic Initiatives. There he was charged with leading policy work that was aimed at improving our cities most struggling schools. Most recently, he has been in a principal residency at P-Tech in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and August Martin High School in Jamaica, Queens. Brandon is the co-founder of Project Nathanael, a free-co-ed school in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Through leadership development, teacher training/coaching, bi-national projects and operational support, Project Nathanael is able to reach 250 students in Haiti, providing them with free education that is aligned to national standards. In addition, he is also an Education Expert with Please and Carrots, offering families his unique perspective on adolescent development and support. In 2014, Brandon received the AmeriCorps National Leadership Award, honoring 20 national leaders across various fields.

 

Raquel Cheney, Assistant Principal

     Raquel was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where it is frightfully cold. After earning a bachelors degree in social work from New York University, a masters in social work from Fordham University, and a second masters in school administration from the College of New Rochelle, she embarked on a long career in social work and school administration. For the past thirteen years, she has been a school social worker in high schools in Westchester County, Albany, and NYC. During that time, she also served as the grants director for the Greenburgh-Graham School, overseeing the administration of a million-dollar grant. Since she joined the Letters team in 2007, Raquel has supervised all counseling and intervention services, the attendance team, and middle school articulation. In June 2010, she successfully planned and executed our first ever eighth grade graduation.

 

Jeanne Rowe, Assistant Principal

     Jeanne was born in Jamaica and came to the United States when she was 12 years old.  She resided in Teaneck, New Jersey until she went to college at Rutgers University, where she studied African History and Criminal Justice.  After many years of working in the Criminal Justice field she decided to pursue a second career in Education, and received a Master’s in Education at Pace University.  She has been a teacher for the past 15 years in New York City and has taught primarily in Brooklyn in both a high school and middle school, as well as in Japan.  She has various interests such as traveling, cooking, art and listening to live music (particularly jazz).  

 

Erin Garry, Assistant Principal

     Erin came to education through the New York City Teaching Fellows after graduating from college, teaching English Language Arts and Social Studies at the Bronx Dance Academy and the School for Global Leaders, where she was a founding teacher.  At Global Leaders, she served as the school’s New Teacher Mentor, Literacy Department Leader, Curriculum Specialist, Inquiry Team Leader and eventually the Instructional Coach.  As a teacher, much of her work focused on Common Core Literacy and building systems and structures to engage students in rigorous, text-based discussions.  Outside of her school itself, she was a part of the Common Core Lab where she worked to develop and refine Common Core aligned curricula for ELA, Science and Social Studies. This work led her to serve as discussion facilitator for the Division of Teaching and Learning’s Intro to Common Core Literacy Course for Science and Social Studies teachers.  Working with other educators to further develop their craft has long been important to her: as a Fellow Advisor for NYCTF, she trained new ELA teachers during their summer intensive.  As the Common Core Literacy and Danielson 1E/3B Lab Site facilitator for CFN 112, she welcomed teachers into her classroom from across the network (and across content areas) and held PD sessions to hone teacher’s understanding of these initiatives and build best practices.  In her administrative residency at August Martin High School this spring, she supervised a group of teachers who she regularly observed, provided targeted feedback and then designed personalized coaching sessions to move practice forward.