Alum Spotlight: Meghan Carroll McMahon '00
In the fall, Meghan Carroll McMahon ’00 began her ninth year as Principal of Urban Assembly School for the Performing Arts (UASPA). A high school in Harlem, N.Y., UASPA draws 300 students from all five boroughs of New York City. The school’s enrollment is open to all students who have a serious interest in the performing arts, an aspect of the mission that deeply resonated with McMahon from the very beginning.
“The reason I was drawn to UASPA is that it is a small public performing arts school founded on the idea that all students should have access to a rigorous academic and artistic curriculum, regardless of prior experience or access,” said McMahon. “As such, we do not screen, test, or audition any of our students. We aim to sustain a college and career preparatory curriculum that infuses the performing arts into all areas of academics.”
A committed classical dancer while at NCDS, McMahon remembers the tremendous psychological and emotional benefits of an environment that promoted artistic expression along with intellectual engagement. “I see the arts as a transformative means of tapping into expression, creativity, confidence-building, and self awareness - all elemental to the building of community,” she noted.
McMahon completed her undergraduate studies at the College of the Holy Cross, where the Jesuit theme of accompaniment is culturally ubiquitous. McMahon knows that valuing each person’s lived experience is a building block of community. “As a white woman, leading a school with a very diverse staff and 100% Black and Hispanic or Latinx students, I am aware that my racial identity is not reflective of our school community, and therefore it is essential that decisions are made with the input of all stakeholders (students, faculty, families, community) and never on my own,” she said. “My own identity and background can play a role in my own biases and lens for decision making. I believe deeply in the power of diversity and collaborative decision making.”
In between earning her Master’s Degree at Tufts University and moving to New York City, McMahon returned to NCDS to teach social studies and dance for one year in the Middle School. “In my teaching year at NCDS, I was so fortunate to teach alongside Mrs. Berkman and Mrs. Hassinger, who both had a major influence on me,” said McMahon. “As a new teacher at NCDS, I was provided invaluable lessons about writing an authentic, engaging, and rigorous curriculum and observing strong pedagogy.”
Mission-oriented and naturally relational, McMahon has been committed to UASPA since its inception in 2006. She was the very first hire made by founding principal Fia Davis. “Fia hired me as the founding Social Studies and Dance teacher in 2006,” explained McMahon “She mentored me as a new teacher, and I became the Assistant Principal in 2010. I took over for her in 2014 when she moved onto another principalship and later became a Superintendent in New York City’s Department of Education.”
Reflecting on why she found a home at UASPA, McMahon said, “I have always been drawn to Sacred Heart Goal III. NCDS, and my family, fostered in me a social awareness which impels to action. I recognize the stark difference and inequities that exist among various types of educational settings and opportunities. The reality is that we have the power to change these injustices!”
The motto of UASPA is “Education Equals Options.” Accelerating the emancipatory power of education is a theme for many NCDS alumnae in the education industry, and one that McMahon clearly keeps at the heart of her pedagogy, noting, “Education is a powerful tool one can use to carve for herself a brand new path.”
Over 200 years ago in a small Parisian suburb, in a country on the cusp of revolution, a young girl imagined for herself a life where she would be free. Society of the Sacred Heart foundress Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat was educated in secret by her brother because “Education Equals Options,” to quote UASPA’s motto. McMahon is not surprised that her alma mater and the school she leads are founded on similar ethos. McMahon recalled that she first read Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom in an NCDS History seminar on the leader, who wrote “education is the great engine of personal development.” Of the class, McMahon said “It transformed me.”
Traditionally, UASPA’s graduation ceremony includes the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by a rising senior. In 2020, after the killing of George Floyd, and with emphatic support from classmates, Liana Morales - the selected rising senior - requested that the school instead approve “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” known as the Black national anthem. McMahon and her staff, including the school’s Race Equity Team, supported and approved the change, as was reported in the Wall Street Journal in June 2020.
The news-making program change was of course not the only pivot the school made that year. At that time the epicenter of the United States’ COVID-19 outbreak, New York City bore the terrifying brunt of the pandemic’s first wave of mass illness and casualties. McMahon recalls that time with reverence, “There was a lot of personal loss among our faculty, staff, and students. Many people lost family members.”
Amid the devastating sadness and the persisting unknowns, McMahon and her staff had to somehow shift their performing arts school to a remote module almost overnight. “One Friday we had a pajama day on campus and then by Sunday night the governor had closed the schools,” McMahon recalled. “We took the next week to obtain Zoom accounts and learn how to use them; to open Google Classroom accounts for each student and learn how to use them; to gather contact information, create schedules, empty all of our computer carts and partner with organizations to mail technology to our students. The work was endless, but we did it.”
That time is simultaneously a blur and an imprint in McMahon’s mind. From that new beginning, McMahon developed a theme of sorts for the “unprecedented” times: extend grace. “We realized that on different days people would be in different spaces - in their minds, in their hearts. The idea of extending grace was paramount to us as educators and as people.”
McMahon and her team spent countless hours recording instructional lessons and prioritized live time for “check-ins” to help preserve social and emotional well-being. “The one regular, daily live class that remained completely unchanged in the schedule was Advisory. It was too important to alter or omit.”
By the fall of 2020, students had the option of attending UASPA in-person or remotely. 75% of the enrollment chose to remain remote. Critical masses of faculty and staff obtained medical accommodation status, meaning that they would also be teaching and working remotely. “For months we sustained an exhausting hybrid model where some students and teachers were in person, and many were remote,” McMahon explained. “An in-person student could sit in a classroom taught by a remote teacher, joined by peers who were also in the classroom and others via Zoom.”
A dizzying time, devoid of the anchoring nature of personal contact, the hybrid class year finally came to an end, and in the fall of 2021 McMahon was able to open her school for full in-person attendance. With this return came a multitude of feelings. “There was a lot of anxiety afoot last year. With so much loss in our community, people were understandably nervous about coming back. Added to that was the unavoidable learning loss we had to address.”
Preternaturally organized, McMahon decided to get some metrics on her side. To measure the academic loss, she administered assessments to all students, the results of which formed the basis of very specific interventions. “In the process of coming back together, we wanted to continue to extend grace, but we also needed to resume academic and classroom expectations and ensure that solid learning was happening,” said McMahon. “We created a variety of interventions, from traditional literacy periods to small group instruction and even one on one time.”
With the newest of academic years now solidly underway, McMahon can perhaps begin to reflect on the challenges of the pandemic era of education. But McMahon is not the looking-back type. “We are thinking forward about how to refine the curriculum in a way that personally engages each and every student,” she said. “It is so important for students to see themselves in the curriculum, because then they will ask the deeper question, which leads to yet another question. Then we are off and running, building and feeding intellectual curiosity.”
“The reason I was drawn to UASPA is that it is a small public performing arts school founded on the idea that all students should have access to a rigorous academic and artistic curriculum, regardless of prior experience or access,” said McMahon. “As such, we do not screen, test, or audition any of our students. We aim to sustain a college and career preparatory curriculum that infuses the performing arts into all areas of academics.”
A committed classical dancer while at NCDS, McMahon remembers the tremendous psychological and emotional benefits of an environment that promoted artistic expression along with intellectual engagement. “I see the arts as a transformative means of tapping into expression, creativity, confidence-building, and self awareness - all elemental to the building of community,” she noted.
McMahon completed her undergraduate studies at the College of the Holy Cross, where the Jesuit theme of accompaniment is culturally ubiquitous. McMahon knows that valuing each person’s lived experience is a building block of community. “As a white woman, leading a school with a very diverse staff and 100% Black and Hispanic or Latinx students, I am aware that my racial identity is not reflective of our school community, and therefore it is essential that decisions are made with the input of all stakeholders (students, faculty, families, community) and never on my own,” she said. “My own identity and background can play a role in my own biases and lens for decision making. I believe deeply in the power of diversity and collaborative decision making.”
In between earning her Master’s Degree at Tufts University and moving to New York City, McMahon returned to NCDS to teach social studies and dance for one year in the Middle School. “In my teaching year at NCDS, I was so fortunate to teach alongside Mrs. Berkman and Mrs. Hassinger, who both had a major influence on me,” said McMahon. “As a new teacher at NCDS, I was provided invaluable lessons about writing an authentic, engaging, and rigorous curriculum and observing strong pedagogy.”
Mission-oriented and naturally relational, McMahon has been committed to UASPA since its inception in 2006. She was the very first hire made by founding principal Fia Davis. “Fia hired me as the founding Social Studies and Dance teacher in 2006,” explained McMahon “She mentored me as a new teacher, and I became the Assistant Principal in 2010. I took over for her in 2014 when she moved onto another principalship and later became a Superintendent in New York City’s Department of Education.”
Reflecting on why she found a home at UASPA, McMahon said, “I have always been drawn to Sacred Heart Goal III. NCDS, and my family, fostered in me a social awareness which impels to action. I recognize the stark difference and inequities that exist among various types of educational settings and opportunities. The reality is that we have the power to change these injustices!”
The motto of UASPA is “Education Equals Options.” Accelerating the emancipatory power of education is a theme for many NCDS alumnae in the education industry, and one that McMahon clearly keeps at the heart of her pedagogy, noting, “Education is a powerful tool one can use to carve for herself a brand new path.”
Over 200 years ago in a small Parisian suburb, in a country on the cusp of revolution, a young girl imagined for herself a life where she would be free. Society of the Sacred Heart foundress Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat was educated in secret by her brother because “Education Equals Options,” to quote UASPA’s motto. McMahon is not surprised that her alma mater and the school she leads are founded on similar ethos. McMahon recalled that she first read Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom in an NCDS History seminar on the leader, who wrote “education is the great engine of personal development.” Of the class, McMahon said “It transformed me.”
Traditionally, UASPA’s graduation ceremony includes the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by a rising senior. In 2020, after the killing of George Floyd, and with emphatic support from classmates, Liana Morales - the selected rising senior - requested that the school instead approve “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” known as the Black national anthem. McMahon and her staff, including the school’s Race Equity Team, supported and approved the change, as was reported in the Wall Street Journal in June 2020.
The news-making program change was of course not the only pivot the school made that year. At that time the epicenter of the United States’ COVID-19 outbreak, New York City bore the terrifying brunt of the pandemic’s first wave of mass illness and casualties. McMahon recalls that time with reverence, “There was a lot of personal loss among our faculty, staff, and students. Many people lost family members.”
Amid the devastating sadness and the persisting unknowns, McMahon and her staff had to somehow shift their performing arts school to a remote module almost overnight. “One Friday we had a pajama day on campus and then by Sunday night the governor had closed the schools,” McMahon recalled. “We took the next week to obtain Zoom accounts and learn how to use them; to open Google Classroom accounts for each student and learn how to use them; to gather contact information, create schedules, empty all of our computer carts and partner with organizations to mail technology to our students. The work was endless, but we did it.”
That time is simultaneously a blur and an imprint in McMahon’s mind. From that new beginning, McMahon developed a theme of sorts for the “unprecedented” times: extend grace. “We realized that on different days people would be in different spaces - in their minds, in their hearts. The idea of extending grace was paramount to us as educators and as people.”
McMahon and her team spent countless hours recording instructional lessons and prioritized live time for “check-ins” to help preserve social and emotional well-being. “The one regular, daily live class that remained completely unchanged in the schedule was Advisory. It was too important to alter or omit.”
By the fall of 2020, students had the option of attending UASPA in-person or remotely. 75% of the enrollment chose to remain remote. Critical masses of faculty and staff obtained medical accommodation status, meaning that they would also be teaching and working remotely. “For months we sustained an exhausting hybrid model where some students and teachers were in person, and many were remote,” McMahon explained. “An in-person student could sit in a classroom taught by a remote teacher, joined by peers who were also in the classroom and others via Zoom.”
A dizzying time, devoid of the anchoring nature of personal contact, the hybrid class year finally came to an end, and in the fall of 2021 McMahon was able to open her school for full in-person attendance. With this return came a multitude of feelings. “There was a lot of anxiety afoot last year. With so much loss in our community, people were understandably nervous about coming back. Added to that was the unavoidable learning loss we had to address.”
Preternaturally organized, McMahon decided to get some metrics on her side. To measure the academic loss, she administered assessments to all students, the results of which formed the basis of very specific interventions. “In the process of coming back together, we wanted to continue to extend grace, but we also needed to resume academic and classroom expectations and ensure that solid learning was happening,” said McMahon. “We created a variety of interventions, from traditional literacy periods to small group instruction and even one on one time.”
With the newest of academic years now solidly underway, McMahon can perhaps begin to reflect on the challenges of the pandemic era of education. But McMahon is not the looking-back type. “We are thinking forward about how to refine the curriculum in a way that personally engages each and every student,” she said. “It is so important for students to see themselves in the curriculum, because then they will ask the deeper question, which leads to yet another question. Then we are off and running, building and feeding intellectual curiosity.”