Mamaroneck High School Welcomes New Assistant Principal
You’re not there to prove you are worth your weight in gold; you’re there to show people that they’re worth their weight in gold.” This is the philosophy that has followed Monique Adams to her newest chapter as Mamaroneck High School Assistant Principal.
Adams didn’t set out to become a school leader. Her first principal in the South Bronx once told her, “You have so much presence… you could be a principal one day, you could be a superintendent,” but her honest reaction was disbelief: “I didn’t even know if I wanted to be a teacher, let alone a leader.” In White Plains, that was a pattern repeated by a mentor who encouraged her toward leadership.
She eventually answered a call to leadership not from any one person but from the moment itself, amid the turbulence of returning from COVID, and stepped in as a house administrator, a role that put her closer to students and families than almost any other position could.
Before she even interviewed, Adams looked for alignment and found it in the school’s vision statement, which framed education as valuable in its own right, not just as a means to a grade: “I used to joke and say if I could be paid to be a student, I would be a student forever, because I love learning.”
Two things outside of work have shaped her in recent years. The first is gardening, a habit she picked up during the isolation of COVID that’s grown into a shared plot in a community garden. “I’m gardening side by side with other people, and they’re sharing their wisdom and their tips. We look out for each other,” she says. When a hectic summer of interviews and transitions kept her away from her plot longer than she wanted, she returned expecting the worst. Instead, she found her neighbors had tended it for her. She turned the moment into a message for her new staff: “Let’s check on each other’s gardens.”
The second is a community prayer call she co-founded with a fellow administrator when their district shut down for COVID. Years later the call still runs every Saturday, drawing in different faith communities. “I wouldn’t call it a hobby,” she says of the call, “but I will say that it’s been transformative for me.”
Adams is a mother of two — a high school senior and a fourth grader — and describes her family life simply: “We just really enjoy each other. We will do anything together.”