To the Editor:

It is my great privilege to write in support of John Vouros’s candidacy for the Newtown Board of Education. As a lawyer, I write numerous letters and briefs every single day. This letter is, without a doubt, the easiest thing I have ever written.

I am a product of Newtown’s public schools, and I was a student of John’s for eight years. In other classes, I learned the mechanics of education: historical dates, grammatical rules, mathematical proofs. But in John’s class, I learned lessons that have become far more important: how to approach problems with a critical eye, persist with tasks until complete, work with a team. (He even taught one of my classmates how to ride a bike. Seriously.) In short, the things we learned from John are the things that have allowed us to be successful beyond the classroom. How John fit these lessons into a class constrained by the same resource limitations as any other is extraordinary.

There is no better measure of an educator’s success than the success of his students. In my own life, I must credit John’s influence with many choices and achievements: I graduated from West Point, earned a Bronze Star in Afghanistan, went to an Ivy League law school (with, not surprisingly, another of John’s former students), clerked for two federal judges, and now I practice law at one of the finest firms in the country. When I think of my classmates from John’s program, I count in their number attorneys, medical doctors, marketing executives, mathematicians, and a healthy share of artists, to boot. They live in big cities and small towns, here and abroad. They hail from Newtown, but they are citizens of the world. In short, they are independent, well-adjusted adults who have pursued — and achieved — success on their own terms.

If John is elected to the Board of Education, he will have the opportunity to do for all of Newtown’s students the things that were, in my time, reserved for those lucky enough to be in his class. With a seat on the board, he will have the voice and the platform to be an expert advocate for children of every age, need and ability. He knows how to challenge children without overextending them. He knows how to use available (and limited) resources in ways that maximize their benefit to all. He knows how to design and implement a curriculum with enough breadth to teach fundamentals and enough specificity to teach precision. Perhaps more important, his experience will give him a reasoned basis to push back against impractical solutions to very real problems, and to craft workable solutions to those same dilemmas. In sum, John has an absolute mastery of the school system, a mastery that he gained, day-by-day, as a frontline educator. Now, Newtown has the opportunity to put that hard-won knowledge to use for the benefit of all of Newtown’s schoolchildren. Elect him immediately. Newtown will be better for it. Your children will be better for it.

Sincerely,

Micaela (Hurley) McMurrough

333 Rector Place, New York, NY                                                                     October 19, 2011