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Award Notification:  Desi Nesmith (CT '14)

CT’s Desi Nesmith Overcome with Shock, Tears, by $25K Milken Award

Desi Nesmith, principal at Metacomet Elementary School in Bloomfield, Connecticut, spent a week planning an assembly to celebrate the school’s work to close the achievement gap. Little did Desi know that he was planning his own celebration. Fighting back tears after hearing his name called as the state’s 2014–15 Milken Educator, Desi tells his students how proud and humbled he is to be principal at the very school he attended. On hand to congratulate him—and convince him that this was really happening!—are Connecticut Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor and Leon McKinley, the former principal who hired Desi for his first teaching position in East Hartford and who has remained his mentor ever since.