SJPII Columbia Principal Anne Gallagher and administrative assistant Riquelbys Pena.
Seth Daniel photo
From a young age, Anne Gallagher knew she wanted to be a teacher.
“I specifically remember being in third grade and looking at my teacher and thinking, ‘I want to teach,’” says Gallagher, who grew up in Derry, Northern Ireland. “It was so clear. I remember that day even now.”
Today, she is the principal at Saint John Paul II Catholic Academy’s Columbia campus.
“I do believe in educating the whole child and that includes emotionally, academically, and spiritually,” she said in an interview ahead of the campus’s Sept. 9 return to school. “They are all as important as each other.”
She added: “It’s important for me to be visible to the children and I have an open-door policy. I had one student every day for the last two years who came in at 7:45 a.m. and wouldn’t go to class until he gave me a hug. I could be in a meeting with a parent, but I had to make time for that because it’s important to him. As a school leader, it’s about finding the niches that are important to the kids.”
“I’ll sometimes remember a student told me they were getting their nails done with their mom, and I make a point to remember asking them about their nails,” she said.
Gallagher studied in London, then returned to Derry to begin her teaching career. She later began traveling to the United States to work at a summer camp in Maine and eventually decided to make Massachusetts her permanent home.
She started teaching at Catholic schools in Waltham and Brookline before landing the assistant principal job at SJPII Academy in Lower Mills that she left to take a principal’s position at a Catholic school in Lowell for two years. Three years ago, she returned to Dorchester as the school leader at the Columbia campus.
“My whole education has been in Catholic schools and my whole career too,” she said. “It’s just the way it happened. I’m from a large Catholic family and the church was always part of my life.”
Her campus – one of three in the SJPII Academy network, a Catholic school consortium reconfigured in 2008 to combine seven parish schools into four – has 265 students enrolled in the toddler program through grade 8, most all from Dorchester.
The campus at St. Mark’s later closed, but Columbia and two other schools, Neponset and Lower Mills, remain. Gallagher and associate principal Tim Ruggere lead the work at Columbia.
The campus of SJPII Columbia on Columbia Road near the intersection of Dorchester Avenue is the only branch of the academy serving students in the northern side of Dorchester.
Seth Daniel photos
“The three campuses do a lot together, but each campus is unique,” she said. “What sets us apart is we’re the only campus with a toddler program. But it’s also our families, students and staff. It might sound corny, but we really do approach our work like a family. We lean in on that and support the mission and live it out every day.”
“There is a little bit of magic in Columbia; we sprinkle a little bit of our own on it,” she said with a laugh.
The school’s administrative assistant, Riquelbys Pena,is the gatekeeper and glue of the school and a parent of five students there.
“It is really a family, and I felt that way before I worked here,” she said, noting that her oldest is in eighth grade after starting at Columbia in Pre-K. “As soon as I got here, I felt the great atmosphere. I loved it. I love helping the families and kids. I love to see the kids coming into school every day.”
The Columbia campus is growing, Gallagher said, as they added an additional second grade classroom this year, and the early childhood program is a hallmark of growth, she added.
Last week teachers and staff were in the building preparing for students, focusing on new goals and initiatives and revisiting things from last year – such as a multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) initiative that they brought on last year and will be “pushing through” again this year.
“The push is to grow obviously and welcome in more families,” she said. “Our student retention is up and it’s just about getting the word out there about SJP Columbia.”
The first day of school for grades K-2 through 8 was on Wednesday this week (Sept. 9), while the early childhood program starts up on Sept. 14.
