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One thing former Sunnyvale School District Superintendent Michael Gallagher ’87, MA ’94, ’97 appreciates about retirement is the time to reflect on where his career first began.

Over thirty years ago, Gallagher was a rookie English teacher at Andrew Hill High School. The assignment was a rough one, beginning midyear after a string of substitutes and facing skeptical students who were already struggling academically.

What steadied him was community.

His principal, fellow Bronco William Kugler ’64, was a friend of Gallagher’s late father and took him under his wing, serving as a mentor and model for what good leadership looked like.

“I felt very supported,” Gallagher says. “While I could never be Bill as a leader, I learned a lot from his compassion, his belief in every student, and his drive to knock down barriers.”

Those lessons echoed through two graduate programs in counseling and education administration at Santa Clara University, where professors like Kenneth Blaker, Fr. Edward Warren, and Dale Larson pushed Gallagher to refine his own stance as a leader and offered sage career guidance.

“I always liked working with people one-on-one, and what I learned in my counseling degree was most pivotal to my career,” he says. “I spent 16 years in human resources at the district level, and interpersonal communication played an instrumental role in being an administrator and problem solver.”

Another key leadership skill he honed was his ability to offer the same empathy to younger educators that he once gave his students—leveraging his previous classroom experiences to guide colleagues who didn’t have that firsthand knowledge of the struggles teachers faced.

This led him to launch resiliency groups led by social workers to support the well-being of educators who, in turn, would promote resiliency in their students, particularly those in underserved communities.

Beginning his superintendency in July 2020, those same skills were tested in the crucible of the COVID-19 pandemic. As apprehension grew around the impending return to in-person classes, he worked to understand the concerns of student families, like their safety, education, and childcare needs. Concerns that he knew were also felt by his staff.

So, he met those individual needs, offering a simple metaphor to encourage patience, care, and solidarity.

“I said: ‘Look, we’re going to have to bring each other across the bridge to the other side. So, when this ends, how do we want to be as a community?’”

Retirement hasn’t slowed Gallagher’s impulse to serve. He continues as an ECP Advisory Board Member and adjunct lecturer, and has launched Reflect FWD, a coaching practice to help principals, superintendents, and school board members grow so they can lift communities.

His advice to new ECP students is characteristically steadying.

“I might be biased, but I think one of the most important functions of a Jesuit university is growing educators who uplift communities,” he muses. “In the end, a door will close, and it’ll just be you and your students. Despite all the political noise today, the classroom teacher still remains the most influential person in a child’s education outside their parents.”