Michael Pisseri has spent more than 25 years working inside public schools, first as a classroom teacher, then as a curriculum leader, assistant principal, and eventually as a building principal. He spent 14 years leading Davenport Ridge Elementary School in Stamford, Connecticut, a tenure that produced two state-level recognitions: a Banner School Award for positive school climate in 2016 and a School of Distinction designation for academic performance in 2019. He has presented at National Science Teachers Association conferences and at a STEM conference at the Johnson Space Center in Houston in 2024. He currently teaches Social Studies and Intervention at a New York City Public Schools middle school in Harlem. He holds degrees from Fairfield University and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Administration from Sacred Heart University. He is a graduate of the Urban School Leaders Fellowship and has been a member of the STEM Design Team for STEMFest in Stamford. He lives in Fairfield, Connecticut, where he continues to work with student councils and pursue long-distance running.
Q&A with Michael Pisseri on Success
How do you define success personally and professionally?
Success, for me, is living in alignment with your values while continuing to grow. I do not think it is about achieving outcomes in isolation. It is about becoming someone you can respect along the way. In education, that means doing right by the students in front of you every single day, even when the results are slow to show up.
Professionally, success has meant building something that outlasts you. When I look at what happened at Davenport Ridge over 14 years, I do not think about any one moment. I think about the culture we built together. That culture was not something I created. It was something the staff and students and families built collectively through a lot of small, consistent decisions. Today, it’s not just a school, it’s a community.
What was the turning point that shaped how you think about achievement?
Growing up, I worked a 20-hour week at a grocery store while playing sports and keeping up my grades. My parents were working professionals who did not have extra time to hand-hold me through life. I had to learn early that if I wanted something, I had to go get it through consistency.
That shaped everything. When I arrived at Davenport Ridge, the school was struggling. I was not handed a playbook. I had to figure out what the building needed, build trust with the people inside it, and stay patient long enough for the work to produce results. That patience only comes from understanding that success is cumulative. It is not a moment. It is accumulated decision-making.
How do you set goals without losing sight of what matters?
I start with direction, not goals. Before I set any specific target, I ask myself what I want more of in my life and what I want less of. That prevents me from chasing goals that look impressive on paper but do not actually improve the quality of the work or the life around it.
In schools, I saw this trap all the time. Administrators would set test score targets without first asking what kind of environment would produce those results. The targets became noise. The culture work, the relationship work, the belief work — that was the actual driver. The numbers followed when the conditions were right.
What has failure taught you?
You learn more from the hard years than from the good ones. Early in my administrative career, I made mistakes around pacing. I moved too fast. I underestimated how much time it takes to build genuine trust with a staff that has been through repeated leadership transitions. The lesson was simple but not easy: you cannot shortcut the relationship work. If people do not trust you and enjoy coming to school, the strategy does not matter. Also, people want to be heard and valued, this is so important and true.
How do you maintain discipline and momentum over a long career?
I do not quit. That sounds simple, but it is the whole thing. I believe that I can get better every day, and I take that seriously. I look for things to learn in every situation, including the ones that are uncomfortable. My current role as a classroom teacher after 14 years as a principal has reminded me what it feels like to be in the middle of the work rather than overseeing it from above. That perspective is valuable. I would not trade it. The perspective has been amazing; to be able to reconnect with students in the classroom as well as staff. It is truly enduring and exciting work.
What role has mentorship played in your development?
I have always believed in quiet acts of kindness. Mentorship for me is less about formal programs and more about showing up consistently for the people around you. The mentors who shaped me did not sit me down for big conversations. They modeled what it looked like to be reliable, honest, and genuinely interested in the people they worked with.
I try to pass that on through how I work with student councils, through how I talk with newer teachers, through how I approach my own sons. You teach what you are, more than what you say. Sometimes the best thing is to be a good listener and be there for people. I learned to be unselfish and how working with both students, staff and parents shaped me.
What does balance mean to you at this point in your career?
Balance, in my experience, is not about splitting time evenly between work and life. It is about alignment. If your work supports the life you want, the balance tends to take care of itself. If it competes with your life, no amount of scheduling fixes that.
Running two half marathons in the past few years was part of that alignment for me. It is not a small thing to train for a race while working full time. But it was something that made me better at everything else I was doing. Physical challenge builds the kind of mental discipline that shows up in your professional work whether you want it to or not.
What would you tell someone starting out in public education today?
Stay close to the students. Administration can pull you into meetings, data, compliance, and everything but the reason you got into education in the first place. The staff and teachers I respect most, at every level, are the ones who never let the system make them forget who they are working for.
And never mistake the goal for the process. The goal tells you where you are going. The process is where everything actually happens. That is where teams get built, where plans get tested, where you fail and refine and eventually get to something worth measuring.