Micaela Bracamonte Email & Phone Number

New York, United States

Brooklyn, New York, United States

New York, New York

I spent two years traveling and talking with school founders & leaders, then I started-up a K-12 school for my two sons, the complex children my husband and I once were, and all of NYC’s promising but profoundly underserved twice-exceptional (2e) students – gifted students with learning disabilities. These young people need and have a right to a school that recognizes and tailors itself to develop their significant strengths and remediate identified challenges. The school I created was an oasis for asking questions, questioning paradigms, questioning the nature of leadership, questioning the purposes of school, for self-reflection, for unexpectedly discovering joy, and for students and faculty to take responsibility for our impact and lean into difficulty – with research-based supports – in order to grow into our best selves. Lang was the first K-12 school of its kind anywhere. I will remember every child and adult who walked through the school's doors and left transformed. The school I started and ran gave students, parents, and educators a glimpse into what school could be. After I left, Lang took a sharp turn toward traditional schooling.

Brooklyn, New York

Julien, my first born, didn't stop crying until he was a year old. Then he cried whenever I left home, making my planned return to journalism difficult. So began my journey to find him a good-fit daycare, a tolerable preschool, and an elementary school that could teach a kindergartner who’d learned to read as he learned to talk and who added in the zeros and ones of binary instead of the "right" way. By the time he was seven, I’d withdrawn Julien from nine schools that firmly believed they understood and could educate him. Then I withdrew him from school altogether.My second born, Pascal, was a "good" baby and a toddler who "behaved." Then came kindergarten in a coveted NYC citywide gifted program, and he committed the cardinal school-based sins of not sitting still during circle time and being more interested in books than in his teachers. By this time I’d observed countless classrooms at work, observing teachers interact with outlier students and unpacking those interactions with school principals. I’d spent endless days sitting on school benches waiting for an announcement that a teacher couldn't handle my child anymore that day. I’d taught both of my kids to read while driving them to pre-school and school, reinforcing their lessons at bedtime. I’d trusted a wide swath of authority figures with master’s degrees and doctorates in education, and I no longer trusted schools with my children, much less the education of educators.All of this hoping and waiting that someone could reach and teach my exceptionally bright, divergent little thinkers had become a full-time job that I decided to quit. Instead, I would start a school to fit my kids' learning needs and those of kids like them. I knew those other kids existed, because I talked to their parents on school benches, outside of principals' offices, on playgrounds, and at after-school programs we all hoped would bridge the gaps that school itself created. Onward.

Ba, English (Honors College), 3.9

Activities and Societies: Music Director & DJ at campus radio station WMUC 88.1 FM. News & arts coverage for campus newspaper “.

Ma, Journalism (Fellow & Gannett Scholar, Philip Merrill College Of Journalism), 3.9

Activities and Societies: Wrote & nationalized features for Gannett Newspaper Group, including “USA Today” and Pulitzer-Prize winning.