Pat Taylor Honored by NHS

The following is the speech given by Nitya Rao '09 at the last NHS induction ceremony:

As we all know, Maggie Walker Governor's School is a very special place. It's not just the education we come out of here with, what we take away with us to college – it's the community we are a part of here – the students, the staff and teachers, and, at the head of it all, our administrators. This is an impressive physical place, but it was not always that way. When a handful of visionary educators came together to start what has become 700 students in one of the elite high schools in the nation, they did so with less than 50 students stashed away on the top floor of Thomas Jefferson High School. Perhaps the person most responsible for this is here with us tonight, Ms. Patricia Taylor.

Ms. Taylor – would you please come up on stage and join us?

The huge success of the Governor's School means that there is plenty of credit to go around, but Ms. Taylor is special and deserving in a way that perhaps no one else really is. Maggie Walker was her dream, a dream that she worked and nurtured and made a reality. As Mrs. Yagel puts it, "Her heart is in the walls of this school." Most of you probably know that Ms. Taylor is retiring this year, and none of us can thank her enough for her day-today contributions, to the larger-than-life dream that she has made into our reality. Although it is pretty hard to imagine these halls without her, it is time for her to enjoy the rest of her life, especially as a full-time grandmother. In your honor, Ms. Taylor, and in an effort to recognize the excellence you have brought to the lives of so many students, the Governor's School National Honor Society is hereby officially re-charted and renamed the Patricia E. Taylor Pioneers of Excellence Chapter. A new public charter is on order, and please accept this certificate noting both our name change as well as your appointment as our chapter's Honorary President. You are, indeed, our Pioneer of Excellence. Thank you.