Category: character traits

Taste, Tradition, and Togetherness: Inside IAL’s Most Heartwarming Event

By: Ana Gonzalez, Director of Marketing October 28, 2025

At Inwood Academy for Leadership (IAL), our mission is to empower students to be agents of change through community-focused leadership, character development, and college and career readiness. Few experiences activate that vision more profoundly—or memorably—than our annual Roots and Recipes Contest. This year’s event didn’t just bring people together; it created lasting emotional moments that […]

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Student Leadership Day – Caring

By: Mary Hackett, High School Principal October 11, 2018

Sometimes school doesn’t make sense to me. Illogical I know, being a High School Principal, but I struggle with the idea of schooling. Curriculum and instruction often focus too heavily on tests and it’s hard for me to always justify education in terms of those high stakes and percentages and scores. It’s not that those […]

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Q&A with Valerie Hoekstra – Part 2

By: Denise Canniff October 2, 2015

Welcome to Part 2 of the interview with Ms. Valerie Hoekstra, Inwood Academy’s Middle School Director. See Part 1 here. Q. Based on your five years of experience at Inwood Academy, are you making any major changes at the middle school? We spent a lot of time focusing on academics and trying to make it rigorous, […]

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