Longtime Cambridge Principal Robin Harris Awarded National Humanities Medal

When former Fletcher Maynard Academy principal Robin A. Harris got the call that she would be awarded the National Humanities Medal in October by President Joe Biden, she was shocked.

“I was like, ‘Whoa!’ So, really taken aback and by surprise,” Harris said in an interview with The Crimson. “And then, I thought about it, and I was like, ‘Well, why me?’”

But for Harris’ former students and colleagues, the award was a fitting honor for a principal known for her devotion to her students.

When he was in first grade, Naseem S. Anjaria remembered, he visited Gorée Island on a field trip to Senegal with Harris, classmates, and parent chaperones from his Cambridge elementary school.

On the trip, the students learned the history of the island known as “the point of no return” for Africans captured for the slave trade. They walked through the gateways and dungeon cells that held enslaved people.

The school trip to Senegal — and others to Morocco, India, and China — were organized and led by Harris, who relentlessly fundraised so all students could embark on the voyage without financial burden.

Anjaria, who is now a senior at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, said that Harris’ commitment to fostering educational experiences for students was “really impactful.”

“​​That was obviously why she won this award,” he said. “She was recognized for being someone that really appreciated the beauty that people can bring in this world.”

‘Build Bridges’

One of 12 recipients of the 2022 iteration of the nationwide award — which also included Ruth J. Simmons, a former Brown University president and advisor to Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 — Harris is known for her fierce advocacy and kind leadership at the helm of FMA, a Cambridge public elementary school in The Port neighborhood.

Harris, known for her humility, dedicated the award to her colleagues for “breaking their backs and going above and beyond.”

“This award, I accepted on behalf of faculty and staff at Fletcher Maynard Academy, because I have worked with phenomenal, phenomenal teachers and staff,” she said. “We did this work together.”

But FMA parents and colleagues directed the praise back at her. Harris, they said, is uniquely responsible for a school culture that deeply engaged parents and made students excited to come to school.

She spearheaded a number of programs to equip all types of students with support and opportunities to be successful, including the Quall’s Academy, a program providing mentorship for young men of color.

“Robin was always evaluating what those students needed and what that neighborhood needed and would step right in and get it,” said Alfred “Fred” B. Fantini, who sat on the Cambridge School Committee for 40 years.

As principal, Harris championed extended learning time — which expanded the school day from six to eight hours at FMA.

The extended learning day gave students more opportunities to learn and reduced costs for afterschool programs, according to Shani A. Siefkes, whose child attended FMA from 2012 through 2017 .

“When you have one income, you want your kids to be able to thrive and have a longer day,” Siefkes said. “It was such a relief on me that I didn’t have to look for additional afterschool care and support.”

The Fletcher Maynard Academy is a K-5 school located at 225 Windsor St. By Emily T. Schwartz

Four years after Harris retired as FMA principal in 2020, she returned as special advisor to interim Superintendent David G. Murphy, working part-time at Graham & Parks Elementary School to “bridge community” after the school’s “tricky couple of years,” she said.

Last spring, prompted by parent claims that Graham & Parks principal Kathleen M. Smith cultivated a toxic workplace, CPS hired an external legal firm to investigate the allegations. Even though the legal firm found the toxicity claims were unsubstantiated, Murphy asked Harris to return to Cambridge schools to “foster a strong school climate,” according to an August memo from Murphy.

“In conversations this summer about how CPS could potentially leverage Robin’s deep institutional knowledge of the district and experience as a school leader, we both felt she was well-positioned to support the Graham & Parks school community for the first part of the 2024 - 2025 school year,” Murphy wrote in an statement to The Crimson.

In her new role, Harris has met with parents of students of all grades and languages in a “series of listening sessions,” she said.

“It’s an opportunity for not only me to listen, but then build bridges for folks to listen to each other,” she said.

‘An Extension of the Family’

During her time as principal at FMA, Harris went above and beyond to engage with families, according to parents and students.

Ulka S. Anjaria, Naseem Anjaria’s mother, who served with Harris on a parent-teacher leadership group now known as the school council, said that Harris and FMA teachers would visit students at their homes to meet their families.

“It really is a different relationship,” said Anjaria, an English professor at Brandeis University. “She just really wanted people to feel like the school is an extension of the family.”

Daniel Skerritt — FMA’s longtime family liaison — said that in Harris’s absence, staff have worked to sustain Harris’s commitment to connection.

“Robin knew every child by name. Not only did she know every child by name, she knew every parent by name,” Skerritt said. “That philosophy has come through throughout the staff.”

Harris’s care for individual students was “incalculable,” said Toni H. Kim, referencing the support Harris provided for her own child, who has Down syndrome. In her work with Harris on the school council, Kim said that Harris also addressed systemic issues and advocated for FMA to receive equitable funding.

During her three years as a parent at the school, Tina T. Lieu participated in Courageous Conversations, a discussion group that Harris moderated on the systemic impacts of race in education.

“I was so inspired by it that I created North Cambridge Courageous Conversations where my other child was going to school,” Lieu said. “I felt that community really, really needed this.”

Naseem Anjaria served as a student representative to the School Committee last year in his junior year at CRLS. Anjaria said that Harris had previously encouraged him to work on a committee that made district communications accessible to non-English speaking parents.

“I genuinely can point to her and that group that she asked me to be a part of as something that really inspired me to find something that I am passionate about today,” Anjaria said.

“I’m going into college next year with that same passion,” he said.

—Staff writer Darcy G Lin can be reached at darcy.lin@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Emily T. Schwartz can be reached at emily.schwartz@thecrimson.com.