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Peter Noonan, Assistant Superintendent for Instructional Service, Fairfax County Public Schools

COLUMN = EDUCATION

In 2006, Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) Superintendent Jack D. Dale named Peter Noonan, Cluster VII assistant superintendent and former principal of Centreville High School, as the new assistant superintendent for instructional services, effective August 1.

Prior to that, Noonan has served as assistant superintendent for Cluster VII schools, including the Centreville, Chantilly, and Fairfax High School pyramids. In this position, he initiated instructional and organizational change using professional learning communities, increased accessibility to educational technology resources for students and staff members, and school leadership development to support diverse learners.

Noonan served as principal of Centreville High School from July 2004 until April 2006, where he developed a principal’s round table for aspiring student leaders, initiated a freshman transition team for rising ninth grade students, and secured funding for an Honors and Advanced Placement Summer Institute. Prior to that, he served as principal of Lanier Middle School. Noonan came to FCPS in 2001 to serve as assistant principal at Langley High School.

Prior to joining FCPS, Noonan served as dean of students, assistant principal, and principal of several schools in Albuquerque. He began his career as a special education teacher at Roosevelt Middle School in Albuquerque, where he was named Teacher of the Year in 1993.

Noonan has made numerous professional presentations, including workshops on establishing professional learning communities, providing extra time and support for students, and integrating technology into education.

Noonan earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from the University of New Mexico and completed studies to earn the education specialist designation in educational administration from that institution. He was named a Danforth Scholar at the University of New Mexico. He also completed advanced studies of contemporary British and Shakespearean literature at the University of Essex in England.

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.”

– Leo Jozef Suenens

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.”

– Marcel Proust

If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.”

– Anna Quindlen

We are not meant to resolve all contradictions, but to live with them and rise above them.”

– William Blake

The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.”

– Andrew Carnegie

The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something.”

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Chuck E. Cheese's

‎That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.”

– J.G. Holland, novelist

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

– Winston Churchill

A people who mean to be their Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

– James Madison

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

– Anais Nin

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Treat the attainment of happiness in the same way an entrepreneur would approach building a business — with a vision, plan, goals, and a systematic approach.”

– Ted Leonsis

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.”

– J. Kristnhamurti, The First and Last Freedom

The dove descending breaks the air / With flame of inkandescent terror.”

– T.S. Eliott

If people like you they’ll listen to you; if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.”

– Zig Ziglar

That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.”

– J.G. Holland, novelist

A truly forgiving person is someone who experiences all the anger merited by injustice and still acts with fairness and compassion.”

– Martha Beck

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!”

– Andrew Carnegie

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do.
 Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”

– Ella Fitzgerald

Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”

– Annie Dillard

Education is an admirable thing to have, but it is well to remember that nothing worth knowing can be taught.”

– Oscar Wilde

Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what nurtures creative thinking.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

A man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.”

– Chinese Proverb

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

– Henry Miller

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

– T.S. Eliot

‎The biggest flaw in our existing theory of capitalism lies in its misrepresentation of human nature.”

– Muhammad Yunus

Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it’s about trading.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

Ripeness is all.”

– William Shakespeare

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. 
Now put foundations under them.”

– Henry David Thoreau

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

– John Quincy Adams

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

– Mark Twain

A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.”

– Carlos Castaneda

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,
 what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

But all the while I was alone, the past was close behind, I seen a lot of women, but she never escaped my mind, and I just grew, tangled up in blue.”

– Bob Dylan

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

– Charles Dickens

I’m not afraid of storms,
for I’m learning to sail my ship.”

– Louisa May Alcott

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which obstacles vanish.”

– John Quincy Adams

Your own words are the bricks and mortar
of the dreams you want to realize.
 The words you choose and their use establish the life you experience.”

– Sonia Croquette

I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.”

– Thomas Edison

You don’t love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their car. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand.”

– L.J. Smith

My task is really not to change myself but to become familiar with who I am.”

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Entrepreneurs are willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise.”

– Victor Kiam

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”

– Albert Einstein

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.”

– Jalaluddin Rumi

Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation that indicate opportunities for success.”

– Peter F. Drucker

Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.”

– Arthur Rubinstein

Friendship is the only cement that will hold the world together.”

– Woodrow Wilson

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’”

– Brian Tracy

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.”

– Albert Schweitzer

You must learn to be still in the midst of activity 
and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”

– Indira Ghandi