Susanne Kaczor will Retire Content
When Susanne Kaczor walks out of Jefferson Primary School for the last time on June 25 she’ll do so with a feeling of contentment. As she prepares to head off into retirement, the veteran teacher recently reflected on her more than three-decade long career and it’s clear she is leaving with a sense of satisfaction.
“As a senior at Walt Whitman High School I volunteered at a local elementary school and assisted learning disabled youngsters,” Mrs. Kaczor recalled. “I realized then that I wanted to work with those children that were on the cusp of being academically successful. With individual guidance and instruction they could acquire the basic skills they needed and could develop positive self-concepts. My mother was an English teacher and both my grandmothers were teachers. This profession is part of my heritage.”
After earning a BA in special education and elementary education in 1977 at the University of South Florida in Tampa, an opportunity to work in Huntington as an in-school tutor surfaced. Mrs. Kaczor also spent time working with home-bound Huntington students and teaching a group of Harborfields High School seniors in an alternative program setting.
Life changed in 1979 for Mrs. Kaczor when Huntington hired her as a special education teacher. She was sent to four different schools every day. She remembers it as “quite a challenging schedule.”
Changes were in order again two years later. It was in 1981 that Mrs. Kaczor obtained a master’s degree in reading at Adelphi University. But, more importantly on a personal level, she married Larry Kaczor, who enjoyed a 27-year career as a guidance counselor at J. Taylor Finley Middle School. It was also the year she assumed a full-time post at Flower Hill School.
“By 1987, I had worked in some capacity at all ten schools in the Huntington School District, including both Toaz [Junior High School] and Finley, as well as the parochial schools,” Mrs. Kaczor said. “In that year, I taught half-time at Flower Hill and monitored the special case-aide program in each of the five elementary buildings, as well as leading staff development workshops.”
Another career highlight came in 1990-92 when Mrs. Kaczor participated in a state mentoring program at Flower Hill that involved a partnership with Fleet Bank. “I supervised over a dozen bank employees who were matched with students that came before the start of work and school and spent time talking, drawing, reading, and/or playing a sport, once a week with their child,” she recalled. “We went to Fleet Bank at the end of the year to show the students where their mentors worked. Several mentors continued to keep in touch with their students through the years.”
When the district underwent a reconfiguration in 1996, Mrs. Kaczor moved over to Jefferson Primary School. She quickly saw a need to renovate the courtyard there. “I utilized my passion for nature and science during the next decade to help establish a special place for the students to learn responsibility and experience the joy of discovering the beauty of plants and animals,” she said. “Through the support of a myriad of wonderful people, my dream for the focal point of Jefferson School has been realized. Hopefully, like the students, it will continue to grow.”
When September rolls around many of her colleagues will reflexively be looking for Mrs. Kaczor but she knows her work is complete. “After 33 years in education, I leave with a feeling of contentment,” she said. “I have accomplished my initial goal. I have nurtured those students who have in one way or the other struggled to be the best they could be, assisting them in, as Nelson Mandela once said, ‘Finding your own garden.’ Well, many of them may have actually found their way through a garden. Yet other students, now grown with children of their own, have found their own passions to make this world a better place to live in.”
Over the past three decades there have been many changes in the world of education, as well as in the community and the district. Mrs. Kaczor has rolled with them all, always looking to maximize her own teaching potential and push ever higher the performance of her students. Now it’s time to step back and enjoy a life of leisure.
“With retirement approaching quickly, I am eagerly looking forward to kayaking all over the South Fork, traveling to places near and far and reading endlessly,” she said.
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