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Tina Huang
21/6/10 10:38Both my daughters went to a wonderful, funky pre-school on the upper West Side of Manhattan. When we were looking at pre-schools, it was easy to be bowled over by facilities, but a lot less so to be bowled over by the places themselves. The sort of schools (and we saw several) that told us (as one Montessori school did) that our child could not hope to get in to Harvard without starting there first, lost us. I've worked at Harvard, Harvard is a great school, but at age two what I wanted was for my child to feel loved, learn some social skills, and be safe and happy. If she learned her ABCs before kindergarten, all the better.
Brownstone School gave the girls all that and more. And a lot of that was because of Tina. She was the co-teacher in Green Room (the 3-4 year old's room) when Sarcasm Girl was there; by the time SG was in Lilac (the next year) she had become director of the school. And until a few weeks ago she continued as director, and the school blossomed. She knew everyone, and even after she became director, I think she knew exactly where each child in the school was, developmentally and emotionally and academically. Brownstone, which had a wide range of client-students (some were on scholarship from DCF, others were wealthy and headed for private schools), became competitive with the best schools around, but never lost the funky, loving, hamish feel. There was music and reading and play, crafts and field trips and naptime (neither of my daughters went quietly into the naptime, and the teachers coped... I imagine nothing much, to an experienced preschool teacher, is new). Tina was a wonderful teacher, and a terrific director, able to give hugs, and the occasional wide-eyed scold as necessary, to the kids, and inform, reassure, and engage the parents as well.
We got a note a week ago, saying that she was retiring from the school, after 26 years, for health reasons: she had been battling cancer for some time. And today I learned that she has died. The upper west side of Manhattan is a little emptier, and I know that while Brownstone will carry on, in part because Tina led so beautifully for so long, the school will miss her beautiful, fierce, loving presence.
Brownstone School gave the girls all that and more. And a lot of that was because of Tina. She was the co-teacher in Green Room (the 3-4 year old's room) when Sarcasm Girl was there; by the time SG was in Lilac (the next year) she had become director of the school. And until a few weeks ago she continued as director, and the school blossomed. She knew everyone, and even after she became director, I think she knew exactly where each child in the school was, developmentally and emotionally and academically. Brownstone, which had a wide range of client-students (some were on scholarship from DCF, others were wealthy and headed for private schools), became competitive with the best schools around, but never lost the funky, loving, hamish feel. There was music and reading and play, crafts and field trips and naptime (neither of my daughters went quietly into the naptime, and the teachers coped... I imagine nothing much, to an experienced preschool teacher, is new). Tina was a wonderful teacher, and a terrific director, able to give hugs, and the occasional wide-eyed scold as necessary, to the kids, and inform, reassure, and engage the parents as well.
We got a note a week ago, saying that she was retiring from the school, after 26 years, for health reasons: she had been battling cancer for some time. And today I learned that she has died. The upper west side of Manhattan is a little emptier, and I know that while Brownstone will carry on, in part because Tina led so beautifully for so long, the school will miss her beautiful, fierce, loving presence.