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Anne knew what she could do when even teachers and guidance counselors did not. She remembers a biting remark that biology teacher Pinkard said. After graduation she saw him in a store and reminded him that he had failed her in biology. “He replied that I had ‘failed’ myself. How true.” Nor was she happy when Dr. Shulman, later a guidance counselor, showed no support for her plans to go to college. After all she had been in one of his easier English classes and hadn’t been too serious about it. But no sooner was she out of school and in college than she became serious about education. Whoever wrote in her yearbook profile that as a profession she would “sit on the boss’s lap as a top notch secretary” thought wrong. Anne has been serious about it for over 50 years as a lifelong teacher. Today each of her four children, one a Ph.D, engages in teaching in some form.
“I have to say there were many reasons I loved coming from a small town like Sea Cliff,” Anne says. “We had the opportunity to be able to walk to everything; the school, the library, the church, the post office, the soda fountain and the beach.” In high school Anne had a lot of friends, but she was particularly close to Nancy Baker and Linda Lloyd. She and Gail Capobianco were good friends the last two years of high school. Gail says she had “a fine sense of humor and if we were talking, she always had a quick response.” Anne served as a maid of honor in Gail’s wedding.
Anne is grateful that she “had very dedicated teachers in college and I loved the profession from the start.” . Even with four children she managed to be a substitute teacher. When her last two children, twins, were born, she did stay home until they began school. Her first year out of college she taught in Glens Falls, NY before moving to East Islip where she teaches fifth grade today at John F. Kennedy Elementary School..
One career was not enough for Anne, so she also became a practical nurse and from the mid 80s until 2006, she worked in a Huntington nursing home on weekends and in the summer months. “People used to ask me which I liked better nursing or teaching. They both had to do with helping people, but, in teaching at least I get to sit down once in a while.” She was 68 when she decided to go back to having only one career.
Anne Conte
26 Ramondo Lane
Smithtown, NY 11787
littleboo98@yahoo.com
