COBBLE HILL — Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña marked her 50th personal first-day-of-school with a trip Wednesday to P.S. 29 in Cobble Hill, where she worked as a teacher for 22 years.
"I consider this school the epitome of what good schools should be," she said.
Fariña visited a few classrooms as she walked around the school, including Room No. 405, where she had taught her own class at least four decades ago, she said.
"A very, very long time ago," is how she described it to the third-grade class.
"When I was a teacher, we had old-fashioned desks and I didn't like them," Fariña told the class. "I was probably the only teacher in those days who would move the desks away."
Fariña said she would buy books for her students to read in class because paperback ones weren't available in the school during her first years as a teacher.
She allowed her students to burrow into the corners of the classroom, closets and even under their desks to read.
"The only place they couldn't read was under my desk," she said. One time, she hadn't realized a student was crouching under there when she went to sit down.
"I think I kicked them," she said.
The third-graders peppered Fariña with questions: What was it like? What about the kids and teachers? Did you have a white board? ("Personal Narrative" was written on one in bold letters — the subject the class was discussing before Fariña entered.)
Fariña told the class she used a blackboard and chalk.
"Does anybody know what chalk is?" she asked. Most did.
"As a teacher it was a lot of fun," she said. Back then she lived right around the block from the school and would host the end-of-year class party at her house.
She would also invite children celebrating birthdays over for lunch and would have parent-teacher conferences in her living room so they could continue talking past 9 p.m.
She had 40 children in her class back then.
"Twenty-eight feels like a lot right now," said Leah Brunski, the teacher of the third-grade class.
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Fariña's long history with P.S. 29 did not end after she eventually left the school and continued her career in the Department of Education. Her two daughters graduated from the school and she is a personal mentor to Prinicipal Rebecca Fagin.
Fariña was even on the front page of P.S. 29's student newspaper, a copy of which hangs in her bedroom.
"I take that very seriously," she said.
Despite her busy schedule — a five-borough tour of city schools — and having to drive next to P.S. 212 in Queens, Fariña made one more stop at Room No. 506, a fifth-grade classroom.
She said that working for more than two decades as a teacher made her realize that you can't just care about your own students.
"You have to care about everyone's kids."
