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About
Weddings, Babies and Memorials Church of England
Our family was members of the Church of England. I attended a C of E school. I saw the Church as a haven where I could go and find a friend to talk to; Reverend Greene was one of those friends, on Sundays I would get there early and usually stayed later to help him. I followed him around the large church helping him to arrange flowers; my job was to straightening the kneeling pads. I talked to him the whole time about my many concerns. He listened to me and asked questions about what I shared with him. I felt accepted.
Leaving Home
I decided to leave home at 22yrs old to go on an adventure in America. I obtained a position first in Great Neck LI then 3 months later as a governess to a family on 5th Avenue, New York. The two children and I became inseparable as we explored New York City together. The affluence in this home shocked me initially. This was a contrast to my family where we conserved, sewed everything and reused hand-me-downs.
The family was interested in me and were kind and supportive
and I stayed with them for 2 years.
Working as a Governess then to College
It was during this time while working as a governess that I noticed many people went to college who were from ordinary working families like mine. I felt perhaps I could go too. I selected FordhamUniversity as I felt comfortable with a JesuitUniversity. I was the first person in my family to go to College.
Being clever enough for College was a difficult concept for me and I spent a lot of time initially feeling that I would be found out. In the culture where I grew up, intelligence and class was synonymous, we were working class therefore not college material. I struggled and worked hard with that. At Fordham I located a supportive therapist and integrated myself into the college community and became very active on campus
During College I supported myself as a nursery school teacher, I loved being able to sing play guitar and paint with these wonderful little people. It was second nature to me to play. I went to Bank Street College of Education where the philosophy was to learn through play. I helped to organize the first open classroom in New York. This was modeled after the British Infants School System. It was a very exciting era in Early Childhood Education.
Theatre
At the same time I became active in a Community Theatre Company we performed a lot of original children’s shows. We also did Adult drama and traveled to College Campuses to perform on weekends.
GraduateSchool
Being a painter and in theatre I decided to pursue an MFA in Fine Art at Pratt Institute. I merged together both the visual arts and the performance art. After graduating Pratt I taught Art Education at QueensCollege in the Education Department. My main goal was to show teachers how to have more fun with Art in the classroom. As a result of my involvement at QueensCollege, I became a director of a YMCA Arts Camp in the Hamptons for several summers.
I also spent an enriching 2 years working in the DeronSchool in New Jersey working with special needs children in Art and Drama.
Museum Education
After supervising many trips to museums I got trained as a Museum Educator at BrooklynMuseum. Later I gained a position as a Museum Education Director at the MontclairArtMuseum.
My position included teaching and supervising museum volunteers and reaching out to the community through presentations. I created many Art Education programs for the public which were highly successful.
I supervised and taught volunteers how to make the museum art more accessible to all age groups. A part of my job was to oversee automating the museum as a result I learned a lot about technology.
From Museums to Technology
I became a programmer, an honest craft. A program either worked or it didn’t, it was binary. I did not like sitting down all day and being alone. Then I got interested in Quality Assurance. I liked that area because I got many projects in different areas of the company. When there was less of that I became a project manager hiring myself out as a consultant PM for a number of years with different banks and businesses.
Path to Seminary
I had been considering seminary for a couple of years. I was doing some work for Citicorp when 9/11 happened. This urged my decision to be in service to God in a more direct way and I applied to seminary almost immediately. I elected an Interfaith program. As we studied each religion, I found irresistible segments in each wisdom tradition. I noted with delight the similarities between each of them.
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