feature stories
For school secretary, education runs in the family
Feb 16, 2006 12:38 PM
A family of educators: the Zambardinos, Nickie at right and (from left) Gary Jr., Nicole and Gary Sr.
When you walk into a school office and there is calm among the chaos, when things are running smoothly despite the normal overload of paperwork, last-minute crises and administrative malfunctions, then you know there is a master secretary at the helm. At PS 112, in the Baychester section of the Bronx, that’s Nickie Zambardino.
A school secretary for 15 years, Zambardino has engendered great respect not only among her PS 112 colleagues for her smooth handling of her school but among her colleagues throughout the city, whom she has helped to train — and even among her family where, although a prophet may be without honor in her own home, Zambardino’s dedication to the city’s public schools has helped create educators of her own children.
When her son and daughter were small, Zambardino nurtured their interest in education, making sure they understood the importance of learning, as much as how to make the system serve them well. Both children, now adults, work in public schools and credit the example both their mother and father set with their decision to make education a high priority in their lives. Their father, Gary Zambardino Sr., taught high school when the kids were growing up.
The son, Gary Jr., now works as a paraprofessional in special education at PS 160 in Co-op City. He welcomed his mother’s suggestion that he consider the job, having grown up taking the same types of classes.
“When I was in school, I had a lot of issues with reading and math,” recalls Gary. “Every day was worse because it got harder and harder. I always felt I was going further and further back.”
UFT Secretaries Chapter Leader Jackie Ervolina says Zambardino inspires other secretaries to speak up about workplace concerns and to connect with one another.
As a school secretary, Zambardino was in a good position to find out exactly where to go and whom to see to provide academic support for Gary.
“I was able to get him a parent advocate,” she says, “to show him he could do it. It’s not that he couldn’t do it; it’s just that he had to do it a different way.”
The experience has proved invaluable in her efforts to help other parents deal with similar issues, she says.
As a little girl, Zambardino’s daughter, Nicole, remembers stopping by her mother’s school on half days and becoming fascinated with the teachers and students she met.
“The teachers were very friendly,”
Nicole recalls. “They would let me sit in their classrooms and observe.
Just to see children’s faces when they figured out something that they
never knew before was amazing. From day one when I saw that, I was
like, ‘this is something I want to do.’ And I still want to put that
look on people’s faces.”
Nicole started teaching this year at PS 96,
near Fordham Road in the Bronx. As a new teacher, she’s especially
grateful that her mother encouraged her to have faith in the success of
public education.
“I call my mother for everything,” she says. The secretary at her own school is “awesome,” she adds, but since her mother is one of the best in the city, “any questions I have, I call my mother immediately. Why am I getting paid this amount? What happened here? She knows her job, other secretaries’ jobs, even the principal’s job.”
So whenever Nicole has a question in her new job, she knows there is an answer to be found. Her mother taught her that.
