everyday heroes
Seizing the day!
Oct 19, 2006 4:52 PM
Teacher turns here grief into beauty at Brooklyn School
In her phys ed office, which becomes her studio after hours, Maria Rosa of Brooklyn's PS 193 talks about favorite painter Rob Gonzalves, her deepest sorrow, feather dream-catchers and the joy of making a school beautiful.
NYPD School Safety Agent Barbara Murphy is very, very proud of her SpongeBob chair.
Principal Frank Cimino really, really loves his blue decoupaged chair.
School nurses Louise Dougherty and Viola Brown, whose offices are down the hall from the flamingo-pink filing cabinet, are ga-ga about their boo-boo chair, which has a big Band-Aid painted on the seat near the word “ouch!” and a boy under a rain cloud with a thermometer in his mouth. Children love sitting in it when they don’t feel well.
Everyone feels better just for walking through their school on any given day, with its bunches of flowers, framed prints, kids’ artwork, the Paris chair, colorful posters, decorated doors, the football chair, the angel chair, Native American feather dream-catchers, images of flowers, birds, fairies and butterflies, the cloud chair, the autumn chair and the carpe diem cookie tin. And never in the history of Western civilization has a teachers’ lounge bathroom had such a glamorous toilet paper dispenser.
PS 193 was once very plain — but now it’s enchanted. Nestled in the leafy avenues in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, the old building has a story to tell, a kind of fairy tale about a sad woman whose hands picked up a paintbrush and couldn’t stop painting and painting.
It began about a year ago, when Maria Rosa, the school physical education teacher, lost her 47-year-old brother Albert. “I was in so much grief, I didn’t know what to do. I had too much time on my hands when I wasn’t at school and had all this sad, nervous energy,” she said. “I started doing arts and crafts to keep my mind off it.
“One day I fixed up an old chair in one of the classrooms, which made people smile. Then I painted some others. More smiles! School, after all, is where we practically live and it should be a nice place to come to for kids and teachers, not barren and institutional. It really starting looking pretty. And I started feeling better.”
Soon teachers were chipping in to buy Rosa paint. Later came requests for fixing up chairs, painting cabinets, creating themes for the classrooms.
“Instead of planting trees all over the place like Johnny Appleseed, I paint and decorate the school wherever it’s legal in terms of fire and safety,” she said, pointing out a rose pink paper-towel holder decoupaged with pansies and a coordinated glittery toilet-paper dispenser in the once chipped and peeling, now gloriously gleaming staff lounge bathroom.
Rosa’s mission soon took on a life of its own. A painted basket — on top of the lilac, trash-rescued knickknack table in the lace-canopied alcove outside the bathroom — started filling up with jars of fragrant lotions. A Mexican statue appeared. Someone brought in a wicker bookcase. Another co-worker helped Rosa reupholster all the seats in the lounge a wild green foliage print.
“People will say to me now, ‘Ms. Rosa, can I put this in the lounge?’ like I’m in charge of everything, but I’m not. I’m just so glad to see people rolling with this,” she said.
Chapter Leader Yelena Siwinski, who loves her political theme/Statue of Liberty chair, said, “Maria devotes so much of her own time and stays late to do these projects — it’s amazing how much she has given of herself to the school.”
In the kitchen, where the appliances are painted electric blue in vibrating swirls, Rosa picks up a purple cookie tin with the words “carpe diem” painted repeatedly around it and says, “‘Seize the day.’ It’s my favorite saying. My brother died so young. He did seize the day while he was here, though. We won’t be here long, we have to seize the day.”
And, one can only hope, for the benefit of generations of teachers and kids, Maria Rosa will continue to seize a paintbrush whenever the mood hits.
Window of opportunity: Since Rosa began rescuing odd relics to paint, like this farmhouse window, her co-workers got into the act, bringing in old treasures for her to decorate. Surrounding her are (from left) Jennifer Benedict, Kristen Deodato, Tricia Lavin, Arianne Schneider, Debbie Palomba, Allison Glaser and Alice Johnson.
Rosa (center) and school nurses Viola Brown and Louise Dougherty with the cloud chair and the famous boo-boo chair.
The fanciest school-bathroom towel dispenser in the city.
A UFT moment: Debbie Palomba kicks back with the New York Teacher in the staff lounge on a whimsically re-upholstered couch, not far from where a UFT Trachtenberg Award hangs on the wall.
