Eventually Sue Ellen underSue Ellen Lian stood that everyone can Perseverance is what Sue Ellen improve and that Mrs. Zarabi’s learned from her CHS English perseverance is what helped her teacher Susan Zarabi. “The to excel at essay writing. teachers that are the most fierce “A professor of mine said and stubborn turn out to be the Sue Ellen Lian and Mrs. Susan Zarabi. that my best quality is that I best. Mrs. Zarabi never gave up, never give up, and I'd like to say one of the influences no matter how much a student resisted,” she remembers. that embedded that quality in me was Mrs. Zarabi,” Sue Ellen found herself rebelling in the face of Mrs. says the 2012 CHS graduate. Now pursuing a teaching Zarabi’s determination to improve her students’ writing degree at Montclair State University, she hopes to teach skills: “If you thought you were a genius when you as “stubbornly and fiercely” as Mrs. Zarabi did, and to walked into her class, she brought you down from your expose unwilling students to the joys of literature. cloud immediately. I was one of those geniuses.” Lisa Ciolino Ambrose
Meg Kostisin Gray
“I had Mrs. Helen Toth in 8th grade at CCMS and loved her. She was the reason I fell in love with chemistry and excelled at it in high school,” says Ambrose, who graduated CHS in 1990. “It was even my first major in college. I still have my notebook from her class.”
Meg Gray remembers the late Mrs. Helen Toth, who taught 8th grade science at Christopher Columbus Middle School. “She had the best one liners. If you yawned she might make you stick your head out the window to “aerate your brain,” wrote the 1990 CHS grad. “If you weren’t paying attention she might call you “density personified!” It might sound mean written here, but the way she said it, you knew she was just having fun with us.”
Kathy Treole Cox
Kristie Dino “Mr. Tony Orlando!! I had him as a gym teacher at CCMS!!! He was the best!!”
“I had a great education in Clifton with lots of great teachers like Mrs. Maryellen Lepkowski from 5th grade at School 9, William Smith (chemistry), Bob Morgan (band), and Laraine Mayewski (theater) at CHS. Lots of great people there,” wrote the 1987 CHS graduate, who works as a speech pathologist out of East Carolina University.
Rachel Christopher Bottaro “I still think of School 2 first grade teacher Paula Mutter even now, 20+ years later,” says the Tobyhanna, PA resident, who operates a crocheting business by night. Christine Labash “Dr. Judith Bookis. I had her at CHS from 1983-1984. Great teacher,” says Labash, who went on to study marketing at WPU after CHS. Christine Gres-Brendel “Mr. Robert Seppentino taught 5th grade at School 1. I still remember the songs we sang in his class,” says the 1981 CHS graduate, who later went on to work at Music Together.
38 March 2015 • Clifton Merchant