SBHS grads get different view of classroom
By Davy James, Staff Writer
When South Brunswick’s schools open their doors for the 2010-11 school year on Tuesday, a handful of returning staff members will resume careers in a district they have called home since they were young students themselves.
These district staff members said they can understand the pressures facing students, because they walked the same hallways and sat in the same classrooms.
”I hear kids talk about different things like where they live and places they go and I know what they’re talking about,” said South Brunswick High School math teacher Kimberly Ryan, a 2003 graduate of SBHS who has taught in the district for two and one-half years. “I think it gives me a different connection to the kids because we can talk about things they’re going through and interests they have because I went through the same things as a student here.”
They now have a different perspective on what their teachers had been thinking, as well.
”I never really saw things from a teaching perspective when I was a student,” said SBHS Special Education teacher Robert Cleffi, a 1974 graduate of SBHS who is entering his 29th year teaching in South Brunswick. “Becoming a teacher here was an eye-opener. I realized my teachers did things for a reason and there was a method to the madness.”
Melanie Pagonis, a 1987 graduate of SBHS, is the school social worker at Brunswick Acres Elementary School and has worked in the district for the last five years. She said the personal connections made during her time as a student brought her back to work in South Brunswick.
”It’s been great working here because a lot of the teachers in the district that I had when I was in school were still teaching when I started here,” she said. “South Brunswick is really a small town when we think about it and working with people who used to be my teachers is a great opportunity.”
However, going fromstudent to colleague can be a bit of an adjustment.
”The hardest part for me when I started here was calling some teachers by their first names instead of Mr. or Ms.,” Mr. Cleffi said. “There were some, to this day, I still call Mr. or Ms. I think it took five or six years before I was comfortable calling my former teachers by their first names.”
The adjustment from student to colleague was made easier by the manner in which the former students were treated by their new colleagues, according to Ms. Ryan and Ms. Pagonis.
”My former teachers brought me in and didn’t look at me as a former student. They made me feel like a fellow teacher,” Ms. Ryan said. “They never really brought up the fact that I was a student and they made me feel comfortable.”
Mr. Cleffi, who was part of the first kindergarten class at Greenbrook Elementary School, also played three sports during his time at SBHS. He coached the baseball team for 11 years after becoming a teacher and said returning to coach for the same school he played for was a great experience.
”To be coaching on the same fields I played on was pretty neat,” he said. “There were times when I was teaching when I remembered being in certain places and walking the same hallways as a student.”
Yet it was the connections made as a student that brought Mr. Cleffi back to the district he has always called home.
”I guess I never really wanted to start over again in a new district,” he said. “I’m very comfortable here, I enjoy special education and we have had a good department through the years. I saw Greenbrook get built and I remember the mounds of dirt on that site when it was getting built. I never had the urge to go anywhere else.”
Ms. Ryan said the family atmosphere in South Brunswick has kept her in the same district for both her student and teaching careers.
”Both of my parents grew up here and are graduates of South Brunswick High School,” she said. “I feel a connection here and a lot of my family lives here. I had a good experience as a student and I enjoy working here. I don’t really feel like I’m going to work, I feel like I’m at home.”
The connection the former students feel is the same connection they hope to build in their current students and is also what has kept these district staff members in the place they call home.
”Once you grow up in South Brunswick it’s like you’re always here no matter where you go to live,” Ms. Pagonis said. “It’s always in your blood. It’s a great place to work because it’s a district that still has that small town feel.”

