SOUTH BRUNSWICK — Once a Greenbrook Gator, always a Gator.
Although Greenbrook Elementary School Principal Patricia Duncan Holliday will be ending her service when she retires at the end of this school year, her heart will never be far from her students.
“It’s been a wonderful career. I’ve enjoyed being of service to South Brunswick,” she said.
While in college, Holliday had focused on psychology before changing her major to education, “which seemed like a natural link” since she wanted to be a teacher since the fourth grade.
Holliday earned her bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Queens College, City University of New York, with a minor in psychology, “which has been very useful” in the education field.
She began her career as a first-grade teacher at P.S. 90 in Coney Island, Brooklyn, but moved to Kendall Park to accommodate her husband’s commute from Valley Stream, Long Island, to New Jersey.
Throughout her teaching career, she taught in all grades from pre-kindergarten to sixth grade. She said she loved the challenge of teaching first-graders how to read; the independence and openness to learning of second- and third-graders; and the “fabulous” nature of fifth-graders, who “rule the school.”
“Every age and stage of the child is amazing to me,” she said.
Holliday was later appointed as the first staff developer for the South Brunswick School District, educating other teachers from 1986 to 1990. Because she needed certification to do so, she received her Master of Arts Degree in Educational Administration from Rider College — though she said she had no intent to use it at the time.
However, after three years as a staff developer in the central office, she realized she missed being in a school environment. When the next principalship opened up, she joined Dayton/Deans Elementary in 1990, and then Greenbrook in 1992.
“Being a principal is all about teaching,” she said, noting how over the two decades since she had been a teacher, the rural nature of the community, the diversity of its population and the technology in the schools all vastly changed.
“[I love when students] take the things they learned here at this school and become successful in the things that they’ve chosen,” she said.
With her 23rd year at Greenbrook coming to a close on June 30, Holliday said she plans to spend more time with her husband and her five grandchildren.
“My own kids graduated from the district … so I enjoyed being a part of making it the best I could,” she said.