Teacher looks forward to an active retirement
BY DAVE BENJAMIN
Staff Writer

JACKSON - After a 40-year career in the Jackson school district, Johnson School resource teacher Risa Sweet, 69, is ready to retire, although she has plenty on her plate to keep her busy after she leaves the district.

Sweet has been recognized as an outstanding teacher and in 1997 received the Jackson School District Teacher of the Year award.

"My family came from Romania and settled in the Ellington-Roxville area of Connecticut," said Sweet. "I went to Willimantic State Teachers College and I did my first student teaching experience in the sixth grade with Rose Podberesky. She was a wonderful woman, very stern, very in control and very organized."

Sweet holds a master's degree in guidance and counseling from the University of Bridgeport. She later became certified as a learning disabilities specialist and a reading specialist, and earned a second master's degree in human development. The educator began her career in Connecticut, in Fairfield and Bridgeport, two areas that were at opposite ends of the spectrum economically. She also had some experience in the Norwalk and New London school systems before coming to Jackson.

"I was hired by Jackson in 1967 and I was a substitute for a while," Sweet said. "Then I was given a contract and I took over another teacher's class at the Rosenauer School."

When the Johnson School opened, she was transferred to the new school. Sweet was a resource teacher and worked with children in class and out of class. She said she focused on children who were struggling.

Sweet described her job by saying if you are in class, you work with a particular group of children and also with other children who are in that class. During the past two years, she taught second-, third- and fourth-grade literacy. In some years she also included math resource teaching.

Another aspect of her career has been her involvement with the New Jersey Education Association's Human Rights Committee, where she represents Ocean County.

"I've been on that committee for a number of years," she said. "It's something that I really love."

Sweet's husband, Ira, who passed away several years ago, worked in community school psychology and was also employed by the Jackson School District.

Both Sweet and her husband had marched for civil rights in Selma, Ala., in the 1960s.

"I would share that experience with the students," she said. "I would tell them what that period of time was like. It was such a different time frame."

Sweet is also a published writer, with two articles in the NJEA Review, "Bring Social Justice to Our Schools," published in 1991, and "Creating a Social Conscience, It's Never Too Early," published in 1989.

When asked why she is retiring, Sweet said she has been teaching public school in Jackson for 40 years and is also teaching two workshops at Ocean County College, Toms River: "Teaching Holocaust from K-8" and "Beyond the Image," which is about the hidden culture of relational aggression or about what students do to each other.

Sweet plans to continue teaching at the college level and hopes the college will soon bring workshops to local school districts.

Sweet has also been involved with conducting programs related to Israel. Both her son and daughter lived in Israel for a period of time.

"My son [once] started a kibbutz there in the Galilee," she said. "He now lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two children. My daughter lives in New Mexico with her husband and their two children."

Sweet is also involved with a Lakewood group called Let's Talk, in which members of that municipality's black, Hispanic and Orthodox Jewish communities meet to discuss issues. She is also the vice chairwoman of the Human Relations Committee with the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office.

Sweet said that when people ask her how she knows if this is the time to retire from her position in Jackson, she tells them, "This is the time when I need to do what I have to do."