Peter Strauss
After retiring last June from almost 40 years at Walsh Intermediate School (WIS) in Branford, former assistant principal Peter Strauss has finally found the time to do, well, nothing.
"I promised myself that I would go a year and smell the roses, so to speak," he explains. "My greatest pleasure is probably not having to leave the house at 10 to 7 in the morning. I get The New York Times at home, I get my cup of coffee, and I go out on the porch and listen to birds-and I don't have to leave. That's a real joy."
As the school year begins without him, Peter, 68, knows he will miss the kids. He looks back fondly on wearing a different fun tie every day of the school year. Each year, he'd repeat one tie once, and give $10 to the first person who noticed.
"It was a way of really relating to the kids," he says. "They all learned to check out my ties."
Peter is proud to look back upon the school's character-building programs; its collaboration between staff, students, and teachers; and the positive environment that he helped create. Perhaps most important, he found the experience of hiring teachers extremely rewarding.
"That decision impacts thousands of kids," he says. "As I leave the school, I think the staff is absolutely top notch."
A native New Yorker, Peter has also lived in Bloomfield and Branford. Today he resides in Guilford, where he moved with his wife Barbara after eight years at WIS. Halfway between his own family in New York and Barbara's family in Boston, it's a pretty ideal place to be, he says.
Working in schools wasn't always Peter's goal.
"I was originally meant to be a dentist because my dad was a dentist," he says. "I soon realized that was something I was not at all well suited for, nor was it something I wanted to do."
Peter met his wife in college at New York University, at which he studied history, but eventually switched to teaching to see if he enjoyed it. He did.
"I immediately began taking courses in administration because I enjoyed that end of it as well," he says. "It soon became very clear to me that it was something I was well suited for and something I enjoyed."
Peter counts himself among those who find their niche in life.
"'If you find a job that you like, you'll never work a day in your life,'" he quotes. "Every day I'd go into work and really enjoy being there.
"It's a particularly tight-knit community," he explains. "The staff, the parents, the kids, are a rather cohesive group-that adds to the positivity of the work experience and the day-to-day environment."
As for challenges, Peter's no fan of standardized testing. Although he acknowledges the importance of measuring kids' learning, he thinks too much time and energy is taken up on tests such as the Connecticut Mastery Test, which are, he says, simply boring and sap kids' motivation. Teachers have enough difficulty motivating students as it stands, he says. Additionally, state-mandated tests focus on raising lower-performing students rather than encouraging brighter kids.
"For the Olympics, what you're trying to do is train champions; the goal is to develop greatness. The goal of the mastery test is to make sure kids don't do really badly," he says, adding, "There are so many things that the test doesn't measure. I have a bumper sticker that says, 'Critical Thinking: the Other National Debt.'"
For now, golf, spending time with his grandkids, reading, biking, and traveling-plus auditing courses at Yale and a trip to Asia next year-are all on the list, but Peter is more than content to spend time in his own backyard, too.
"I don't like to go away in the summer; it's too nice here," he says.
But this is just his year of smelling the roses, he emphasizes, "before I come up with my next life."
"I promised myself that I would go a year and smell the roses, so to speak," he explains. "My greatest pleasure is probably not having to leave the house at 10 to 7 in the morning. I get The New York Times at home, I get my cup of coffee, and I go out on the porch and listen to birds-and I don't have to leave. That's a real joy."
As the school year begins without him, Peter, 68, knows he will miss the kids. He looks back fondly on wearing a different fun tie every day of the school year. Each year, he'd repeat one tie once, and give $10 to the first person who noticed.
"It was a way of really relating to the kids," he says. "They all learned to check out my ties."
Peter is proud to look back upon the school's character-building programs; its collaboration between staff, students, and teachers; and the positive environment that he helped create. Perhaps most important, he found the experience of hiring teachers extremely rewarding.
"That decision impacts thousands of kids," he says. "As I leave the school, I think the staff is absolutely top notch."
A native New Yorker, Peter has also lived in Bloomfield and Branford. Today he resides in Guilford, where he moved with his wife Barbara after eight years at WIS. Halfway between his own family in New York and Barbara's family in Boston, it's a pretty ideal place to be, he says.
Working in schools wasn't always Peter's goal.
"I was originally meant to be a dentist because my dad was a dentist," he says. "I soon realized that was something I was not at all well suited for, nor was it something I wanted to do."
Peter met his wife in college at New York University, at which he studied history, but eventually switched to teaching to see if he enjoyed it. He did.
"I immediately began taking courses in administration because I enjoyed that end of it as well," he says. "It soon became very clear to me that it was something I was well suited for and something I enjoyed."
Peter counts himself among those who find their niche in life.
"'If you find a job that you like, you'll never work a day in your life,'" he quotes. "Every day I'd go into work and really enjoy being there.
"It's a particularly tight-knit community," he explains. "The staff, the parents, the kids, are a rather cohesive group-that adds to the positivity of the work experience and the day-to-day environment."
As for challenges, Peter's no fan of standardized testing. Although he acknowledges the importance of measuring kids' learning, he thinks too much time and energy is taken up on tests such as the Connecticut Mastery Test, which are, he says, simply boring and sap kids' motivation. Teachers have enough difficulty motivating students as it stands, he says. Additionally, state-mandated tests focus on raising lower-performing students rather than encouraging brighter kids.
"For the Olympics, what you're trying to do is train champions; the goal is to develop greatness. The goal of the mastery test is to make sure kids don't do really badly," he says, adding, "There are so many things that the test doesn't measure. I have a bumper sticker that says, 'Critical Thinking: the Other National Debt.'"
For now, golf, spending time with his grandkids, reading, biking, and traveling-plus auditing courses at Yale and a trip to Asia next year-are all on the list, but Peter is more than content to spend time in his own backyard, too.
"I don't like to go away in the summer; it's too nice here," he says.
But this is just his year of smelling the roses, he emphasizes, "before I come up with my next life."