A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E - Colby-Sawyer College

Make a Joyful Noise:
Ann Neary ’74 Finds Her Calling in the Classroom
A morning person who regularly wakes up at 4 a.m. to go to
the gym before navigating the five highways between her home
in Greenwich, Conn., and the Bronx, Neary stands at her classroom
door to greet students as they come in from the hallway
brimming with teenagers. “Good morning, gentlemen,” she
says to two boys. “Oh, I really love that dress,” she tells a girl.
Just before eight o’clock, there are still some empty seats.
The missing students, Neary supposes, are waiting to go
through security. In a school rife with racial tension and 4,226
teenagers who need to remove shoes and belts before walking
through a scanner, just getting in the door to school can be a
challenge. And, after six years of teaching here, Neary knows
how many other obstacles her students face in getting to class.
She says that what they deal with is beyond what she can imagine
dealing with and gives them “a huge amount of credit” just
for showing up. One seat in the class will stay empty, though:
a boy who lost his home at Christmas has disappeared. Neary
had high hopes for him and is heartbroken.
by Kate Dunlop Seamans
On a Monday morning at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, Ann Woodd-Cahusac
Neary ’74 prepares for her first class of the day, AP English Literature. She has brought chalk
from home—teachers must supply their own—and arranges thrift-shop finds to serve as
costumes and props for enacting scenes from Macb eth. Outside the frosted windows of the
classroom is the school’s perfect football field surrounded by a track.
22 COLBY-SAWYER ALUMNI MAGAZINE
PHOTOS: Michael Seamans
Despite their burdens—drugs, abuse, being booted from
their home or not being able to go to college because they have
to care for their siblings—Neary’s students do more than just
show up: They are all senior honors students, and most will go
to college in the fall. MIT, Vassar, Siena College, SUNY schools
and others have accepted them, and they have options.
Perhaps no one is more proud of them than the teacher
they affectionately call Miss and Teacher Mom, who not too
long ago considered her own options and chose to be at the
front of a classroom instead of behind a corporate desk. For the
first 30 years of her working life, Neary inhabited the world of
retail, rising through the executive ranks from buyer for Lord &
Taylor and a stint at Brooks Brothers to vice president of sales
at Ghurka, a manufacturer of fine leather goods and accessories,
and operations manager at Two’s Company. Then, ten years
ago, came the attacks of September 11. When the unthinkable
happened, anything became possible.