John Bligh
- Retired teacher
Susan Miller’s girlhood dream of working for the U.S. State Department and living abroad ended 50 years ago when she learned that a top diplomat who spoke out against the Vietnam War at a party was demoted to a job in Passport Control after his supervisor was told of his remarks.
“I didn’t want to go through life always having to watch what I said,” Susan told a reporter in 2014, when she retired from teaching.
She died on Sept. 20, 2022, at age 70, of complications from breast cancer.
It took Susan a while to find her way to the classroom. While she took education classes as an undergraduate and would later get master’s degrees in both education and political science, when she graduated from Brooklyn College in 1973, the Board of Education was not hiring new teachers as the city hurtled toward the fiscal crisis two years later. She took a series of jobs in the business world, but increasingly good salaries didn’t compensate for the long hours she was working. So in 1989, she took a job teaching students in pre-K to 2nd-grade at PS 36 in Harlem – with a $21,000 pay cut from her $60,000 salary at the real estate firm Cushman and Wakefield.
Susan said it was worth it because “I wanted to live a life.” In her corporate job, she explained, ‘If you had theater tickets for ‘The Producers’ and you had to wait on line for them, your boss didn’t want to hear it. In teaching, I don’t have to mark [students’] tests until the next night. You control your own room, although ultimately the kids do.”
That last remark reflected the wry sense of humor Susan brought to her 25 years of teaching. After two years at PS 36, she spent 14 years at Madison HS in Brooklyn, not far from the Sheepshead Bay home where she lived most of her life, and then moved to Eleanor Roosevelt HS, where she also spent a year as the UFT chapter leader.
“She loved being involved with the kids,” Arturo Molina, who’s been the chapter leader at the Upper East Side school for the past decade, said shortly after Susan’s passing. “The kids just loved her style, her way of acting with them. She didn’t treat them as kids; she treated them as young adults. The staff respected her and we loved having her around — we were always laughing.”
He recalled Susan organizing major school events, such as graduation ceremonies.
At Madison, she had worked in the school’s Law House, which prepared students for possible legal careers, and the shared interest the coursework created meant “they would confide in you more often” about their lives, she said. Later in her career, she was active in financial literacy programs run by a former principal.
Susan retained her penchant for speaking her mind, saying in the 2014 interview that the negativity brought to the city school system by Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg had made teachers’ jobs harder. She mentioned Bloomberg’s decision in 2012 following Hurricane Sandy to close schools for four days but then require teachers to come to work that Friday.
Susan also faulted the internet and the city Department of Education’s determination to teach to standardized tests, saying both had bred bad habits among students in her history classes who “have no context whatsoever, and they don’t listen to the news.”
And yet her feelings for those she taught were undiminished by those frustrations.
Predeceased by her parents and a younger brother, Susan made good on her intent to indulge her enjoyment of travel in retirement. Her travels often included stops at sports events from Los Angeles to France and from Australia to Toronto. A serious tennis and baseball fan, she also held season tickets for both the New York Knicks and the Brooklyn Nets.
Susan said that in retirement she wouldn’t miss waking up at 5 a.m. for her long subway commute, particularly in bad weather, or grading papers. Asked what she would miss, the crusty exterior dissolved. “The kids, probably more than anything else,” she said.
I only saw a small glimpse of Susan’s life, but in that time I learned a lot about her. She was a Knicks fanatic and expressed her opinions and criticisms on the team with eternal optimism (in true Knicks fan fashion). She stood out to me because she also took a keen interest in me, and remembered every conversation we had about traveling around the world, particularly Croatia. She’ll be missed at Madison Square Garden, where she always took the time to pass by and say hello to ask about how we were doing (and to remind us about how our App wasn’t working properly).
We’ll miss you Susan!
Susan was a joy to everyone she came in contact with. I will miss seeing her cheer and make people laugh all around MSG. Sleep in paradise, Ms. Miller.
Susan and I were only friends for the past few years but I’m grateful to have made that
connection. I looked forward to meeting her at our Brunches and to our frequent phone
calls. Susan exhibited an abundance of knowledge about an infinite number of topics.
I always came away learning something after speaking with Sue. Although she enjoyed
telling me about her activities, she expressed much interest in my life as well as in my
husband’s. She was truly a most thoughtful person who had so much to offer to others.
She passed away too soon and I think about her every day. Rest In Peace my friend!
Susan lead a Great Decisions course given annually at the 92nd street Y. She encouraged us as the
Group participants to express our opinions openly and freely, without criticism and without fear.
She was often tolerant of strongly expressed opinions and was able to keep control of sometimes contentious adult voices. She later helped with an offshoot group of us following a pattern similar to the foreign policy associations publication and covering a multitude of current events. We met weekly on zoom during the pandemic which was a welcomed comfort during challenging times. Susans voice, her knowledge and her presence will be so very sadly missed.
Ms Miller was a character who made a point to personally connect with her students in the classroom. Her passion for her teaching always shined through.
When she retired, I remember remaining in touch with her and was happy to here she was making the most of it.