Marble Hill nursery school’s longtime director retires

Karen Worchel never forgets a face.

After nearly 47 years at Marble Hill Nursery School — 38 as its director — Worchel has met thousands of preschoolers.

Yet she remembers all of them, even if it’s been decades since they last walked out the 5470 Broadway doors.

“I recognize the women right away because, for the most part, they look like bigger versions of themselves when they were students here,” Worchel said. “But with the men, it takes a little while to remember. They look so different with facial hair and their features change. I think to myself, ‘They’re not supposed to have a beard — they’re just 4 years old. And they’re really not supposed to have children of their own.”

Many old faces have returned to the school since Worchel announced she’s retiring as director in August. Old friends swelled the attendance at the school’s annual gala in May to raise money for scholarships and additional programming.

“It was like 50 percent more people than have come in recent years,” said her colleague David Bleecker-Adams, who will succeed Worchel as director. “I just felt while I was in that room all the love and all the support for the school, and that there’s a kind of momentum that will carry us into the future.”

There’s a simple, comforting kind of rhythm to the school, located on the Marble Hill Houses campus. First opened in 1955, the school has a homey, timeless feeling that makes it difficult to tell exactly what year it is outside. But whatever the time, the school exudes safety and inclusion.

The library is a quaint room stacked floor-to-ceiling with picture books. Hot meals are made in a big, lived-in kitchen. Kids play together quietly in the sunny classrooms, engrossed in activities and only occasionally looking up to see what new people entered the room. They study worms, Jackson Pollock paintings, and the planets of the solar system.

Perhaps that feeling of familiarity and timelessness is what’s prompted former students to return, send their own children to Marble Hill, and perhaps stay on to teach. That charm led Worchel to go from parent to volunteer to employee, much like most of the staff.

She became a Marble Hill parent in 1972 at the advice of the family pediatrician. After a few years, she became increasingly involved in the school — first as a member of the parent co-op board, then on the board of directors.

“The following year they asked me to be president of the board,” she said. “They said, ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s an easy job. Nothing ever happens here.’”

But then one of the school’s programs lost government funding. After a leadership shakeup, Worchel — who worked as a kindergarten teacher before her kids were born — took over assistant director’s duties. Finally, she became director in 1981 and has kept the school thriving ever since.

Using her early childhood education training and classroom experience, Worchel molded Marble Hill into a child-centered program that made play central to world learning. Many contemporary schools push teaching reading early, but Worchel believes worksheets and rote exercises don’t encourage children to problem-solve.

“The trick is to organize play so that you have this internal structure that makes the play productive instead of the kids just running around wild, which is what I think some people envision play as being,” Worchel said. “But that method of teaching requires a great deal of skill, and I admire our teachers so much for being very good at that.”

Years of experience with children make Worchel an invaluable resource, parent co-op board member Cynthia Carrion said.

“She’s there to ensure that certain things your kids are going through are normal, or work with you on making adjustments,” Carrion said. “I think as parents — especially when you’re a new parent — navigating all of their child’s feelings, Marble Hill has just become such a hub of love and support.”

To provide more enrichment, Worchel began fundraisers to pay for extras like dance and art instruction. Marble Hill has a staff psychologist who comes in a few days a week to work with students about social-emotional skills, and holds coffee hours with parents to discuss childhood development.

“We have a speech pathologist who’s here once a week,” Worchel said. “We found the (city education department) process takes quite a long time for some of our kids who are here only a year. By the time they get their services from the city, many months had gone by, so we wanted to ensure we were able to take care of that as quickly as possible.”

And a big part of fundraising is to provide tuition assistance to low-income families. Because of the school’s location, 3-year-old applicants within the Marble Hill Houses get priority. But the school’s quality draws students from all over — Washington Heights, Inwood, Riverdale and beyond.

“Our board supports our incredible student diversity by offering scholarship money available to parents who can’t afford that experience otherwise,” Worchel said. “That allows us to offer a private school experience to students, whether their parents are doctors, or their mom is a single mom going to school trying to get her GED.”

That diversity, Bleecker-Adams said, is an enormous strength.

“I can tell you from a teacher’s perspective that the more diverse your classes, the more it enriches the experience for everybody,” he said.

Though she won’t be director anymore, Worchel said she’ll be around some to assist Bleecker-Adams during the transition.

“And I have to say that the fact that David is taking my place makes me feel very happy and very confident,” she said.

Of course, she will long for the parade of smiling faces every morning.

“I will miss the hugs, the interactions with the kids, the parents and the staff,” Worchel said. “But I can come back and visit. What I’m not going to miss is all the paperwork.”