News & Events
86-Year-Old Prof. Druce Finds Teaching Math Adds Up to Fulfilling Career
In the early 1930s, Zelda Marblestone Druce was just entering her teenage years when her family’s finances took a nosedive: her father fell ill and was never able to work again. He did, however, give her something money could not buy -- encouragement to reach her potential and go to college, first for a bachelor’s degree and then for a master’s degree in mathematics.
“My father was a great influence on me,” she explains. “He was a district captain of the Republican Party and our apartment door on the Lower East Side was open at all times to people who needed help. My mother was service-minded, too, and used to help neighborhood children with their math homework. So even though we were poor, we managed to help those who were worse off than we were.”
Druce had always done well in school, particularly in math and history, and had the grades to meet the very rigorous admissions standards of Hunter College, which didn’t charge tuition at the time. “I had two brothers who were smart but didn’t go to college because they went to work to help support the family and then served in the army during World War II,” she explains. “So I was the only one of us able to continue my education.”
Over the decades, she never forgot how significant her father’s support was nor the importance of giving back to one’s community. As a result, generations of students have benefited from her caring approach. At the age of 86, she still drives her car to the Newkirk Avenue Station in Brooklyn twice a week and then boards the subway to New York City College of Technology (City Tech), where she teaches algebra, geometry and trigonometry.
“I love teaching and I love my students,” she says. “I’m a strict professor and it takes the students a while -- usually about two weeks -- to get used to me because I am all business. I come in very well-prepared and start teaching on the first day the class meets, during which I assess whether each student belongs in my class. Even though there’s a gap of several generations, I can relate to the students and they know it.”
Before coming to teach at City Tech in 1982, Druce was a full-time math teacher for 15 years at Samuel J. Tilden High School, not far from her East Flatbush neighborhood. Nothing sums up the effect she had on her students better than a letter she received a couple of years ago from a former pupil, Stephen Samuel, an African-American who is the founder and president of Design Visionaries, an engineering consulting business. After graduating from high school, he majored in mechanical engineering and went on to work as an aerospace engineer for Pratt & Whitney, the jet engine manufacturer.
“Before I took your class I found math to be very difficult and I thought maybe there was something wrong with me that made it more difficult for me than for most,” he wrote. “I didn’t know that I actually had a talent for math. You helped me discover it. I wanted to learn the math partly because I respected you and wanted to do it for you.”
Samuel went on to say, “You may be wondering, ‘What did I do that was so compelling?’ So many things. You praised me, noticed me, and showed me that I could do a good job….You never lost sight of how difficult it could be for kids who don’t yet know the material. I appreciated your warmth and I appreciated that you cared deeply about your work.”
In closing, he wrote about his visits to inner city high schools to try to get students excited about math, science and education in general. “There’s a piece of you that I carry around and use every day of my life….I want you to know that the help you gave to a young man over 20 years ago made a huge difference. I want you to know that the spirit of your actions is carried to other young people all over the country and to older engineers internationally.”
Decades before Druce made her mark as a math teacher, she had to overcome the hurdle of finding a job during the Great Depression. “When I graduated from Hunter College with a major in math and minor in physics, I went out looking for a job every day, six days a week,” she recalls. “Finally, thanks to an aunt, I was hired to operate a switchboard for an automobile distributor and earned $10 a week.”
It was then that her father said, “Don’t waste your time; go on for a master’s degree.” So she traveled from the Lower East Side to her switchboard operator job in the Bronx and then headed south to Brooklyn, to attend Brooklyn College at night.
The ink was barely dry on her diploma when she was hired as a junior professional assistant in mathematics by the United States Signal Corps. From there, she went to Bell Telephone Laboratories as a mathematical research assistant, performing the mathematical work involved in the development of ultra-high frequency radar tubes. One of the supervisors there, future Nobel Prize winner Dr. Polykarp Kusch, asked her to be his research assistant at Columbia University, working on math computations for his experiments involving molecular beams.
Druce worked with Dr. Kusch for three years until 1948, when she got married, and then stayed home for 14 years to raise three children. “When my kids were little I was very active in the PTA, serving as president a couple of times. All the neighborhood kids used to come to me for help in math and, of course, I also helped my own children. A friend said, ‘Why don’t you take the exam for teaching?’” She did and subbed for a couple of years before becoming permanent at Tilden High School in 1967.
In 1982, family circumstances and her husband’s retirement from his government job led her to retire from the Board of Education to teach part-time at City Tech. For years, she taught two courses a semester until she had ideas of retiring in 2000.
At that point, Druce returned to Tilden as a volunteer, helping new teachers get acclimated to the challenges before them. “It was then I really saw with my own eyes how poorly prepared pupils were. I went back to the college classroom with a renewed focus and changed my way of teaching to accommodate this reality.”
Currently, she has no plans to retire. “I am a big fan of City Tech; the students are nice, well-mannered people. My husband wants me to continue teaching, my children and granddaughters say, ‘Don’t stop!’
“I am always looking to improve my teaching,” she adds. “I experiment with new techniques and make adjustments when I find something works better. The challenge keeps me going.”
3/16/06
