This is an abridged version of the original interview first published on 777.hu.

I met this always kind, smiling, and despite her 75 years incredibly active professor at the Meeting of American Hungarian Schools (Amerikai Magyar Iskolák Találkozója, AMIT) in September 2022. Then I learned that she is not only a Professor and Head of the Department of Mathematics at the City University of New York (CUNY), but also the founder of the first Hungarian summer university in America and former Director of the Hungarian School Camp of the Hungarian Scout Association in Exteris. Afterwards she gave me a book about her mother, who lived for 102 years, and was a teacher in Hungary. She also told me that she was a candidate for the János Arany Medal of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. I asked her to summarize her wide-ranging achievements.

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Your book about your mother reveals that you are the fourth generation in a dynasty of educators. What does this precious family legacy mean to you?

To paraphrase a classic, it means ‘roots and wings’—even if I haven’t personally known my ancestors or had access to their specific heritage. For example, my maternal grandfather died in World War II, but I found his handwritten teacher’s notebooks in the attic, which I enjoyed reading as a high school student. My father used a small notebook as a diary during the war, which I found in his drawer ten years after his death. I have used a similar notebook without being aware of his…

And what did they give you for your teaching career?

My maternal great-grandfather, Baron Károly Schrőder, studied in four countries to become an engineer, but due to his deteriorating eyesight and the lack of suitable glasses, he had to change his profession and became a teacher and then school principal in Körmöcbánya (now Kremnica, Slovakia). His students loved him so much that when everything Hungarian was demolished after the Treaty of Trianon of 1920 (when Hungary was torn apart and lost most of its territory to multiple new and existing countries surrounding it), they left his painting on the school wall. My maternal grandmother, Gizella Schrőder, was considered a linguistic genius, teaching French in a small village near Körmöcbánya, and later as school teacher in the town. There she met the renowned young deaf-mute teacher, Aladár L. Hribik (later Hámory). History brought the family to Kaposvár, where my grandfather taught at the Institute for the Deaf and Mute and later became the school’s principal. He was able to teach children (who couldn’t speak) to communicate in different ways: reading lips and speaking articulately, not just using hand signs, which earned him praise in the journals of the time. He taught disabled children which wasn’t only helpful to them but also to society. My mother, Charlotte Hribik (later Sarolta Hámory), known to all as Lottyka, was a physical education teacher in Kaposvár, Hungary. Her students loved her so much that when she couldn’t travel to graduation reunions at the age of 90, her students celebrated the reunions at her apartment for the rest of her life, many of them even coming home from abroad. My legacy from her: wherever I have taught, my students have kept in touch with me. For example, my first job was in Balatonfüred at the secondary school for viticulture and wine-making. The students of my class ask me every year when I’m coming to visit Hungary, so I can attend their graduation reunion.

Has the perseverance you inherited from your grandfather and the student-centered, loving attitude you inherited from your mother helped you to succeed as a university professor in this international environment in New York?

Yes. I also had to start my life from ground zero a few times. European thinking is not the same as American thinking. I couldn’t expect my students to learn mine, I had to learn theirs. I can teach well if I know what they know, and on that basis, I can set them challenges that encourage them to learn. I need to find a way to connect with them. Our university has 500,000 students on 26 campuses, including 14,000 in our own College of Staten Island. There isn’t just one way of thinking: a Puerto Rican thinks very differently from an Egyptian or a New Zealander, so I have to know a very wide range of thinking. And it’s not just about an inherited attitude, but a method I first heard about in the U.S., when I was the only European participant in a five-year project. One of the essential elements is that I never share with them the correct answer but ask questions in a way that makes the students come up with their own solutions. The experience of success must not be taken away from them if we want them to love what they are learning. Knowledge cannot be inherited; it must be learned by all generations through hard work. For a teacher, the sense of achievement is when the knowledge has been acquired by the student. Teaching is therefore about creating an environment in which the student can flourish. And because every child learns differently—different skills, existing knowledge, and interests—, it is the teacher’s job to help them to do their best; noo matter how old they are or where they come from. I encourage my prospective teacher students to learn many different methods and ways of thinking. When they get a new student of a different nationality with a different way of thinking, they should ‘learn’ him/her, and when a student with similar background comes along, they’ll know how to approach the latter. The method is based on working in small groups, and at the end we have a ‘congress’ where anyone can add their own comments to any solution presented, or even a completely different result, enriching the original.

This is a very different approach from what we experience in traditional (Hungarian) education, where some teachers don’t accept any other methods but their own…

This constructivist method is very different from the one when the teacher uses the only method he/she knows, in some cases successfully, but after a few years the student remembers more or less nothing, because it wasn’t his/her solution, but the teacher’s. The solution is a student-centered education. If I do not allow a Puerto Rican or an Asian parent to help their child to solve a problem in a different way, I would certainly lose them… There was a Hungarian mathematician called György Pólya, who taught at Stanford University. His books have been translated into many languages, and he wrote about solving real-life problems, among other things—so we have examples that Hungarian professors were already practicing this method. In Hungary, an attempt was made to introduce it by Professor Tamás Varga, but unfortunately the teachers weren’t prepared beforehand—as we were and as we then prepared others in New York—, so this methodological change had no success at home. Incidentally, on the 100th anniversary of Tamás Varga’s birth, we organized a professional conference about this method, which I attended.

Teacher-student collaboration is also part of your teaching philosophy. This is the reason you founded the Mathematics Connection Conference. Why?

One of our jobs is to help students work together during their university years and beyond. That’s why I’ve established and run this conference for 16 years: to keep my former students in close contact with their alma mater, to feel at home even later on in life. On the last day of the conference, they can bring their children, when my current trainee teacher students can show them personalized maths logic games (based on their age and ability). Our goals are to bring former students together and to get their children to love maths and also to show them a model for use in their own schools.

You are also the coordinator of the LEAP to Teachers Paraprofessional Program. What does that entail and why did you get involved?

We were the second campus at the university to introduce this program, which now runs in 12 locations, the idea being that we can employ those who want to be teachers but can’t afford the very expensive university courses (such as recent immigrants) to work alongside special needs children with mobility and/or learning disabilities that teachers don’t have time to deal with. The U.S. government pays them full salary, all benefits and health insurance, and even pays for two or three courses in three semesters for 18 credits—a huge help. A young cleaning lady from Argentina once confessed to me that her dream was to become a teacher, but she had three children, a strong Spanish accent and couldn’t afford the courses. I helped her fill out the application form, she passed, and opened her own kindergarten for children in need which she proudly showed me later.

How did you get to the U.S. and ended up as a professor at CUNY?

For the same reason my great-grandfather traveled the world to study and the old guild masters sent their apprentices to other masters… When I was young, traveling the world didn’t work, I had to find my own way. When I was a university student, I worked as a guide and traveled around Europe in the summers. I went from village to village in the winters and told my travel stories, which I was paid for and even—always in the villages, never in the cities—given dinner. When I graduated from the university in Szeged, I chose two places in Hungary where there were both mountains and water: Balatonfüred and Esztergom. I applied to both places, but I was invited to the former sooner and was hired immediately. I taught at the vocational school for viticulture and wine-making in Balatonfüred for five years and felt I’d retire from there. I earned enough money as a teacher to build a small apartment in five years, which I still have today. While I was teaching in Füred, I did a doctorate at ELTE University in Budapest, and then went to the Teacher Training College in Kecskemét to teach mathematics. My colleague and friend, who was in charge of the German department there, asked me to accompany her to Krems, Austria, where I also presented a lecture, which the rector of the university listened to and suggested that I participate in a university project in New York, which I managed to join. They selected eight teachers from eight countries to learn this constructivist method at the University of Utrecht (now Freudenthal) in the Netherlands, graduate, and return to New York to teach it to university teachers. After five years the program ended, and everyone turned home, including me. In Kecskemét, the principal was happy to see and re-integrate me, but before the school year started, I got a call about another two-year project… Before it ended, a full-time teaching position was advertised and I was chosen out of 32 applicants. This time I didn’t return to Kecskemét. In 1988, this was a great professional opportunity: I was able to go to conferences, do research, and work with people I’d probably never had the chance to meet in Hungary. But this also meant that I had to start my career from scratch. I had to prove myself for seven years in order to get a tenure at the lowest level, while many of my colleagues dropped out. That’s why I lived only in a tiny room for a total of ten years, because I didn’t know whether I would succeed…

You succeeded but remained in close contact with your home institutions. For whom and why is the cooperation between CUNY and ELTE useful?

I stayed in New York but didn’t cut any ties to my home country. Last year, for example, I gave a lecture at the University of Kecskemét on Science Day. They keep publishing my writings, they feel like I belong to them, and so do I: I’m going home there. Balatonfüred and Kecskemét are such important milestones in my life that I’ll never forget them. But I wanted to keep contact also because I knew that Hungary is very good at teaching logical thinking, while the U.S. system is good at increasing students’ self-confidence, educating them for independence, and putting theory into practice. At a conference of the János Bolyai Mathematical Society, we shared our elementary school teacher training experiences and their impact on our students with mathematics professor Dr. Judit Szitányi. As a result, we submitted a cooperation application and won a five-year scholarship. More than 400 students participated in the joint research on the development of logical thinking and the concept of numbers, and after processing the 16,000 records received, it became clear: Hungarian students have the same difficulties as Americans, but the former are better in 20 out of the 24 topics. We were able to present the results at a high-level international conference, for example at the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) Conference, at one of the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME) conferences in Pretoria, South Africa, and recently at the conference of the American Hungarian Educators Association (AHEA) in Connecticut. Semester student exchanges with mutually accepted credits are also part of the application. We organize teacher exchanges, too: the professors give eight lectures to students at the partner university.

Mathematics seems to be for you a tool for the common good. The justification for the Arany János Medal states: ‘for social, educational and organizational work’. The award was granted by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, it’s not just about your academic results, but what you used the results for, right?

Likely, but I certainly wouldn’t have gotten it if I hadn’t done academic research. Knowledge is yours, but if you keep it to yourself, that’s the end of it. On the other hand, if you pass it on to others, you’ll not have less, while others will have more. Because it’s not important what I do, but what we can achieve together… That’s why I have always tried to pass on everything I learned in Hungary and in the U.S.

In an interview, you stated: although teaching is your job with passion, your voluntary service to the Hungarian nation is your heart and soul.

I live and I’m paid here, but I’m Hungarian in my heart and soul. I never complain, because everything I do, I do with pleasure. For example, I really liked acting, so I applied to director Erzsi Cserey at the Hungarian Theater in New York. In 20 years, I became her first intellectual partner. I got involved in scouting through this theatre, when Erzsi started a program called Pódium on the stage of the 69th Street Reformed Church. We made interviews with famous Hungarians active at the time, including Gábor Bodnár, founder of the Hungarian Scouts Association in Exteris (KMCSSZ in Hungarian). While having the interview with him—his last live interview as he was already terminally ill at the time—, he was actually testing me: after the interview, he told me that the Hungarian Summer School Camp had stopped a year ago—as they ran out of children and teachers—, but will restart next year and I’ll be the one to lead it. The goal of such camps is to provide the opportunity to learn the Hungarian language and culture and is primarily offered to those Hungarian children who live too far away and therefore cannot attend Hungarian weekend schools, which exist only in larger Hungarian communities; today in 33 cities in 22 states. First, I had no idea how to start but I managed to invite a teacher from Hungary and recruited 16 children. After ten years, I handed over the leadership of this camp with 24 teachers and 120 children. Since I could only lead a scout school camp as a scout officer, I became a scout officer, too. Since Gábor was very ill by that time, Imre Lendvai-Lintner, the current leader of KMCSSZ, put the tie around my neck.

The Hungarian Summer School Camp still exists, but the First American Hungarian Summer University founded by you has ceased to exist. Why?

I founded the summer university for those children who quit the Hungarian weekend schools at the age of 14: they have language skills, but they do not have enough literary and historical background. At the summer university, professors like András Ludányi taught them history, literature and ethnography. The professors gladly took part even in the rehearsals of the end-of-camp joint performances—another type of teacher-student collaboration both parties love. We even invited the local Hungarians to the campfire. Even 56ers joined the summer university to improve their Hungarian language skills; for them, it was of symbolic importance. The university was held at a large campsite of the Reformed Church in Pennsylvania acquired by Rev. Bertalan Imre and then carried on by his son. Unfortunately, we have since lost the place due to financial reasons. What first generation Hungarians have built, the second generation kept, the third either kept or not, the fourth mostly lost. We are here now; we will soon lose the Reformed Church in Passaic, and we won’t be able to maintain many other facilities either, because we do not have enough Hungarians attending the churches… There are two conditions for survival of a nation’s heritage: a location and the next generation who is willing to carry on.

Where did the idea for AMIT come from? Have you ever taught in schools?

In New York, I contacted Péter Harkay, then principal of the Arany János Hungarian School, who gladly entrusted me with the senior class that was about to take the scout leader exam. Many current scout leaders were my students then. I taught there for a while, later in St. Stephen Hungarian School in Passaic as well, where I eventually became deputy principal. I was also a professional consultant at the Széchenyi Hungarian School and Montessori Aprókfalva Kindergarten in New Brunswick, New Jersey. I was twice elected leader of AMIT’s predecessor, the Association of Canadian and American Hungarian Schools, which later ceased to exist. 10 years ago, together with Katalin Petreczky, the director of Arany János Hungarian School at the time, we decided to restart it in a new form. AMIT today covers 33 schools in 22 states, with more than a thousand children combined. Our goal is to keep in touch, share knowledge, and provide professional support and further training for teachers who teach children on weekends as volunteers. We meet in person once a year at the Hungarian Consulate in New York, but during the year we hold various online professional meetings. We are in continuous contact with the principals and teachers at these weekend schools that I often visit in person, too.

You seem to be connected to several Hungarian communities in the U.S. Why?

I was born after WWII, when faith couldn’t be lived publicly, but within our ‘four walls’ we received enough support to keep our faith alive. When I lived in New York, I joined the Hungarian community of St. Stephen Church, who directed me towards the Hungarian school, theatre and scouting. My involvement in Hungarian American life is due to that community, especially Katalin Votin. Later, when I lived and worked in Passaic, New Jersey, I visited the St. Stephen’s Church there and was an elected member of the local church council three times for three years. When I bought a house in Monroe, near New Brunswick, I joined the Hungarian community of St. László’s Church in New Brunswick. I feel at home in all three places.

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