Three Decades of Cooking Up Great Ideas at Epiphany

By Linnea Covington

At the tender age of 6, Wendy Levey knew she wanted to teach's or at least that"s what she told the stranger who came across her painting in the street.

“He said, ‘I guess you will be an artist," and I replied, ‘Nope, I am going to be a teacher," said the now 61-year-old Levey. “And now I think I am very lucky to be living my dream.

Since 1975, Levey has run the Epiphany Community Nursery School, a project that started with five neighborhood kids in the basement of a church. Now, the Upper East Side school teaches 160 children ages 2 to 5 from all over the world. While Levey no longer teaches her own class, she keeps

busy running the institution and interviewing close to 400 families a year.

“I am always thinking of how to make it better, she said over the phone, adding that the crux of her teaching is to make learning come alive for the children.

One way she does this is through creative programs. For example, the 4-year-olds have a “letter of the week and do activities pertaining to that letter. When it"s P week, the teachers and students get to wear pajamas to class one day, bring something to show and tell that starts with P and cook piles of P foods, like pizza, pie and pasta.

Cooking is another way Levey teaches her kids, and even the 2-year-olds get an educational taste of the field.

“We cook every week's it"s a very important part of the program, she said. “I love that they get to mix and measure and count, start with one thing and end up with another's after all, it"s the basis of science.

Levey said everything they do with the kids has an educational orientation. Her goal isn"t to make them smarter but to allow them to become better learners.

The New York-born Levey started giving lessons in 1968, when she left the city to study education in Boston, at Wheelock College. There she took her first job teaching, but came back to Manhattan after only a year. For two years after returning she taught at other schools before deciding to open her own.

Now Levey also runs The 74th Street MAGIC (Music, Art and Gymnastics) Instruction Center. She opened this branch as a place for older kids up to age 14 to benefit from the school and participate with their younger brothers and sisters. One unique thing about the space is its circuit gym, which forces you to figure out how to methodically get from one station to another. Of course, like all of the aspects of Levey"s school, there is a reason for it.

“Sequencing the body and sequencing the mind helps kids be more organized thinkers, she said, likening it to learning how to efficiently shop in a grocery store.

Every day, Levey is thinking about how to improve the school"s seven classrooms and activity spaces, whether that means freshening up curricula, preparing kids for standardized tests or adding new programs. And in her personal life, she is just as busy after raising two children of her own, now 29 and 22, working out daily, serving on two other school boards and heading the youth service program at a drug rehabilitation center.

Is she thinking about slowing down? Not a chance, she said. “I will be running the school as long as I can's hopefully for the rest of my life.