America’s oldest teacher celebrates 100th birthday with her NJ students http://t.co/6Z9hwLN0HT pic.twitter.com/WMe2piSFiz
— NJ.com (@njdotcom) January 10, 2014
Zhelesnik was a homemaker until age 81, when she became a full-time home economics teacher and started teaching students how to cook and sew at the North Plainfield school. She’s still there. Why? She likes the kids, she says. There is another attraction at Sundance for her: Her daughter Agnes Arakelian teaches there, as well.
The Star-Ledger quoted her as saying she would have rather celebrated at home, but said:
They did all this, and so I’m going to live with it.
When she turned 99 last year, she said she might retire at 100, but she didn’t announce plans to do that at her birthday party.
Here’s a video of the celebration held last year when she turned 99: