4 arts teachers take their retirement bows

• Karen Zambelli%3A Putting young dancers on the path
• Carol Arrucci%3A Providing a haven from middle school angst
• M.A. Haskin%3A Helping students find their voices in her home away from home
• Scott Zimmerman%3A After years of sending kids into theater%2C he makes the leap himself

Across the Lower Hudson Valley this weekend, parents are scrambling to find school supplies, kids are hoping to stall the inevitable, and teachers are preparing for a deluge. It's time to go back to school.

But four teachers whose tenure adds up to 113 years in local classrooms won't be heading back to their old schools. They retired in June from positions that had them inspiring students to take to the stage.

• M.A. Haskin spent 35 years teaching theater and public speaking at Dobbs Ferry's private Masters School (and 10 more teaching in Cleveland);

• Karen Zambelli taught dance for 37 years at Mount Vernon's Grimes Elementary School (and Pennington-Grimes when that was around);

• Carol Arrucci spent 25 years teaching music at Blue Mountain Middle School in Cortlandt, every day of those 25 years in the same room — Room 210 — the same room her uncle taught in for 21 years before her;

• Scott Zimmerman ended his 15-year run teaching theater at New Rochelle High School, after 34 years in classrooms from Illinois to Norwalk to the Bronx.

Carol Arrucci | Blue Mountain Middle School | 25 years

Creating a haven for when 'middle school is middle school'

As long as there has been a Blue Mountain Middle School in Cortlandt, there has been Room 210 upstairs, and a member of the Cavalieri family teaching music there.

Until this fall.

When the school opened in 1968, Angelo Cavalieri was the room's first occupant. He stayed 21 years. His niece, Carol Cavalieri Arrucci, took his place and retired in June after 25 years teaching choir and general music in Room 210.

Arrucci's musical roots are deep in Cortlandt, where she will continue to run the Cortlandt School of Performing Arts.

Her inspiration was her high school teacher, Dr. Renato Vellutino, the legendary director-producer-conductor who led productions at Pleasantville High School for 34 years before retiring in 2002.

"I have such great memories of Pleasantville High School," Arrucci said. "I was in every chorus there, even the men's chorus. He threw me in the tenor section and told me to 'sing like a man.' He was a master."

Arrucci never strayed far from high school, popping up across the region as musical director in Pleasantville and Briarcliff and drama director at Hendrick Hudson. She formed a 25-member choir of community kids who landed a role in the 1993 Broadway production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." Even while raising her sons – with her husband, actor Ray Arrucci — she'd rehearse late but always return to Room 210, tired but ready to teach.

"One thing I learned as I went along is that your relationship with kids – showing them that you really care – is important," she said. "Kids have to learn how to critique each other's work with respect. And how to be good listeners. Performers need informed audiences who can talk about what they like and why they like it."

Arrucci said the 42 minutes kids had in Room 210 could turn their bad day around.

"There was always a good vibe here. It was their safe place," she said. "Theater brings that to kids' worlds, where they know it's a place they're safe from being harassed. Middle school is middle school."

Her bond with her students was undeniable, she said, talking about how she'd hug her choir members after each concert. Thinking about them, dozens of kids over dozens of years, brings Arrucci to tears.

"It's tough being in here," she said, dabbing her eyes as she looked around the room. "I'm going to miss this place. It's a long time. It's the end of an era."

Karen Zambelli | Grimes Elementary School | 38 years

Karen vs. Debra

When Karen Zambelli started teaching dance at Grimes Performing Arts Magnet School in her native Mount Vernon, America was 200 years old and she was 22, fresh from NYU.

America is now 238; Zambelli has retired.

Mount Vernon built Grimes Performing Arts Magnet School, offering dance, film animation, voice, piano, guitar, instrumentation — and hired Zambelli as its first dance teacher.

Zambelli's first few weeks were rough, she recalled, because her father was the district's superintendent of buildings and grounds and there were complaints of nepotism when she was hired.

"Then I put on my first concert, and it was wonderful," she said proudly, all these years later. "The superintendent called me into his office and said 'Well, I guess you showed them it wasn't nepotism.'"

Over the years, she moved from Grimes to Pennington-Grimes to Washington School and then back to Grimes. Along the way, she earned her master's in physical education, to bolster her position against budget cuts.

In 1990, famed Mount Vernon Principal Nellie Thornton hired her to teach dance at Washington School (the school now named for Thornton). Zambelli had just wed John Gwardyak, who now directs musicals at Eastchester High School, where Zambelli is bad-cop director-choreographer to Gwardyak's slightly loopy good-cop director-technical director.

"Nellie Thornton was a mama," Zambelli said with appreciation in her voice. "She'd do anything for her kids. John and I were just married and she took me aside and said 'Don't have any babies right away. I need you here for my babies.' "

Zambelli taught ballet and Broadway-style jazz – Bob Fosse jazz. Thornton wanted her to teach tap, which Zambelli didn't know.

She learned tap.

The times have changed.

"In 1976, if you had a rehearsal and it was late, you'd tell the kid 'Get in the car, I'll drive you home,' " Zambelli said. "In 2014, you can't be alone in a classroom with a child, male or female. I was taught ballet by a teacher who would push back my shoulders, move my arms, tap my stomach. Now, if I'm teaching a child ballet, I need to say 'I'm going to touch you. I'm going to move you.' And they'll say 'OK.' It's a different world."

The kids have changed, too.

"What I see now is that when children get corrected, they think of it as an insult and they doubt themselves. I have to go out of my way to say 'I'm not insulting you. I'm not putting you down. I'm not dissing you. I'm just trying to teach you that you're on the wrong foot.' "

Then there's "Debra," Zambelli's alternate personality, who typically appears as the performance nears.

"My kids know Debra. 'You don't want to see Debra,' they'll say. 'Because Debra will shut you down.' Debra will correct you and not be nice about it. The kids know that as we get closer, Ms. Zambelli is going to turn into Debra."

While Debra may be harsh, "she gets on children for their behavior, not their dancing."

Asked what she brought to the equation, Zambelli's voice chokes with emotion. The tears flow.

"I brought fun into their life," she said. "And I brought passion. They couldn't dance, it didn't matter, just as long as they were there and doing whatever they had to do. And we had a good time. I wanted to teach them that if ever they went on they would know how to act professionally and know how to behave in a professional class. And that's what I wanted to give them. But I wanted them to have a good time."

Scott Zimmerman | New Rochelle High School | 15 years

An actor's life for him

For Scott Zimmerman, it's all about character.

In the classroom, where he taught for 34 years – the last 15 at New Rochelle High School, after stints in Illinois, Norwalk and The Bronx – he'd start his freshmen acting students with "Jabberwocky," Lewis Carroll's jibberish poem.

"'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe."

"I tell them 'If you can unleash meaning in this, you can unleash character,' " said Zimmerman, who retired in June.

He was present at the creation of the 209-seat Linda Kelly Theater in the school's new wing, a far cry – and a far way away – from the huge 900-seat Whitney Auditorium at the other end of the sprawling campus.

"The more intimate theater allowed me to work with character more, because the other space eats you up, it's so big."

Now, after decades of directing plays and musicals, and sending some students into the harsh reality of professional theater, Zimmerman is taking the leap himself. He'll live off his pension as he charts a second career, as a professional actor.

He played Mayor Shinn at Westchester Broadway Theatre's "The Music Man" — the first musical he had ever appeared in — and this summer played Cinderella's father in "Into the Woods" at Mamaroneck's Sandbox Theater. He made his New York City acting debut last month in "Poisons," part of the New York Fringe Festival.

His approach to character is the same one he taught at New Rochelle.

"I find the words that define the character. For Mayor Shinn, it was 'Watch your phraseology!' because he was trying to protect his daughter,' " he said.

Part of his new journey is turning to friends for help, including former students now in the business. A former student who is a casting director will help him make the rounds before he attends her L.A. wedding next April. A New York-based casting director wants his resume. Another former student is shopping a screenplay and had Zimmerman read a part, giving him an inside track for screen time down the road.

"I know people. They're not giving me advice," he said. "They're opening doors. Things are just happening."

His directing technique will help him as an actor, he said.

"I call it 'audience expectations.' Whenever I directed a show, I always sat there and said 'How will an audience be affected by this?' If it's not affecting me, it's not working.' When an audience is supposed to tear up, if the kids didn't get me teared up, it wasn't working. And I'd fix it. That was my approach."

Zimmerman isn't auditioning to be the leading-man roles. He knows his strength.

"I'm a character actor," he said.

M.A. Haskin | The Masters School | 35 years

'Pass it on'

The story of M.A. Haskin can best be told in terms of a house, a cow, and a philosophy.

Haskin, who retired in June after 35 years teaching at Dobbs Ferry's private Masters School (and 10 years in Cleveland before that), has lived in Michigan, Ohio, Connecticut and New York. But the house in which Haskin has has spent the most time is "the house" at the theater at Masters, where she taught public-speaking and theater and directed plays and musicals.

"It's scary," she says, a laugh rising in her soft but husky voice. "But I've spent 35 years in this room, most days from 8 in the morning to 6:30 at night, not to mention Saturdays and Sundays. I haven't even slept in the same bedroom that many hours because we've moved."

"In my 35 years, everyone who has graduated from this school has had me as their public-speaking teacher," she says, with a mix of pride and awe in her voice. That's thousands of kids.

In 1979, when Haskin began at Masters, it was a school without musicals, but not without music. Haskin enlisted the school's madrigal singers to take part in "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" and a music teacher to develop musical interludes between scenes. She asked the dance teacher which dances she was most comfortable with. When the teacher came back with The Charleston, Haskin chose "The Boyfriend" as the school's first musical.

"Without collaboration, theater is nothing," she said. That included enlisting men from community theater to play some parts, such as Anne Frank's father. Paul Harrington, Haskin's husband, a red-headed Irishman, played Fagin in "Oliver!" and Mr. MacAffee in "Bye Bye, Birdie."

Students have changed over the years, too. In 1996, boys were first admitted to Masters.

Now, to that cow, which demonstrates how Haskin collaborates with her students. These days, student actors flock to YouTube to see how others have played a role. But that didn't help the Russian girl Haskin cast as Milky White, Jack's cow, in "Into the Woods" this year. Milky White is a role typically given to a prop cow.

"We decided to cast a girl as the cow so the cow could have facial expressions," Haskin said. "She looked on YouTube and said 'How am I going to play the cow?' And I said 'However you want. That's the point.' And her facial expressions were wonderful."

At one point, Milky White dies. The student asked how that was to be done.

"I suggested she think about it, that the cow shouldn't just fall over dead. When would the cow start to show signs of sickness and weakness? I told her to let me know when the cow would have its first burp. She came up with this whole understory of when the cow was run around too much and started to get weak. And that wasn't my telling her what to do. That was me telling her to figure it out. Her face just before she fell over? Hysterical."

Retirement will mean going to plays put on by her grandkids.

"I see teaching as a passing on to someone else. People ask what famous people I taught, I think 'You don't have to become Meryl Streep,' I'm talking about whatever you learned in here pass it on. Pass it on to kids you work with, pass it on to your children.' I really think this is a good time to pass it on to another generation of students and teachers."