We Will Miss You Jan!
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?”
Martin Luther King Jr.
For every day of the past forty-seven years, Janice Friedman answered this question through her work first as an educator, and ultimately as the CEO for the Variety Child Learning Center, which is headquartered in Syosset and has two additional locations in Levittown.
The Variety Child Learning Center is a preschool and school-aged setting that promotes the development, education and inclusion into the diverse community of children with or at risk of disabilities.
Beginning her career as a Master Teacher working along-side renown early childhood activist and educator the late Judith S. Bloch, Jan entered the field of early childhood education immediately upon earning a Master of Arts in Early Childhood Special Education from George Washington University.
“I wanted to work with young children,” said Friedman, “I knew there was a great philosophy behind the education at Pre-Schooler’s Workshop.” Pre-Schooler’s Workshop, then located in Garden City, began as a single-class program that would later develop into Variety Child Learning Center. “Judy Bloch drove our team. She was an unbelievable mentor to me and she taught me a lot,” offered Friedman, who noted that when she began at Pre-Schooler’s Workshop there were four classrooms.
