When Deputy Superintendent Ann Marie Costa told her mother that she wanted to be a doctor, her mom didn’t believe it was such a good idea.
She told her to be a nurse, or better yet, a teacher.
It was advice that Costa took, and students in the City of Revere for the last 42 years have been all the better for it.
Costa has been a classroom teacher at the former Shurtleff School, a visual arts teacher at Revere High School, an assistant principal at the Garfield, a principal at the Whelan School and – for more than a decade – the second-in-command in the district’s Central Office.
At the end of this school year, her impressive educational run in her hometown of Revere will come to a close when she retires. It is for her impressive career and her continuing progressive decisions in 2011 that Costa is the Revere Journal’s 2011 Woman of the Year.
Costa grew up on Revere Street and was raised in the Revere School system.
She said her mother stressed education because she was not able to pursue her education. During the hardscrabble days of the Great Depression on Revere Street, Costa’s mother had to quit school when her father died young. On top of that, her mother was blind and left with eight kids.
Three out of the family’s four daughters had to quit school and work as seamstresses and stitchers.
Read the full story at the Revere Journal.
