(Following are excerpts from a speech delivered at NYSUT's School-Related Professionals Conference in the fall.)

Although I complained often during my first few months on the NYSUT Board of Directors that there wasn't enough at these conferences for a private-sector higher education worker like myself, the fact is that all of you have been here to teach me . . . and you've taught me how much we have in common and how much harder your jobs are than mine.

The last 18 months has also brought back some fond memories of the SRPs and teachers who worked in the schools I attended. For example, there was Mrs. Been, the lunch lady at the Mile Creek Elementary School in Old Lyme, Conn. If lunch lady is politically incorrect, I apologize, but that's how we knew her. Anyway, Mrs. Been single-handedly ended malnutrition at Mile Creek.

Anytime a child didn't want to eat his vegetables, all the lunch monitors had to do was report it to Mrs. Been, and she'd come out of the kitchen with a two-foot-long wooden spoon. When we saw her coming with that spoon, everybody's plate was clean. Mrs. Been is the reason I eat brussels sprouts today.

And there was our bus driver. Gramps was a tall, strapping, white-haired older man who knew how to teach respect. From kindergarten through the seventh grade, Gramps was the only bus driver I knew.

Then, on the first day of eighth grade, the bus stopped and the doors opened, but Gramps wasn't there. What had happened was that Gramps' eyes had grown too weak and his reflexes a little too slow, and a decision was made that it was no longer safe for Gramps to drive a busload of children. But the school board had a very interesting pension plan for Gramps. They gave him a job inside the school with a bucket and a mop. Now, Gramps was of an age to have been a young man during the Depression and I'm sure, in his heart, he believed the school board had done him a favor by allowing him to work until the day he died. Gramps is the reason I have made improving pensions a priority of my local for our last three contracts.

And there was Mrs. Angelo, who had the dubious honor of having to teach me algebra, geometry and trigonometry over three years in high school. I wasn't the brightest light, and at least twice a week she worked with me after school because she was determined that I would keep up with the class.

Fifteen years later, she was still making me do my homework. On the first warm day of spring, I just had to go for a bike ride instead of doing my accounting homework. But Mrs. Angelo's voice drifted in on the breeze and said, "Stephen, if you don't do your homework, you'll never pass the exam." I got out my spreadsheets.

Mrs. Angelo is the reason I can set up the algebraic equation needed to calculate the pension benefits of my members.

Wherever Mrs. Angelo, Mrs. Been and Gramps are today, in this world or the next, I hope that their ears are ringing to know that 30 to 40 years later, they were publicly acknowledged for their contributions.

You've taught me just how misguided our nation's priorities have become these last six years. We pay obscene amounts of money that couldn't be spent in a thousand lifetimes by ordinary people to corporate executives who, with a memo, a press release or only a few keystrokes on a computer, can export jobs, lay off thousands of workers in our communities, and divest from our towns and cities — which undermines the tax base needed to support our schools.

And we pay the lowest salaries to the Mrs. Angelos, the Mrs. Beens and the Gramps who, every day, are entrusted with this nation's most precious assets: our children, our future. And, after years of making us pay more and more for health insurance, the foundation is now being laid to renege on our pensions.

You've taught me that it requires a profound dedication to restrain a violent student with compassion and to do it thinking more about the safety of the student you're restraining than your own.

You've taught me that, even in the most hopeless student, there is still hope; we just have to look a little harder for it.

You've taught me that every child — no matter how challenged, no matter how troubled, abused, neglected, angry, lonely, or unfocused — every child has the potential for success, if only we don't give up.

We can't give up if only because we don't know today which of our students will grow up to be the doctor who will find a cure, the lawyer who will represent a misguided youth or the politician who can refocus this nation's priorities and intelligently allocate its resources.

Yes, you have really given me an education.

You've instilled in me the highest admiration for all public school employees and I have just two words for all of you who have taught me so well: Thank you.

Rechner is president of the Union of Clerical, Administrative and Technical Staff at New York University. He was recently elected to the newly created position of at-large director representing private-sector higher education on the NYSUT Board of Directors.