Mrs. Lombard is Retiring: Third Grade Teacher, will miss her ‘home away from home’

By Natalie Bass, Student Life Editor|April 18, 2021

Colonial Times file photo

Mrs. Lombardi on a 2014 field trip to the New York Botanical Gardens.

Joanne Lombardi, a third grade teacher at Colonial, is retiring this year. She said she will miss having students and seeing the Colonial staff, who are like family to her.

Teaching has never been easy for Mrs. Lombardi, but she said she enjoys getting to be a part of children’s lives and is happy when she teaches people something new.

Mrs. Lombardi said she makes sure everyone has a chance to learn and has a good time. She knows becoming an elementary school teacher was one of the best decision she ever made.

Colonial is “a place with wonderful children who want to learn and who reward their teachers with smiles that say, ‘I get it!'” she said.

Mrs. Lombardi taught computer for three years before switching to third grade. Other than that, she spent one year as a fourth grade teacher. She loves teaching third grade because she said kids at that age love to learn and are enlightened by the world around them.

After  retirement, she said she plans “to do a little traveling… around our own country first and then to a few European countries that are on my list.” She also plans to buy a small beach house for the summer and take up the piano again.

All of her students will miss Mrs. Lombardi when she is gone. And Mrs. Lombardi will miss Colonial too. After all, she thinks of Colonial as her “home away from home.”