Carolyn Mooney

Carolyn Mooney (1948 – 2023) was a classroom teacher, building representative, union officer, and student teacher coordinator in the Hamburg School District for 40 years.

Carolyn was hired in September 1970 as an elementary teacher after graduating from Buffalo State. Armor Elementary School, AES, was her home for the next 33 years. She taught third grade for almost all of those years, most of them with her Level 3 colleagues Marianne Chiumento, Nancy Masters, and Carmen Kluckhohn. Many of Carolyn’s former students fondly remember her “Multiplication and Division Olympics” which helped to ingrain a mastery of basic mathematics.

In 1972 Carolyn, an ardent believer in the importance of student teaching as a critical building block in the development of effective teachers, joined the Fredonia-Hamburg Student Teaching Programs as a charter member. She continued in this program for 40 years, first as a cooperating teacher and a recruiter of other teachers, later becoming the program’s Steering Committee chairman, finally assuming the overall Program Coordinator role conducting classroom instruction for all interns as a n Adjunct Faculty Member of SUNY Fredonia.

In 1987 Carolyn was honored in Albany as an Outstanding Teacher Educator by the New York State Association of Teacher Educators.

In addition to her teaching career Carolyn was a longtime member and former President of the Hamburg-Orchard Park ZONTA club and worked passionately in that role to advance the status of women and girls in service and advocacy.

Carolyn was married to Joseph P. Mooney for 50 years and was the mother of Jeffrey Mooney and Julianne (Jeffrey) Senulis and the grandmother of Cameron Mooney, Anna, Patrick, and Nina Senulis.

Carolyn passed away on November 11, 2023. She is missed to this day by her family, her friends, and her many admirers.