Monday, July 14, 2025
Nearly 20 years ago, 5-year-old Sydney Caven was getting ready to hop on the school bus and head to her first day of kindergarten at East Elementary School in Long Beach. But Sydney wasn’t happy, hysterically crying as she boarded.
Her mother, Tina Posterli, was obviously heartbroken. Even today, she remembers that day as if it were yesterday.
“On her first day of kindergarten, she was just so little, and I was choking up at the bus stop as she went up the stairs of that big yellow bus, because she looked so tiny compared to the bus and everyone around her,” Posterli recalled. “She was really scared. I assured her, ‘You are going to love it. It’s going to be great,’ telling that to myself too.”
Worried for Sydney, she called her daughter’s soon-to-be kindergarten teacher, Sharon Weiss, to explain the situation. She told her she had just put her daughter on the bus, and that she was hysterical. Weiss assured her that she’d be there the second the young girl stepped off the bus to meet her and comfort her, and she’d call her back once Sydney was settled.
“True to my word, I went and I took her off the bus, brought her to class, and I waited a little while to call Mom back, because I wanted to see that she was OK in the classroom,” Weiss said. “I called Tina back, and I said to her, ‘Everything’s OK. She’s doing great in class, I took her off the bus.’ She started laughing and goes, ‘I know. I followed the bus to school, so I watched you take her off the bus.’”
Posterli lived around the corner from the bus stop, so she made a split decision to follow the bus that morning to make sure her daughter would be fine. She got to the school and parked around the corner so she could see Sydney get off the bus. She saw her get off, crying, and was ready to run over to her. But before she could take a step, Weiss was there, guided her off the bus and comforted her until she calmed down.
Posterli then knew her daughter was in good hands.
Posterli never told Sydney, who’s now 24, about that day until four years ago, when Posterli was on the Long Beach Board of Education and gave a presentation about Weiss, who was receiving tenure as an assistant principal. Weiss worked in the district for 33 years as a teacher, teacher in charge and assistant principal. She spent 28 years at East School, the last five at Lido Elementary School, before retiring in June 2021.
Shortly after retiring, in August, Weiss started working as a field supervisor at Molloy University, acting as a mentor for student teachers. She stopped into Frippery, a boutique in Long Beach, where Caven was working one Saturday over the summer, and they got to reminisce. Weiss knew that Caven was going into teaching, but she didn’t know they were fated to meet again.
“We got to talking, catching up a little bit, because it’d been a while,” Caven said. “I told her that I recently got into the graduate program at Molloy for teaching, and she happened to be one of the field supervisors there for student teachers. It was really, really amazing, because she was actually going to retire that year, but then when she found out that I was going, she stayed another year for me.”
Over the past few months, since August 2024, Caven and Weiss had been working very closely with each other once again, back in East School together, just like old times, loving every minute of it. Caven just graduated with her master’s on May 19.
Caven said she officially decided as a junior in high school that she wanted to be a teacher. She would work as a camp counselor and it showed her what it was like working with children, solidifying what she wanted her career to be. Deep down, she thinks Weiss sparked her love for teachers and teaching back on her first day of school.
“I loved working with the children, I loved how rewarding it was just being with them and being around them,” Caven said. “I had so much fun, and I wanted to be that figure in their lives, I wanted to be like Sharon. I wanted to be for these children what Sharon was to me. I wanted to be the person that they would remember for years and years.”
Caven doesn’t remember everything from that day back on her first day of kindergarten, but after hearing the story from both her mother and Weiss, she said she knows how important that day was to not just her, but all of them.
“My relationship with Sharon obviously started when I was very, very young, my very first day of kindergarten,” she said. “She has been my everything throughout this process. I can go to her with advice, I can go to her with absolutely anything. She’s been absolutely amazing. She’s been such an amazing mentor figure in my life, and I pretty much owe everything I know to her.”
Weiss has been a vital part of the lives of students of every age: elementary, middle school, high school and college. She’s helped so many young learners, but with Caven, she did something that not many people can say. She’s seen her through the very beginning and the end of her learning journey.
“She’s become a superstar,” Weiss said of Caven. “She’s wonderful and amazing. You don’t get the chance to see kids at 5 years old and then go become 24 year olds and from the start of their (learning) career to the end.”
