Miriam Krinick, who turned 100 in November, was honored on Nov. 1 at Brooklyn’s PS 108, where she taught for 18 years, at the unveiling of a Little Yellow Library, a charitable donation to the school from the Kendra Scott Foundation.

“For over 50 years, I’ve been a member of the UFT,” she said.

Krinick started her teaching career in 1959 when educators had no union representation. “I remember when Al Shanker came in,” she said, referring to the union founder who became UFT president in 1964. “Until then, there were a lot of things that weren’t right,” she said. “I made $4,300. I could have made more as a bookkeeper.”

Krinick was among the teachers who walked off the job in 1968. She marched alongside her daughter, Merrill, who was herself a new teacher. “I didn’t feel comfortable about being on strike,” she said, “but if this was going to get what we needed, we had to do it. It made a difference. We got benefits — things that we really needed.”

Although she started as a per-diem sub in 1959, she took over a 4th-grade class midyear with students who were acting out. “These kids weren’t even allowed in the auditorium,” she said.

Krinick embraced the challenge. “I believed in finding every student’s strength,” she said. Her teaching philosophy, she said, was centered on making every child feel valued and appreciated. By the end of that year, not only were the students allowed in the auditorium, they threw her a party there. “I was dancing with 4th-graders,” she said.

Krinick taught at PS 108 in Cypress Hills from 1965 until her retirement in 1983. Claire Kaplan, a fellow retiree, remembered how Krinick helped her make the transition back to the classroom in the early 1980s after a decade-long maternity leave. After such a long absence, Kaplan needed a mentor to learn the new reading curriculum. Krinick taught demo lessons in Kaplan’s class, gradually getting her up to speed but without ever being overbearing.

“I felt like a new teacher,” Kaplan said, “and Miriam brought me back to feeling like a good teacher.”

Krinick has inspired three more generations of teachers in her family: her daughter Merrill taught briefly after college, her granddaughter Aubra Arbuse is a 31-year veteran teacher at IS 278 in Brooklyn, and Arbuse’s son and Krinick’s great grandson, Adam, is in his second year teaching physical education at Midwood HS in Brooklyn.

“Your joy in teaching was so incredible for us,” Aubra Arbuse said to her grandmother. “Look at us, we’re teachers!”

In awarding the proclamation to Krinick, UFT Vice President Mary Vaccaro lauded Krinick’s long service as a teacher and as a UFT member. “All of us here today,” she said, “can go back to our classrooms and think ‘I can be like Miriam. I can have that effect on people’s lives.’”