For the past three decades, Tina Stevenson has been a nurturing force for the children at the Seal Beach Playgroup.
Now the woman known affectionately as “Miss Tina,” despite being married and with two grown children of her own, is retiring.
“Miss Tina has an amazing connection with children. She not only teaches them but empowers them,” said Erica Keil, whose daughter Olivia attends the playgroup. “The kids adore her.”
Friends, family and co-workers are preparing a way to send her off in style with a celebration of her “30 years of dedication.”
Miss Tina’s Retirement Party will be held from 6 to 11 p.m. on Saturday, March 13, at the Old Ranch Country Club, 3901 Lampson Avenue Seal Beach. The $75 per person event will feature dinner, dancing and an auction with proceeds to benefit the playgroup and its programs.
Stevenson has helped a generation and more get a good start in life and there seems to be a legion of parents in the Seal Beach area who appreciate her special way with the hundreds of small children whose welfare she has concerned herself with over the years.
She has been a part of the playgroup for so long that she has even had the child of a child she had at the playgroup under her supervision.
“It has been my privilege to touch the lives of 700 to 800 children,” she said.
Stevenson has earned a great reputation for her ability to engage children with a sense of wonderment of the world around them and helped to give them some initial social skills – a job that is sometimes not without its stress. To many people who have known her over the years, she has done so without seeming to age. In fact some say she looks like the same statuesque woman who started at the playgroup 30 years ago.
Stevenson was born in Long Beach and lived in the Naples area for about the first six years of her life.
“We moved to Whittier for the school time and back to the beach in the summer,” she said. “I married my high school sweetheart, Don, who grew up in Belmont Shore.
“I worked in the French Hospital Pathology Department while he finished graduate school at USC and got his teaching credential.”
She left the hospital to have children and never went back.
“I went back to school after our second child and worked toward my ECE and Director Certificates,” she said. “I decided that I wanted the same vacations as my husband and children and I wanted to be part of the important learning process of the early years.”
In 1972, the family bought a house in Huntington Beach and have lived in “Surf City” ever since. They have two grown sons, Eric and Kit, and 3 grand daughters.
So how will she fill her time, without the playgroup responsibilities?
“In my spare time I enjoy reading, gardening, cooking, photography, cross country skiing, and I even knit and crochet a little,” she said. “I am not one to sit.”
Stevenson has been at Seal Beach Playgroup since 1980 and said she has had the pleasure of knowing “some of the best families in the area.”
Over the years, Stevenson has received awards from California Council of Parent Participation Nursery Schools (our parent co-op group). These include: Teacher of the Year, Teacher Director Award, Lifetime Achievement Award, and Community Service Award.
“My greatest reward/achievement has been the smiles on the faces of the children and the knowledge that I have been a small part of their education,” she said.
For more information about Miss Tina’s Retirement Party, go to www.sealbeachplaygroup.com.
