SUNNYSIDE -- When she started her teaching career, Eisenhower was President, and gas cost less than a quarter a gallon. Now, a Sunnyside teacher talks about changes in education, and the lives she's touched for more than 50 years.

"You will take a number, and you'll build that many things by it," says Bobbi Quigley, as she talks to her class.

    If the number 53 was in that deck, Quigley's students might have a tough time gathering that many items for this math exercise. That's how many years quigley's been teaching first graders for the Sunnyside School District.

"There has never been a morning that I've gotten up on a school day, that this isn't where I've wanted to be," says Quigley.

    When she started in 1956, computers weren't even around. Now, Mrs. Quigley, as her students at Outlook Elementary know her, would call herself an encourager, rather than a teacher.

"It used to be someone would walk in and hear this talking, they would say not a good idea, this is so healthy now, we want children to use their language," she says.

"I don't think most people can do it, but she's still fabulous," says first grade teacher Mara Zieske, who was inspired by Quigley to become a teacher herself.

"Mrs. Quigley is the kind of teacher that every first grader in her room thinks they are the most important person in the world," says Zieske.

"I look at them and think of the difference, honestly, I'm getting a little moved right now, that they have made in my life," says Quigley.

    The longtime teacher says she'd love to keep teaching for another 53 years.

"This is their chance for upward mobility. It's an infinity, we have no stopping line for a goal and I love being a part of that," says Quigley.

    The Sunnyside School District is home to more than two dozen teachers with more than 30 years of experience each. Harrison Middle School has one teacher who's been there for 41 years.