Carmel Brown sat at her desk and assured a visitor that she prays to St. Joseph “all the time.”

Consistently, St. Joseph has answered those special prayers with solutions, help and other things that seem to just appear, said the Shelton resident and mother of two.

“I’m wondering, “ she said with a smile, if he had something to do with her latest opportunity.

Brown, an educator at area parochial schools for the past 11 years, has been named the new principal at St. Joseph’s School here. For the Derby native who graduated Derby high School in 1965 , it is a “thrilling” role.

“I always wanted to be a teacher. It’s the only thing I ever wanted to be as a little girl…I’d line up my dolls and teach them…and my three younger brothers had to (play) my students, too” she said, chuckling.

During her college years, she spent summers as a teacher’s aide for “underachievers” and as a playground counselor. “There was nothing else that seemed right for me, it seemed,” the slim, black-haired woman recalled.

After earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in education, art and reading from Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, Brown taught in the Seymour public school system for 18 years.

In 1987, she began teaching at St. Mary’s School in Derby. When St. Mary’s and St. Michael’s schools merged in 2988, she began a 10 year teaching career at the merged schools.

Since, 1993, she has been the schools’ assistant principal, based at St. Michael’s.

She was aware of the opening at St. Joseph’s created by a retirement. But Brown had not thought of applying for the job until a school official urged her to do so. Now St. Joseph---by the way, the name of both Brown’s husband and son---has an even larger role in her life.

“What better saint could you have protecting your school?” she asked, referring to the foster father of Jesus, a carpenter she calls “ a quiet saint…everyone forgets him.”

Brown said one of her primary tasks at St. Joseph’s will be to give the children “a strong faith. If you have faith in God and in yourself, that is the most important thing,”

She sees Catholic schools as “an extension of the family…giving each child caring, love and dedication. Each child should be treasured and cherished, respected and loved.”

“Proving a caring environment for them to learn in that’s what I believe I can give them,” she added.

Preparing for the start of the new academic year Aug 25, when 114 children enter St. Joseph’s classes in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. Brown has a few new features in mind.

She plans to set up a Future Musicians Program, essentially, a school band and will begin a Rainbows Program a national effort involving peer support groups for children from homes affected by death or divorce.

She is also planning additions for St. Joseph’s computer lab, which now has 5 computers.

Individual classrooms are also equipped with one computer each. But Brown wants each child in the school “to experience being in a computer lab with a computer teacher at least once a week.”

Brown is also establishing a development program at the school to attract funding for improvements and additions.

A parishioner at St. Mary’s Church in Derby, she is an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist, passing out communion.

She is also a Lay Carmelite and secretary for the St. Lawrence Church of Shelton chapter of the Lay Carmelites, a religious order of women who try to model themselves after Mar, the mother of Jesus.