 Kathleen Morris's niece, Susan Kilburn, attended one of Collyer's children's classes in the late 1940s and in 1953 took private lessons at Collyer's duplex on Elm Avenue.One of Collyer's preferred teaching techniques was to set up a still life for her student to paint, using it to demonstrate the use of contrast in painting.Collyer kept up relationships with her friends from Trafalgar School, but her closest friend was Margaret Reid, who supplied the social ease in which she lacked.