Front of the Class Read online

  Around seven o’clock, it was finally time to leave. There was still so much to do that I could have worked through the night, but I knew I needed to go home and get a good night’s sleep. As I left the now quiet building, one of the custodians passed me and said, “Welcome to Mountain View. We’re excited to have you here.”

  I couldn’t believe the enthusiastic welcome I had received—from everyone! It was so comforting and comfortable. I loved this school!

  As I walked to my car in the empty parking lot, I reflected on my first day. I knew in my heart that Mountain View was absolutely the right place for me. Although it had taken a desperately long time to get a job, I always knew I needed the right administration in order to be successful. Hilarie and Jim set the tone here, and the rest of the staff followed. They were all nice, and most welcomed me with open arms. I still couldn’t quite believe that they were going to give me a chance to teach. Everyone here was able to see through the Tourette’s and see me. It was a great feeling.

  The next morning came early. Not only did I have to finish getting the classroom ready; I also needed to get my lesson plans together. And I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to teach.

  There were 650 students at Mountain View Elementary. To form my class, each second grade teacher identified four or five kids from her class to move to my room. There had been four second grade classes. Mine would be the fifth. On Friday afternoon all my students headed to their new room. Since my room had no desks, they brought their own from their old classrooms. It was great. I heard the noise coming down the hall before anyone arrived. When I stuck my head out through the doorway, I saw a herd of seven-year-olds pushing their desks and chairs along the carpeted hallway toward me. It was the most wonderful sight I have ever seen! Once they arrived, they put their desks wherever they wanted. At the time, I didn’t care where they were putting their desks. That was the least of my worries. I was trying to figure out how in the world I was going to remember all their names.

  As the kids came in, some commented favorably on the paper ice cream cones hanging on the door and walls. The cones on the door said, “Welcome to Mr. Cohen’s Class.” On the walls, I had written the name of each student on a brightly colored ice cream cone.

  Everyone in the room, including me, was excited. The kids were all smiling and began making new friends right away. I overheard a few sharing stories about why they were picked over other students in their class, and they were discussing how some of the other students were upset that they were not picked to be in my class. It made me feel great to hear that.

  First things first, I decided. I needed to figure out who these kids were; I needed to get to know them. I got my student list and began to go down the roster, all the while feeling like I was announcing the starting lineup for an all-star baseball game. I was that proud.

  When I finished, I noticed there was one little girl who was not on my list. I went to Hilarie and she quickly figured out the situation. This girl was not on the list to switch classes, but she so badly wanted to be in my class that she had made the switch on her own. Her teacher had never even realized she had left the room. I was very flattered, but quickly sent her back to her own class.

  When the kids left for the weekend, butterflies started kicking around in my stomach. I was officially a teacher and I had a lot to do. The only problem was that I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do. This is common for first-year teachers; college teaches us only so much. Once we get into real-life situations, we have to make it work on our own. I knew that only time and experience would make me more comfortable, and I tried not to stress out too much.

  The next week I had an open house for my class. Ours was the only class doing an open house because all the other classes had held theirs just after the school year started. This was a great chance for me to meet the parents. I talked about Tourette’s, but that didn’t take as long as I had expected. Apparently I had done a good job of educating the kids, and they had gone home and told their parents all about it. Several of the parents felt comfortable enough to offer to come in each week to help in the classroom, and I was strengthened by their support.

  Overall, I felt the need to prove myself to everyone. I was a twenty-two-year-old guy fresh out of college, and I knew everyone was wondering if I really could teach with Tourette’s. Although I stayed positive, I knew there was a hint of doubt in everyone else’s mind. I intended to put that to rest as soon as possible. I made a point to be as funny and outgoing as possible and to spend as much time getting to know the teachers and staff as I did the kids.

  Each grade level at Mountain View worked as a team. The teachers all worked together and shared ideas regularly. It was a wonderful, nonthreatening environment for me. That first year, I did a lot of listening. I was very interested to hear what the other teachers had done in the past, what had worked, and what had not worked. When I felt I had a good idea to share, I would share it, but I understood that I had a lot to learn and was more thankful every day that these teachers were willing to help.

  My first class was an interesting combination of students. There were eleven boys and eight girls. Some of them were really rough, and I couldn’t help but think about how each of these kids had ended up in my class. The other teachers had chosen which students would be transferred from their class to mine. Some gave me the children they didn’t want in their classes because those particular kids would be difficult for them to teach. Other kids ended up in my class because the original teacher thought they would benefit from some positive male support. Some of the boys were a special handful. They monopolized my time, and I had to deal with a lot of academic and behavioral issues with them. I worked really hard that year to be sure I made a difference in each one of my students’ lives. And I got to know some of their parents very well.

  As the year went on, I gave up many planning periods and lunch hours to go into as many classes of the other grades as I could, to teach them about Tourette’s. After just a month, the entire school knew why there was a teacher walking down the hallway barking. I must have done my job well, because before too long, kids of all ages would wave to me in the halls. Brothers and sisters of my own students would stop by and say hi in the morning before classes, or in the afternoon before they went to their buses.

  The teachers got to know me better as we attended in-service workshops at other schools or just hung out together after school. As often as possible, I got up in front of groups of teachers and explained Tourette’s and answered all their questions. It was nice to know I had a family of teachers at Mountain View—and in surrounding schools—after only a few months.

  It was nice, also, to finally be able to tell my parents that I had a job. It relieved a lot of stress for both of them, particularly my mom, who had always made it clear that her door was open should I want to go back to St. Louis. During that first year, my mom came to visit me at school, and Dad and Diane also stopped by to read to my class.

  While my dad was waiting for me when he came to visit, he had a few minutes to chat with our school secretary, Nancy Bazemore. “Eventually we could hear Brad coming down the hall toward us,” recalled Nancy, “ because he was making noises, as he usually does. As Brad got closer and closer, and the noises got louder and louder, his dad turned to me and very dryly said, ‘Hide-and-seek never was Brad’s game.’”

  Once I finally got into the classroom, I could truly be me. My second-graders, like young children everywhere, were not caught up in how people are different, so they were unfazed by my Tourette’s. As the days passed, I understood more and more that teaching was what I was born to do. I wanted school to be fun, but I also realized that since all my kids were individuals, not every activity would speak to every child.

  As I taught, I used all the techniques I had learned in college, and I tried new things that I learned throughout the year. I was not afraid to try something a little different. Keeping the students’ best interests in mind, I needed them to learn th
e curriculum, but I didn’t want to be a teacher who gave out ditto sheets and had the kids do desk-work all day. Instead, I integrated the curriculum, teaching science and social studies with reading and math. We did lots of projects so the kids could participate in hands-on learning activities. My classroom was set up so that kids sat together in groups of four, which was perfect for when we needed to do things in small groups.

  For example, we did a big space unit for which I had all the kids get in groups and make the various planets out of papiermache. I also combined music and science by playing the song “Here Comes the Sun” while we learned about space. In another unit, we learned about different natural habitats, and the kids wrote reports. When we learned about Japan, we did origami. For one unit, each student chose an animal, researched it, and then gave a speech. For most of the units, we made colorful displays on the walls of the room out of butcher paper and construction paper. I had the weekly spelling words hanging on the wall, and every day we did something with the calendar. I love pumpkins, so we had a big unit on pumpkins and did a lot of hands-on learning with the many pumpkins I had brought into the classroom. Then we cooked them to make pumpkin food items. I also read to the class every day and saved time for independent reading. When I was busy helping one student, I put on my Dr. Seuss The Cat in the Hat hat so that the others would know not to interrupt. Whenever possible, I made learning fun.

  Mountain View Elementary is the kind of school where moms and dads are very involved, and I worked hard to earn the respect of my students’ parents. I knew my kids’ learning styles inside and out, and at parent-teacher conferences I provided parents with full reports on how their child was progressing in reading and math. I worked with kids one-on-one as much as I could, and I learned how to set up my room in stations, so that some kids could work independently while I taught small groups. Everything fell into place.

  “I remember the first time I saw Brad interact with his students,” recalled Cindy Bergeron, the computer lab instructor at Mountain View. “I was in the lab when Brad came in with his second-graders. He seemed like all the other teachers in our school, except that he had Tourette syndrome. The moment that really sticks in my memory is when Brad wanted the students to stop working, line up, and leave the lab. I had watched other teachers yell, threaten, and flip the lights off and on to get the attention of their students. Instead, Brad called out, ‘If you can hear me, do the Mickey Mouse.’ Several children lined up and put their hands over their heads like Brad. Next he called out, ‘If you can hear me, do the Scooby-Doo.’ More children quickly got in line and began to do the twist. Soon Brad had the attention of the entire class because they wanted to hear what he had to say. He made learning fun. Brad had accomplished his goal quickly, and without raising his voice. I knew then that Brad was different, not because he had Tourette syndrome but because he was a great teacher.”

  I don’t know if I was a great teacher then or not, but my kids sure had fun. With my star chart and Reach for the Stars theme, the class could earn stars for good behavior in the classroom and the school. Once they earned 100 stars, the class got a celebration. The first time they reached this goal, they decided to have a sleep-out during the day under the stars, since we were learning about planets. The kids brought sleeping bags and we made s’mores. I don’t know who enjoyed that day more, the kids or me.

  I used a flip chart with colored cards to monitor behavior. Each child had a pocket and began the day with a yellow pocket card for good behavior. If a student misbehaved, he or she had to flip the card to another color that meant time-out. A second misbehavior and the student flipped the card to a color that meant he or she had to miss recess, and so on until the child eventually ended up in the principal’s office. I tried to deal with the problem myself before it got that far, because my own trips to the principal’s office were still fresh in my mind, and I knew what a negative and devastating experience that could be.

  Keeping order in the classroom was really hard for me that first year. I had several children who decided to write “bad words” on the back wall of the school. Discipline aside, as a first-year teacher I was most surprised to see that these children spelled the bad words correctly, while missing simple words on their spelling tests. I had several students who were discipline problems, and I didn’t know as much as the veteran teachers about how to take charge. When two students tried to light a match in the bathroom, the other teachers and Hilarie were there to help me.

  Lighting a match in the bathroom was not acceptable behavior by any means. Together, Hilarie, the other teachers, and I decided on firmness, but also a program of extra attention and strong praise for the smallest successes. The plan worked, and I am happy to say that a few years later both children were doing well. To me, that is what teaching is about. I happened to be in those children’s lives at a critical time and for some reason recognized it as such. Had the situation been handled poorly, those kids could have ended up as arsonists incarcerated in juvenile detention. Instead, they found positive alternatives and they are turning into productive young citizens.

  Late in the year, another of my toughest kids gave me a poem, and attached to it was a penny with the shape of an apple cut out of it. That poem is one of my most treasured possessions, because it means that in some way I touched that child’s life. I never look at it without thinking of that kid, and I’m so very proud that I could make a difference.

  After the match incident, I turned often to another second grade teacher, Susan Scott, for help in deciding how to deal with problems in my classroom. Susan became a mentor to me as she helped me with curriculum and routine problems.

  And there were certainly many problems, both before and after I was seeking advice from Susan. We had a fire drill my first day of school, and I took my class out the wrong door. If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, the entire school had to do the drill again because my class had messed up in front of the fire marshal. As the year went on, more happened. I ran out of pencils the first month; then I sent home a newsletter with some major misspellings; once, I forgot to save some permission slips for a field trip, so the morning of the outing I had to call each parent to confirm that we had permission to take their child to a museum.

  In spite of glitches like these, my daily routine rarely varied and I thrived on the structure of my days. I’d arrive at school a little early and get situated before the kids came. We did reading, writing, and math in the morning, social studies and science in the afternoon. In between were lunch and recess. Some of the teachers sent out for their lunch, but I ate the school lunch. Early on, I got in good with the lunchroom server. She quickly learned what I liked and what I didn’t like, and made sure that I always had a big helping of vegetables to go with the two chocolate-chip cookies I’d take consistently. I have to say that the food at Mountain View really was very good—certainly better than the fast food I was eating for dinner.

  In the spring of that year I brought out the bubble. This was a huge piece of plastic attached to a fan. The fan blew into the plastic, forming a tentlike bubble, and four or five kids at a time could go inside where it was quiet and cool to read or study. The kids loved this ten-foot-wide bubble, and it became one of my trademarks.

  I also took lots of pictures of my first class. A teacher doesn’t get a second chance for a first class, so I wanted to have plenty of photos to remember everything we did. One day while I was trying to take a class picture, the kids wanted everyone to make a funny face. I just could not get them to smile for my nice photo, and I realized I would never have a nice photo of my class if I let them make funny faces every time. So I told them that every time we took a class picture, I would take two pictures. For the first one, everyone would smile. For the second one, everyone would make the goofiest face possible. This strategy yielded some hilarious results.

  As the year progressed, I worked with the children who struggled in reading, spent a lot of time with the kids who couldn’t write well, redirected bad
behavior, and challenged the kids who needed to be challenged. I went to Susan, my mentor teacher, and told her I was having a good first-year experience, but I often felt like I was not really sure if what I was teaching was good enough. In reply, she gave me a sign that I still have on my desk. It reads: “IF YOU WANT TO FEEL SECURE, DO WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW TO DO. IF YOU WANT TO BE A TRUE PROFESSIONAL AND CONTINUE TO GROW … GO TO THE CUTTING EDGE OF YOUR COMPETENCE, WHICH MEANS A TEMPORARY LOSS OF SECURITY. SO WHENEVER YOU DON’T QUITE KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING, KNOW YOU’RE GROWING.” This quote from renowned educator Madeline Hunter still guides me as I plan my days.

  GOING TO THE CUTTING EDGE

  ONE DAY IN EARLY MARCH 1997, when I was about six months into the job, Hilarie pulled me into her office and told me she wanted to nominate me for an award. The Sallie Mae First Class Teacher of the Year Award was given in every state and Washington, D.C., to their best first-year teachers. First, each school in each county decides if there is anyone from their school they’d like to nominate. Then each county chooses a winning teacher from its individual schools. Then each state chooses a winning teacher out of all its county winners. Mountain View wanted to put my name in for their school.

  I was very flattered, but after taking the application home and reading it, I really didn’t think the award was for me. The next day I walked into Hilarie’s office and said, “I think I’d like to decline the nomination right now.”

  “Why would you do that?” she asked, a very puzzled look on her face.

  I tried to explain why I didn’t think I deserved the nomination. I knew I did a good job as a second grade teacher, but I knew there were many areas in which I needed to improve, such as in learning how to maintain discipline in the classroom. I knew I could do better.