In 1985, “Back to the Future” was the highest-grossing film, Whitney Houston made her recording debut, and Michael Jordan was named the NBA Rookie of the Year. It was also the year Colleen Cox first started teaching kindergarten at Burbank Elementary School in Belmont. While the top movies, music, and sports have changed over time, Cox remained in the same classroom, in the same school, and in the same town, a steady presence for the littlest students beginning their school careers.
But time marches on, and Cox has announced that this will be her final year of teaching in Belmont.
The Belmont Voice asked Cox to share her thoughts on how teaching and education have changed over the years and how she feels about saying goodbye to the classroom after all these years.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why are you retiring now?
I’m starting to have, in my classroom, children of children that I taught. And there are several teachers in town that I had as kindergarteners. I had some health issues last year that really made my husband and me stop and pause and say, where are we? That was one of the major reasons that I decided to retire this year as opposed to next year when I hit 40 years. It just seems to be the right time. I want to depart while I can still move around freely and still love the job.
Tell me about why you love to teach kindergartners specifically. Clearly, they are your favorite group of people .
I love kindergarten because it is the time of the biggest brain growth, and it only happens twice in our lives, once from birth to 1 and then from 5 to 6 when all of the acquisition of language is put into reading and writing knowledge. In the kindergarten year, they become readers and writers.
That must be very exciting to see — they do come in as babies and then grow up.
We literally go from letter recognition to letter sound, and by the end of the year, they can read and write full sentences and write their own stories. These lightbulbs go off between March and April that are just amazing, and it just brings great joy. They look at me and go, ‘I get it!’ They have “aha” moments that are just so precious.
The last few years, with COVID-19, have been a really challenging time for teachers. What was it like for you at the kindergarten level when you couldn’t be with the kids?
I had some health issues, so I did take advantage of that time to not teach for a couple of months, and I came back when we came back into the classroom. As an older teacher, trying to figure it all out without colleagues to help was really challenging, but I figured it out. But it definitely wasn’t how I wanted to teach — especially with special needs children who really need hands-on experience and exposure.
So much of kindergarten is learning how to go to school, how to sit when the teacher says and following directions, so how did that even work during COVID?
It was really challenging because some kids, especially special needs children, learned, ‘Oh, she can’t see me if I push that button!’ because I’d say, ‘Ok, time to get out our reading materials, put the toy cars away’ — and they’d go ‘Bye bye Mrs. Cox!’ and off goes the camera, and there’s no way to combat that. Young children need hands-on experience with people to really be effective in learning the amount that we have to teach in a given year. For 5- and 6-year-olds, it needs to be play-based to keep it developmentally appropriate and to keep imaginations engaged while learning to read, learning to write, and learning to calculate and manipulate numbers.
How has teaching changed over the nearly 40 years that you’ve been in the classroom?
When I started, the goals were to know the letters, the sounds, simple addition, [and] knowing shapes and colors. Now we are full on, differentiating between fiction and non-fiction, being able to write nonfiction information, as opposed to being able to write a story about themselves or a fantasy story. In math, they’re learning 3D shapes, basic 2D shapes, addition, subtraction, sorting, and being able to go into multiple add-ins for addition.
Are kids starting school with higher skills than they used to?
They are. Preschools are definitely teaching them their letters and sounds and starting them writing their letters. So, they are coming in knowing numbers 1-10 usually, knowing how to write their name, knowing how to recognize their name, and knowing a lot of sounds, too. Different preschools teach in different ways, so we bring it all together and put it into a format that will be systematic throughout elementary school.
Do you remember what drew you to education in the first place?
When I was in high school, I always knew I wanted to teach. I always knew I wanted to be a special education teacher, so to my parents’ chagrin, I chose one school here in Boston. I knew I wanted to go into education, and the number-one school at the time was Wheelock in Boston. That’s where I applied and that’s where I went.
Do you have any favorite memories you want to share?
We have a hoedown at the beginning of the year where the children learn to sing a couple of songs about farms, and we teach them three different square dances. We invite the families to come, and they dance with us at the end. It is a coming together of our class as a community, and it shows the children how important it is for families and teachers to talk and to know each other so we are a team and so the children feel supported at home and at school. It’s a blast; It’s so much fun.
Do you have retirement plans?
We have a house in New Hampshire I’ll be spending more time at. I’ve looked into working as a reading tutor up there through the school system, but I’m not sure yet. I know September is going to be very hard for me, to not be setting up the classroom and getting ready, being excited, looking at that new list of names, and reaching out to families. My husband and I are going to go on vacation the first two weeks of September so that I’m not focusing on what I’m not doing. It’s a new chapter.
