As students and parents visited Gorham Middle School Friday and teachers prepared for the first day of school, veteran teacher Patti Joyce seemed calm at the center of all the activity.
Her calm might have come from her experience – Joyce has been at the head of a classroom for 20 years – or, perhaps, her thorough preparation – she’s been getting ready for the start of school for three weeks.
In between answering the phone while the rest of the office staff attended seminars, Joyce, a sixth-grade teacher, said she was looking forward to another group of students this year.
“I’ve got fresh, new faces and minds to mold,” she said.
The office at the middle school was a flurry of activity Friday morning. A steady flow of teachers checked mailboxes between the workshops, and students stopped in. Before making final preparations in her classroom and between answering the phone, Joyce talked with parents registering children.
Roger Marchand, a school committee member, popped in to say hello as he made his rounds of the schools. “Everyone looks ready,” he said.
Joyce, who prepped for three weeks, was ready. The mother of an eighth-grader and a college student, she teaches language arts and social studies. She is also a homeroom teacher.
In her homeroom, she placed nametags in front of chairs lining tables. She also distributed a student guidebook and a combination lock for each student.
Her students will have to memorize the combinations. But there’s a master key if a student forgets.
Joyce said that for the children, entering the sixth grade is a big step.
“They have lockers. The building seems big to them,” she said. “They’re nervous. It can be overwhelming.”
With her experience, she can defuse much of the anxieties of the students. She uses humor and encourages students to help one another. “I constantly reiterate that we’re in this together,” she said.
She’ll have 24 in her homeroom and 23 in her classes. By Wednesday, she would know each of them by name. She met students and parents at an open house Thursday.
This will be a learning year for Joyce as one of her students is deaf. “I’ve never had a deaf child,” she said.
Although the classroom has a full-time interpreter, Joyce will learn sign language to communicate with the pupil. “I see him as my teacher,” she said.
Joyce took a final look at books lining shelves in the library in a corner of the classroom. From her own pocket she buys books that she feels will encourage children to read.
“It breaks my heart if a child doesn’t like to read,” she said. “I love to read, but when I was their age I didn’t.”
Again this year, Joyce organized her classroom to be kid friendly. Selected from a home file, artwork done by former students is posted on a wall. She pointed out a painting done for her by a former student, Chris Crosby, when she taught at the Village School. Crosby now teaches art at Gorham High school.
In a classroom telephone call, she talked with an intern teacher. A student at the University of Maine at Farmington, the intern will assist Joyce. She briefed the intern that students would begin arriving on buses at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday and they would enter the classroom about 15 minutes later.
Joyce walked along the corridor from the wing of her classroom to the auditorium. She is also the school’s drama teacher and manages the auditorium. She said 70 students participate in drama.
She said keeping food and drink out of the auditorium is the biggest challenge. Taking a look, she stepped over some type of spill on the floor.
The facility is equipped with lighting for the stage, control panel and theater-style, upholstered seats.
“I feel like a kid in a candy store,” she said of the modern, high-tech auditorium.
Cutline Patti Joyce 3) – Artwork of former students is displayed on wall in the classroom of teacher Patti Joyce at Gorham Middle School. “It’s kid friendly,” she said about her classroom.
Cutline Patti Joyce 1) – This week Patti Joyce began her 21st year teaching in Gorham. She teaches the 6th Grade at Gorham Middle School.
(Cutline Patti Joyce 6) – Patti Joyce places name tags on tables Friday as she prepped her 6th Grade classroom for opening day Tuesday at Gorham Middle School.
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