Career ends after 41 years in same classroom
Middleborough teacher became part of students’ lives
Roxanne Russo taught first grade in the same classroom at the same school for 41 years because the Middleborough community in Essex embraced her and became like her family. She says she just couldn’t leave. On Friday, just hours before the final school bell rang, marking the end of her long career, it was the children who appeared not ready to let go.
Sitting in a circle on a mat with her, the young students told her all the ways they had changed since September. They couldn’t do any math, and now they like it. They were once shy and nervous, and now they had found their voices. They only read small words, and now they read books. They used to cry when they left their mothers, and now, it isn’t so bad.
They told her they didn’t want to say goodbye.
“She’s the greatest teacher in the whole wide world,” said Jaiden James, a girl with thick curly hair.
Jaiden’s mother, Danielle Greifzu, was also taught by Russo.
Russo, 64, first decorated her classroom, which is down a long hall, in 1977. She came to Middleborough Elementary for a chat with an assistant principal and was hired immediately, just a few days before school started and a few months after graduating from Towson University.
She had no idea what she was doing, she said, and was nervous. But she had a group of helpful mentor teachers who got her started.
Her colleagues said she seems to have figured it out, becoming what some say is the quintessential first-grade teacher.
“So patient, energetic,” said Carol Yoo, who has taught on the other side of the hall from her for 25 years. Russo, she said, has always been the same teacher that she is now. “She hasn’t stopped learning,” Yoo said. And unlike some teachers who get tired in their last years of teaching, Russo never did.
She said Russo has been a good colleague and mentor to other teachers. And the favor has sometimes been returned.
A teacher who taught in the classroom next to Russo for years retired and moved to Pennsylvania. But when Russo was out as her husband battled cancer, the retired teacher came back as a substitute for 14 weeks, spending the night at the homes of different teachers during that time, so that Russo would know her students were in good hands.
More than a decade ago, Russo decided to start using puppets in her classroom to help her teach. She amassed dozens, realizing that they helped children learn concepts or understand a book.
She believes children will often tell a puppet things they won’t say to an adult.
“Ms. Russo is the kind of teacher that everyone wants their child to have,” said Kevin Connolly, who was her assistant principal from 2001 to 2004 and now works in the county school system’s central administration.
When he walked into her classroom, he said, “it was filled with compassion and love. It was just a beautiful place to be.”
Connolly said Russo managed to combine two qualities that are valuable in teaching. She taught reading and math well, but she also taught children “how to care, how to respect, how to share with each other. She adores children and she is invested in the uniqueness of every child.”
“I would consider her a master teacher,” Connolly said.
Connolly remembers walking into her classroom one day and finding a child who had been struggling sitting next to Russo on the floor and holding her teacher’s foot as she taught.
On Friday, Russo gathered two boys who were angry with one another, holding each by an arm and leaning down to them, speaking softly about using words to describe their frustrations. Yoo said Russo has an amazing ability to pull a child to her side when something looks awry and fix the problem quietly, while continuing to teach the larger group.
Russo’s approach to teaching has nothing to do with the latest trends, but is based entirely on relationships. At the beginning of the year, she begins by learning something about what every child likes, and she finds ways to comment to them about those things they are interested in. As the year goes on, she said she tries to build a level of trust.
“If they know you are there for them, they try harder,” she said.
This year’s students include a little boy who started out behind but is now reading above grade level.
Russo said she has always tried to be part of a child’s life outside of school, showing them that they are important to her beyond the classroom. She has gone to lots of birthday parties, dinners, graduation ceremonies, weddings and even simple meetings in parks. After Russo married and had a son, she would take him along.
“I made so many lasting friendships with the families I have taught,” she said.
She recently came back from officiating at the wedding of a former student in Jamaica.
There are generations of families she has taught. Danielle Greifzu said she felt relief when she learned Jaiden would have Russo as a teacher because she knew she would feel as comfortable as she does at home.
In those last final minutes Friday, when her classroom still belonged to her, Russo talked about the decades behind her. She cried as she hugged a couple of puppets and sat in the rocking chair a class had given her in the 1990s with a little plaque on the back that says “Love.”
Teaching “was always a joy. It was never a struggle. It gave me happiness to come to work every day,” she said.
Her class came running back in from gym, and she let each one pick a puppet and a doughnut hole to take home. The kids were peeling their name tags from their desks when, suddenly, the final bell of the school year — and Russo’s career — rang.
Russo’s mouth dropped open, and everyone froze. There was silence. Then a couple dozen children ran to her and into a class bear hug. She cried. They cried. And the year was over.