The twin boys, 10-year-olds Jackson and Bradley Doyle, devised a plan to keep their former teacher at Pembroke Hill School in their lives.
They called it Lunch Bunches, an informal setting that the boys invented during recess one day. They chose a teacher from their past. One they liked, felt comfortable with. They’d go to Ms. Duclos’s class during lunch break and eat with her. They’d talk and laugh. They’d listen and learn.
Elizabeth Duclos, who teaches third grade at Hill, somehow never felt like your run-of-the-mill teacher. At least not to her students.
“She was one of the teachers I liked,” said Jackson, who’s 43 minutes older than his brother. “She was not grumpy or old. She was that kind of teacher, and what she did was fun.”
She’s as grumpy as Doris Day. And she creates special activities and a special rapport with her students, which is why the Doyle twins nominated her for the Granite State’s Teacher of the Year Award.
More than 300 teachers were nominated, by superintendents, principals, past and present colleagues, parents of students and other community members who have direct contact with a teacher.
Oh, and grade school kids, too. Duclos had no idea what the twins had done. In fact, when the good news was emailed to her last winter from the Department of Education, she nearly deleted it.
“I thought it might be spam,” Duclos said. “I read it and I was shocked and I had tears in my eyes because someone thought this highly of me that I deserved this kind of recognition.”
Through what will end as a nine-month procedure, the 300-plus nominees were whittled down to 92, then, last spring, that number fell to four. Duclos remains on the list. The winner will be announced next month.
Also nominated were Ritu Budakoti, an eighth-grade science teacher at Keene Middle School; Sean Donahue, a sixth-grade mathematics teacher at McKelvie Intermediate School in Bedford; and Gregory Parker, an interventionist teacher at Manchester Memorial High School.
When asked what Duclos brought to the table at Hill School, principal Wendy Gerry pushed out a subtle laugh, as though her answer would never be enough to paint a true picture.
“We’re very fortunate to have her on our team, and she’s a great ambassador for the school,” Gerry said. “She has a strong grasp on how to build relationships with the kiddos.”
Duclos knew what she wanted to do in grade school. She grew up on a 125-acre dairy farm in Orange County, New York. Her mom milked the cows. Duclos tried for two weeks and didn’t like it.
Instead, after helping her aunt, a teacher in Nottingham, prepare for the new school year, Duclos had her vision. She was 8 years old.
“I would come up for the summer and help her set up her class,” Duclos said, “and every time I said, ‘This is where I want to be.’ I knew from a very early age.”
She’s been teaching for 16 years, the last 13 at Pembroke Hill School. She relates to her students in different ways, creative ways, helping them to enjoy something that just a short time before had seemed impossible.
For example, last semester, a boy disliked reading, until his teacher asked him what he liked to do. Dirt bike riding, the student said.
“You can’t force a child to read,” Duclos said. “It’s finding ways to encourage them to learn. We found lots of books on dirt bike riding, and then subsequently, he found out that he liked sports and other nonfiction stuff.”
The result?
“By the end of the year, he had made up over two years’ worth of growing,” Duclos said. “We just filled his bucket. He trusted me. It’s my job to build a connection with students first.”
Duclos starts each day with an informal 15-minute gathering. The students are asked to make eye contact with classmates, fist bump one another, anything to create bonds and a team environment.
She might ask for someone’s favorite super hero, TV show, or board game.
“We share topics,” Duclos said. “I learn something about my students every single day. They share something new, even if it’s as simple as their favorite food.”
Students are treated to Freedom Friday. Bradley, the younger twin, loved it.
“We would get to have 15 minutes to do what we wanted,” Bradley said. “I usually did puzzles with friends.”
Her methods wowed the committee judging the Teacher of the Year competition. Her entire makeup must have helped. Recently, she sipped ice tea at a local restaurant, her hands in constant motion, her smile never fading, her eyes moving in different directions as she searched her mind, reflecting on why she thought she had made it down to the final four from a huge stable of candidates.
Earlier this month, she and the other three finalists were required to give a speech in front of the committee. Duclos’s was 6½ minutes long. She practiced in front of a pair of Lego animals, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger too.
“They were great,” Duclos said.
Duclos’s impact was so powerful that Jackson, the older twin, schemed his way back into her classroom the year after he finished her third grade class.
Sometimes, he’d visit to sharpen his pencil. Other times, he’d clandestinely spill crumbs on her classroom floor. That gave him an opportunity to use Duclos’s dustpan to clean up the mess and see her.
Eventually, the twins’ mother, Kristin Doyle, gave Jackson his own dustpan to use on his ex-teacher’s floor.
“He did not take it out of his backpack,” Duclos said. “He kept coming in to visit. My class is a welcoming place.”