Like other teachers on this first full week of summer vacation, Mr. T plans to sleep in.
Today, at the beginning of his retirement as a full-time teacher, his vast and once-crowded fourth-grade classroom, which used to resemble “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” is empty.
The new void is as stunning as its former plenitude. Other teachers, parents and students find it hard to imagine Ebert Elementary School without Robert Tomsich.
The fishbowl that held the Invisible Piranha – “DON’T feed it!” warned a sign taped to the glass – is gone.
No longer will students peer inside, searching for a breath of movement signaling the Invisible Piranha’s presence. They will never know if sticking a finger in the bowl really introduces a peculiar toxicity that causes the Invisible Piranha to die, or if Mr. T just made the whole thing up.
“If I’d had carte blanche, I’d have a classroom that looked like the house that the Addams Family lived in,” said Mr. T, as he’s been called since his teaching career began more than 40 years ago in Michigan.
Over the years, he has taught HeadStart and gifted-and-talented children, and first, second and fourth grades, and aspiring teachers at Metro State College. He was once an education and classroom-management consultant. He was a school librarian.
Three years ago, he accepted a job at Ebert.
Mr. T called his classroom to order by pounding on African drums. He instituted calm with a background soundtrack that included Frank Sinatra tunes. He induced students to write their thoughts in a classroom journal that posed a Question Of The Day. Most of all, he filled his classroom with objects that aroused amusement and curiosity.
His favorite Addams Family prop was the shark with a human leg drooping from its jaws. Though he never found one of those, he did find a disembodied plastic leg and a plastic hand, which he enjoyed attaching to the classroom ceiling, as if someone upstairs had fallen through.
His classroom has amused parents as well as kids.
“Mr. T has the kind of classroom with the structured creativity that makes all of us parents want to be back in fourth grade with him as a teacher,” said Janet Meredith, whose two boys went to Ebert.
Nobody knows if another teacher will carry on the Pickle Day Party, a signature Mr. T tradition. Only sour, green food is served at a Pickle Party – giant sour dill pickles, sour lemonade, sour green candy, sour apple straws. Admission to a Pickle Party requires each attendee to draw a picture of Mr. T, as he would appear if he were a pickle.
Guess what CSAP score Mr. T’s class, and the rest of Ebert’s classes, earned on the Colorado School Accountability Reports.
The Colorado Department of Education lists Ebert as Excellent, one of the few elementary schools to hold that distinction. Mr. T thinks he knows why.
His theory is that kids will put up even with odious tasks, like math or spelling, if they’re rewarded. His classroom held countless stashes of goodies, deliberately modeled after pediatricians’ offices where young patients choose stickers or toys as consolation prizes after a shot.
He kept one treasure trove to reward random, unconscious acts of kindness – holding open the door for a classmate, dispensing an unsolicited compliment.
Kids, he said, “rise to the expectations.”
Read what Harper, one of Mr. T’s fourth-grade students, wrote last week:
“My eyes fill with tears and joy as my heart learns I will be pulling away from months of happiness in a comforting place of learning.”
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
