By Linda Thomas
Hometown Weekly Correspondent
The day he had been waiting for was here.
That 1988 September morning, Eric Moskowitz bounded through the school yard and walked straight into his new fourth grade classroom at the John Eliot Elementary School in Needham.
The year earlier, he’d walked to school every day with a neighbor who raved that Stephen Fortin’s class was special. But what Moskowitz didn’t know then was that Fortin’s teaching methods would help pave the way for his own future career path.
He walked in the door and there on the back wall was a life-size poster of Doug Flutie, Heisman Trophy winner. Over on the blackboard were the standings for the American League East.
How would Flutie and Major League Baseball be part of a lesson in school?
Not what you’d expect in most classrooms. But, par for the course for Fortin and his fourth-grade students.
“It was the first time I’d seen a teacher put up things above and beyond school artwork or inspirational posters, educationally,” said the now 37-year-old Moskowitz.
“It made him very real, and it made the class more inviting.”
He said Fortin would talk about the latest Red Sox game with the class, teaching math concepts like winning percentage, games behind and magic numbers — without the class even realizing it was a lesson.
“It got me hooked,” he said.
“I’d race to get the morning newspaper to look at the standings so I could contribute to the discussion, sparking an interest for me at 9 in both newspapers and sports, each of which would become a lifelong passion,” added the veteran Boston Globe reporter.
Fortin reaches kids where they live — reflecting his philosophy as an educator for 40 years, the last 27 as principal of the Old Post Road Elementary School (OPR) in Walpole.
With just 100 days before he retires in June, Fortin has reached the pinnacle of his career.
The 52-year-old school was honored Feb. 1 at the State House in Boston for its high academic achievements, and was named a Massachusetts Commendation school for 2016.
“I was so proud to accept the award for the OPR community,” Fortin said. “But it hits me each day this sort of thing will be my last … It’s the hard work of the students, staff and parents that pay off every single day.”
Fortin’s career as an educator began in 1977 teaching third and fourth grades for the Needham Public school district. He also was a middle school resource teacher.
In 1990, he came to Walpole as the second principal of OPR.
He’s usually at school around 7 in the morning and outside of “arrival duty” to greet the kids as they get off the bus. He says one of the most important parts of the job is to be visible.
“It is fabulous to see the students coming in with smiling faces - and lots of Patriots gear - these days,” he said.
Today, OPR has 445 students. In the 1990s, 256 students were enrolled at the school, which Fortin recalls as a nice small school - a community school.
“You could tell there was a lot of warmth there, and everybody knew one another,” he recalled.
OPR was the perfect fit for Fortin. It was similar in size to the Eliot School, where he was able to engage with the students.
For Moskowitz, Fortin’s class was “the first place where I got to try stretching out as a writer, doing more than putting ‘spelling words’ into sentences or stringing together a few clauses.
“We got to try creative writing, coming up with our own children's books (I wrote one imagining a guinea pig with secret super powers), revising the text to get it just right and illustrating it, too. We also put together our own yearbook in his class.”
Moskowitz said the thing that most resonated with him were the journals Fortin had students write - a bit of personal essay with some creative writing thrown in.
“He would take us outside to sit on the grass and write in these little blue journals about the sky and the weather and the environment and whatever came to our minds in the moment.”
Even after nearly 30 years, Moskowitz still remembers how bittersweet it was to learn in fifth grade that Fortin was leaving for Walpole. It meant his younger brother wouldn’t get to be in Fortin’s class.
“He’s that kind of teacher,” Moskowitz said, “the one you wanted to have and the one you wanted your friends and siblings to have, too.
Not only have students benefited from his teaching, but teachers have also learned through his example.
Erica Curran lauds the plethora of Fortin’s positive characteristics, such as flexibility, involvement, kindness, humor and presence.
“Steve had always recognized his staff's dedication to their jobs and he has always recognized we all have families and understands our own families are our top priority,” said Curran, who teaches third grade. He truly loves being an educator. Children are so important to him. He still likes to get in the classrooms to work with the kids. When he is in the room, he is an active participant with the students.”
Susan Moniz, who teaches second grade, also praises Fortin for being heavily engaged with students.
“He’ll come and sit down in whatever activity or group work is going on in the classroom. He'll often join the kids to understand what they’re learning and how they’re learning,” she said
Plus, Curran said, at the start of every school year, Fortin, with his wife’s and mother-in-law’s help, hosts a luncheon for the staff and faculty — and he never forgets to make his homemade carrot cake.
Years ago, Fortin decided that since he had to dress up every day in a suit coat and dress pants, he needed something a little “funky.” So he bought a lot of ties - mostly Save the Children ties.
And every year on the 100th day of school, he would saunter around the classrooms wearing 100 ties.
“Steve is a really strong leader with strong values and has made a real sense of community at Old Post Road,” said Moniz, who started the year before Fortin in 1989. “I’m going to miss him very much.”
Ellen Hanley Nadeau’s five children attended OPR during Fortin’s tenure. Four now are out of college and working, and her youngest is a college freshman.
“Two things that always impressed me about Principal Fortin were he always did what was best for the children,” she said. “It was always about the kids.”
In practice, she said, that meant coming up with clever solutions when OPR was greatly overcrowded – more than 600 students in a building built for about 400.
“We had students receiving educational services in converted closets and bathrooms,” Nadeau recalled. “He prioritized low class sizes and was very creative in maximizing limited space. He made difficult decisions to continue to provide a great education to the students at OPR.”
Fortin also was an early advocate for technology, she said, and made buying computers for students a priority before the devices were commonplace in schools.
“At that time there were many other competing needs, but he felt it was more important to have computers for students,” Nadeau said.
He helped set up the school’s first computer lab and was a big supporter of the Walpole Computer Foundation, which raised money for school technology not provided for in tight school budgets.
“Steve built a community, not just a school,” she said.
Back when he was a student, Fortin had his own Mr. Fortin — Mr. Duffney — who taught third grade and was the only male teacher in the school.
Mr. Duffney was a great artist, Fortin recalls, and might have been the first spark for his becoming a teacher. “It made me feel special,” Fortin said. “He would draw me sitting with one finger on my cheek as though I was thinking … something I often do today.”
For his senior year project, Fortin worked with special needs children, those today considered on the spectrum of autism.
“Being with the kids and watching the teachers communicate and work with the kids sold me and what a teacher could do,” he said.
Some of Fortin’s teachers let the students into their personal lives - where they grew up, where they went to school and what they did during summer vacations.
So he held onto that approach and let his own students into his life.
Then, there’s his fascination for space, an interest that began when he was 7.
He remembers watching John Glenn orbiting the Earth in 1962. Three years later, he woke up at 4:30 in the morning for the countdown during Walter Cronkite’s coverage of the Gemini missions.
But as an educator, the death of Christa McAuliffe in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on Jan. 28, 1986, really hit home.
McAuliffe would have been the first teacher in space. A teacher from New Hampshire, she was picked to join the mission and teach lessons from space to schoolchildren around the country.
McAuliffe didn’t make it. And for one shining moment, Fortin thought, “maybe me.”
Fortin and his wife Ellen, a developmental therapist who works with kids from birth to age 3, raised four sons: Brett (23), Jeff (26), Scott (32) and Sean (33).
Fortin long has known the community.
Ellen was born and raised in Walpole in a house you can see from the window in Fortin’s office. When they visited her parents, their sons played in the playground across the street from where the school is now.
When school officials met with candidates to be his successor, Fortin was in his office during the interviews. “It felt surreal,” he said. “Different. And I’m sure I’m going to have a lot of days like that … in the last 100 days or so.”
When Fortin retires, he hopes to devote more time to the Make A Wish Foundation, one of his special charities. The value of its work was brought home to Fortin during a February school vacation about a dozen years ago. He and his wife took their sons to Disney World, where they saw children in wheelchairs and their families having the greatest of times.
In the meantime, he tells parents of young children that every milestone is important: the first step a child takes, the first day of kindergarten, the first day they drive. Every milestone should be celebrated.
“Life’s too short,” he said. “And kids grow so quickly.”
Fortin doesn’t have that famous Flutie poster or baseball standings in his office today. But there is a banner of a drawing students gave to him.
It hangs on the sidewall with big letters that reads:
“We are thankful for our principal.”
Editor’s Note: Linda Thomas writes for Hometown Weekly Publications. For comments and suggestions she can be reached at [email protected].
