As Oakdale teacher Christine Barlow took a certain special visitor around her school, students made various guesses about the older man’s identity. Was he the governor? President? Her husband?
“Does anyone know who this strange man is?” Barlow asked a first-grade class, before Robert O’Leary leaned in to kiss her on the cheek.
“He’s kissing Mrs. Barlow!” said Oakdale Principal Holli Armstrong, as a buzz went through the room.
A girl in the class figured it out.
“It’s not Mr. Barlow!” said Barlow. “It’s my dad – that’s right, it’s my dad.”
There were plenty of lighthearted moments as the second-grade special education teacher toured Oakdale with her father – a state senator who represents the Cape and Islands – and more serious ones.
In Ruth Dorsey’s fifth-grade class, O’Leary, who leads the Joint Committee on Education, told students during his visit last Thursday, that he would be presenting the Democratic caucus that afternoon with the second part of Massachusetts education reform – a follow-up to the landmark reforms of 1993.
“This is the next step, and it’s a big, gigantic bill” that will surely lead to some controversy, he said. “It’s really an effort to keep Massachusetts at the top.”
O’Leary said most Bay State schools are good, but “the bottom 20 percent are not doing well at all.”
“So the trick is going to try and help those schools at the bottom that aren’t doing as well as you guys are,” he said.
Prompted by Armstrong, four of Dorsey’s students told O’Leary the standards of behavior they follow at Oakdale, saying they are cordial, hard-working reliable, and respectful.
“We could really bring that to the State House, you know,” O’Leary remarked.
Armstrong said last week’s tour came together because Barlow wanted to show off her school to her father. “There’s a personal touch there – she has a dad, and he’s really invested in education,” the principal said.
State Rep. Paul McMurtry joined the tour, with his nieces Alyssa and Julia Landry (who go to Oakdale) tagging along. In her third-grade classroom, Alyssa went to give McMurtry a hug.
“This is my uncle Paul, and he’s state representative,” she said.
As O’Leary spoke with students one third-grader, Dominic Vitiello, took the opportunity to make a statement, telling how swine flu begins.
“You start with your throat hurting, then you cough and then you get a fever,” the 8-year-old told the visitors.
The kids then practiced coughing and sneezing into their elbows, an important way to prevent the spread of the flu.
The senator took questions from students about his job.
“It’s a lot of fun,” O’Leary told the students. “We don’t get any recess. Actually, we do get recess. We recess a lot!”
Dedham Transcript staff writer Edward B. Colby can be reached at 781-433-8336 or ecolby@cnc.com.
