She tap danced into the classroom and announced, "of all the third grade classes named 3S that have music at 10:15 on Thursdays, you're my favorite!" It comes a little too fast for all of them to get it right away; eventually the whole group figures out that she can, and does, say this to everbody. She doesn't stay long on these daily visits around the school, but does let me persuade her to hear the latest three-note recorder ditty the 9-year-olds are learning. Bless her, she knows how to hide a wince.

I've known her for 10 years, as long as I've been teaching in this affluent Boston suburb. She was a little hard to read at my interview, she was concerned that my 15-pound music curriculum meant that I might be a little too rigid to be trusted with her children. Perhaps, I thought, she was simply maintaining a neutral face so as not to bias my application.

I never did quite learn how to hold a smooth conversation with her, there always being some odd pause and no facial cue to read. Over time I figured out that it wasn't me or a judgment on her part. Years later she told me about the reservations she had about my hire, and how she was so completely over them. In fact, when all the elementary principals met with department heads to discuss the deployment of specialst teachers (art, music and physical education) across the town she was adamant that I remain in her building.

Every summer would come the handwritten note accompanying the agenda for the first week's meetings. It was always a heartfelt message of appreciation and acknowledgment for the work all of us do. "Once again, you have exceeded my expectations," she would say.

During the school year she wrote the most intelligent and clearly articulated newsletters for parents, explaining the nature of children's behavior, their development over the elementary years, their learning, their socialization. "How lucky I am," I realized shortly after I began working for her, "to have the leadership of someone who understands children so well."

And how lucky I was also, to know someone who understood me so well. She made friends with my partner, George and could tell the wildest stories. At a staff party (December, of course) when I explained why I hated the season so much (ex-fundamentalist, coming out to born again parents didn't go well, soured on my old faith), she suggested that I go ahead and get a tree. Before I could object she added, "and decorate it with dildos."

She laughed with us, she led us, she worked with us, she pursued kids tirelessly toward greater maturity, toward learning, toward kindness. She made me a better teacher.

Last Friday was her retirement party, she had just strength enough to attend. Hundreds came. I was reminded of a Terry Pratchett novel...

...it was one of his Discworld books, in which he has had some characters observe that "to the well-organized mind, Death is the next great adventure." In his universe, some magical persons know exactly when they are going to die, so they have the funeral gathering the day before so as to be able to enjoy the party too and prevent the day-after squabbling over their stuff...

...because one of the guests quietly observed over the bagels and lox, "this is her wake."

Tonight she is resting comfortably in Intensive Care. The emergency phone chain has been updated, a plan is in place for that day if or when we need to deliver sad news to the school.

Ellen, of all the principals I have worked for at the H & S schools named Ellen, you are, and always will be, my favorite.