"They sign in with how they're feeling," she explains.
She says the happy, sad and mad faces on the sign-in sheet help her to gauge which students need extra attention and encouragement.
Feeley-Brooks has been in front of classrooms for 33 years. Before the merger, she says, morale at Maynard sunk as students' performance lagged and the school was overlooked for new initiatives.
"For a long while there was a sense of despair," she says.
But the first weeks this year have been the "happiest, most uplifting" start to school in a long time, she says.
"People were making a big squawk about a new building," she says, "but what a coat of paint can do."
Feeley-Brooks says teachers are cooperating more closely now, in part because of a new teacher training program called the ATLAS Community.
"We get to pursue things that we're interested in, not the administration says, 'this is our focus,' " she says.
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