LEWISTON – In Marie Badeau’s first-grade class, there are certain constants.

Stickers and small pictures mean “good job.” The cookie tin is open to anyone who doesn’t have a snack. When the teacher talks, you listen.

For more than three decades, Badeau’s classroom has been a haven for the city’s first-graders, a place where they could count on their teacher’s soft French accent and kind smile even when the rest of the world wasn’t so nice.

But on Friday, when Badeau’s kids leave for summer vacation, new students will not be waiting to take their places. Her classroom will belong to another teacher. Her stickers and cookie tin will be packed away.

After 34 years in the Lewiston schools, Badeau, 74, is retiring.

“It was a hard decision,” she said. “It really was so hard.”

Always caring

Badeau always dreamed of becoming a teacher. As a child, she loved the smell of school, the sights and sounds of it.

After high school, she taught for two years at a local Catholic elementary school, but left to tend to her parents’ bakery. She put off her dream again when she married and had three boys.

By the time her sons were old enough to attend school or day care, Badeau learned she would have to wait again to become a teacher. She had to get a college degree.

It was the fall of 1969 and Badeau was 40 when she started teaching first grade at Frye School in Lewiston.

A year later, she transferred to the brand-new Longley Elementary School, then a state-of-the-art, open-concept learning center with no walls between classrooms.

“It was chaos,” she said.

But Badeau delighted in showing her kids how to read and write, and she rejoiced in their accomplishments. Teaching proved to be everything she’d dreamed it would be.

“There’s a joy that you experience,” she said. “There’s no word for it.”

By the 1980s and ’90s, Badeau saw the world change through her first-grade classroom. Students were struggling to deal with larger problems. They didn’t seem to get the support they needed from home.

But in Badeau’s classroom, students always got a warm welcome and a smile.

“I remember her being kind and gentle and always caring,” said Jennifer Laroche-Albert, who was in Badeau’s class in the early 1980s. “The students were always very important to her.”

Other former students say they best remember how Badeau rarely raised her voice yet always commanded attention. Kristie Miquelon, 11, said she liked Badeau’s laugh.

“She always used to laugh when we told her we were taller than her,” said Miquelon, now a fifth-grader.

A petite woman, several of Badeau’s first-graders stand at least to her shoulders.

She helps kids’

On Wednesday, just two days before the end of school, many of Badeau’s current students said they would miss her.

“She’s a good teacher,” said Kala Stewart, 8. “She helps kids.”

Until this spring, Badeau had planned to teach for another two years. She had the passion, but she also had a bad back. Discussions with friends and family convinced her it was time to retire.

But as her last day creeps closer, as former students beg her not to go and her co-workers say good-bye, Badeau is finding it hard to let go.

“I still don’t like to think about it,” she said, coming close to tears.

Badeau, who lost her husband several years ago, plans to spend retirement visiting her three sons and five grandchildren and caring for her home. But she doesn’t expect that she’ll be able to stay away from the classroom.

Badeau is already thinking of ways to volunteer in school.

“I still find teaching as exciting as I did the first year,” she said.

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