Clare Melerine was teaching her third graders about the Cold War rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union one recent afternoon when she abruptly called out: “Mirrors on.”
The students at Joseph Davies Elementary School in St. Bernard Parish sat up in their seats. When Melerine began chanting — “First one that gets to space wins the space race” — the students knew to repeat after her.
It’s a strategy that Melerine learned at the University of New Orleans, where she graduated this month, and honed over the past year as a teacher-in-residence at Davies Elementary…