FRAMINGHAM -- Joan Bruce doesn't remember the name of every student in her 37 years of teaching at St. Bridget School in Framingham, but she remembers many. During a recent lunch break, Bruce and a new teacher discussed a teacher's aide whose son or grandson Bruce had taught in third grade.

"How do you remember their names?" the new teacher asked.

"I don't know," Bruce, 71, replied. "It happens sometimes, and sometimes, if you're standing right next to me, I can't remember."

The pictures help. The walls in Bruce's office are covered in class photos dating back to the 1985-86 school year. The names, faces, and fashions change, but all have the same words: "Mrs. Bruce." There are photos of class trips to Washington, D.C., and school plays she directed.

"I have wonderful memories of those, too," Bruce said on March 28."" said on March 28. "And we did a lot of musicals. And I loved it."

One photo shows Bruce with two boys in blue graduation robes.

"These were a couple of my special-ed kids," she said, "and they graduated, and this little guy right here came back one year as a kindergarten aide."

The other boy went to Norwich University in Vermont, got married, and moved to Georgia. Bruce believes he works in law enforcement.

"He always struggled with math," she said, "but boy, oh boy, he made it."

Her career at St. Bridget's has been so long that she uses the pictures to remember the many jobs she's had over the years. Bruce taught third grade from 1986 to 1999, then special education from 2000 to 2017. She briefly returned to teaching third grade before returning to special ed in 2020. She now provides special education to grades three through eight. St. Bridget's serves 286 students from pre-K to eighth grade.

Bruce said teaching special ed gives her "a closer relationship" with students.

"I can really hone in on their disabilities and offer them strategies and how to change the way that they're thinking," she said. "Good teaching strategies work with a regular ed class and with a special ed class. The only difference is that somehow, some way, children learn a little differently, and you just have to find that best way to teach them that they learn."

When she teaches, she always thinks, "What would Jesus do? What would Jesus say?"

"We always practice our virtues," she said. "Respect, responsibility, compassion. And I think we try to teach those every day in our teaching."

Bruce was born and raised in Framingham. She still lives in her childhood home with her husband, Richard. She attended St. Bridget's in seventh and eighth grade before going to the now-closed Marian High School in Framingham. After graduating, she studied elementary and special education at Boston College. Over the summers, Bruce watched her father, a pediatric dentist, work with special-needs children.

"That's where I found a calling," she said.

Her first teaching job was at Milford Public Schools, where she worked for five years before taking time off to raise her two daughters. When they were old enough to start kindergarten, she began work at St. Bridget's in 1986. It wasn't like her time in Milford.

"I think the biggest difference is that the parents expect us to offer values, to teach their kids values, and to discipline their children when needed and to also definitely offer good education."

She has learned that kids can have good lives no matter what disability they face. She taught reading to a kindergartener who had dyslexia. He later went to college and became an accountant.

"It took all of us," she said. "It took him, myself, and his parents, and we all worked together cooperatively."

During the pandemic, she taught middle school math, which she said is "one of the hardest things to teach virtually."

Her policy was, "Let's not lay in your bed." She required her students to be seated at their desks during virtual classes. Earbuds were forbidden.

"Even though it's virtual and over Zoom, you have to put in your best, too," she said. "We have to make the best out of a situation that isn't very good."

As she looks at the photos in her office, the memories all come back to her. She hopes that she touched her students' futures. She always loves it when her former students stay in touch and tell her how they're doing. It's easy for her to stay in touch with one of her third graders: Lauren Nazzaro, who now works at St. Bridget's as the director of early childhood education.

"I think it took her a long time to call me Joan instead of Mrs. Bruce," Bruce joked.

"Mrs. Bruce was an amazing teacher," Nazzaro said. "Even as a third grader, you could recognize that she tried to make learning fun. I can still to this day remember multiplication raps that we did in third grade."

Bruce helped her get the job at St. Bridget's. Nazzaro said that coming back to work at the school was like a family reunion. Bruce is still something of a teacher to her.

"She's always willing to help, to step up," Nazzaro said.

As Nazzaro spoke to The Pilot, Bruce took over for her, watching the preschoolers during naptime. Students who meet Bruce in the halls may get a cheerful greeting or praise for how well they did on their recent math test. Bruce now has five grandchildren of her own, but she doesn't plan to retire until she can no longer walk up St. Bridget's stairs.

"I love what I'm doing," she said. "I have the best job in the world. Even if I'm sick, I'd love to be here. And I hope I make a difference. I think I do. I hope I do with the children and the staff and the parents, and I love them all."