Lunch ended, and students started heading upstairs.

The rumble of voices, which grew in volume as they reached the lockers at Horizon Middle School, were a sign for teachers to go outside their doors.

Eighth-grade English teacher Melissa Cournia stepped outside hers. It was her first day of school at Horizon. She came here from Cheney Middle School in West Fargo. Schools opened Thursday in Bismarck, Mandan and many other areas of the state.

On this first day of school, the students in never-washed shirts and shorts and unscuffed shoes wandered toward Cournia's classroom. They cradled notebooks and printouts of their schedules in the crooks of their arms.

"Are you looking for Ms. Cournia's English room?" Cournia said to a random query. "You're in the right place."

She'd repeat the same two sentences a few more times before class started, as students asked out loud, "Who is Mrs. Cournia?" or "Where is English class?"

One student walked toward her room in the way a person does when he's trying to find something: disregard for his surroundings and an intense focus on his schedule.

"Hey Kent, you're coming here again? You want English twice?" she asked the lost student. She sorted him out and other students who asked for help.

Inside the classroom, some students asked their classmates for confirmation that they were in the right spot. A few walked through the door, then asked if it was English. They found their seats, with some guidance from Cournia.

Class began, and they got to work on a word exercise that also taught the class rules.

"For me, we talk about the three R's every year and I make them relate that to what they know," she said.

The three R's, spelled out in large letters at the front of her room: respect, rigor and responsibility. The exercise that started off class looked at words to describe those three words.

Throughout the exercise, she worked on memorizing their names. She met Kent, whom she redirected in the hallway earlier in the day. Her goal is to be able to recognize all her students in the hallway by name by the end of the second day of school.

"I'll be staring at your face," she told her class. "I'm not trying to creep you out, I'm just trying to learn your names."

She went from seat to seat, matching the name on her list to the person in the blue chair. About halfway through the class, she tested her memory, mostly getting it right.

"One thing, it shows you care, and the other, it helps manage the classroom," she said.

Quickly bringing to mind a student's name helps when a student is talking. One tactic she likes to use is to have the chatterbox answer a question.

Teaching is old hat to Cournia. A pink hat, to be exact.

"Did anyone tell you to ask me a question?" she asked her class.

One girl raised her hand, and pointed to a furry top hat resting on the corner of the television.

"We were told to ask about your hat," the girl said.

Cournia grabbed it, and plunked it on her head, then told the story about her first day of school hat, which her grandma gave her.

"My grandma is this tall and my mother is this tall,"she said while gesturing to her elbow and her shoulder.

The three of them found the hat while shopping together, then she proceeded to wear it the rest of the day. She kept her word, and has worn it the first day of each school year.

Her hat collection subsequently grew. There's a Dr. Seuss hat, a pirate hat, bonnets, ball caps and even a shower cap. Sometimes her students can wear the hats in class while they write.

On Thursday, the pink hat story was new for the Horizon students and gave Cournia and her students a way to get to know each other. Cournia is getting to know Horizon, much like the seventh-graders were Thursday. The trick is asking lots of questions, and it helps that her colleagues want to help her, she said.

"I try to learn everything I can and keep asking questions," she said.

She hopes her students do the same.

(Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@bismarcktribune.com.)