A Dropout Drops Back In--at Age 56 : Education: Norman Plante returns to high school, 20 years after his own children were graduated. His wife signs his report card.

Two decades ago, high school English teacher Cynthia Leal drilled Norman Plante’s children on the rudiments of grammar and literature. Now she’s teaching Norman Plante.

“I had a hard time getting past calling him Mr. Plante, but he’s got a marvelous outlook, a marvelous attitude,” said Leal, one of the teachers helping him fit back into an 11th-grade classroom 39 years after he dropped out of school.

The paradoxes are plentiful for the oldest member of the Class of ’92.

Most of his teachers taught his five children, now in their 20s and 30s, one a teacher herself. His wife visits on parents’ nights and signs his report card, which hangs on the refrigerator. And over at the elementary school is his 10-year-old granddaughter, just six grades behind him.

There’s been some good-natured family ribbing since he decided to go back to school this fall, said Plante, 56. “The kidding was, ‘Is (Grandma) going to fix you a lunch box? Are you going to get on a school bus?’ It was all in fun, you know.”

A conservative dresser, with gray hair combed smoothly back, Plante admitted to having a case of nerves on his first day in class at Monson Junior-Senior High School.

“Here I’m coming, invading their school more or less,” he said. But students have been “as nice and great as could possibly be.”

Students, who sometimes hail Plante with a roaring “No-o-o-rm,” in the style of the patrons of television’s “Cheers,” say that the unusual student deserves the credit.

“He has a lot of courage to come back,” said classmate Gina Flood, 15.

In 1951, the Korean War beckoned and the 17-year-old Plante signed up.

“I thought I knew more than my parents. It was rebellion,” he said.

In peacetime, Plante learned the trade of plumbing, married his wife, Ruth, and settled into life in this western Massachusetts town.

But always there was the nagging problem of not being smart enough.

“When I went to apply for a job that someone had sent me to and they found I didn’t have a high school diploma, they couldn’t even hire me on a production line. It was just the way life worked,” he said.

As a plumber, he had trouble getting through written tests, taking the Massachusetts form four times before getting his license. “I passed the oral and practicals the first time, but not being able to explain myself on paper was always a big problem,” he said.

Efforts to get a Graduate Equivalency Diploma failed. Plante said he never learned to study and take tests.

In February, 1989, Plante suffered a herniated disc in an automobile accident. Physically limited, but with time on his hands, he asked his friend, Principal Michael Kane, if he could come back to school.

In some ways, Plante is an education in himself, administrators and students said.

“Having him come back makes you realize the importance of it (education),” said Thad Michael, 15.

Leal, who had worried “how is this going to work, this man and these kids,” said her concerns evaporated.

“I’ll tell you, now it’s, ‘Norman, can I take a look at your homework?’ ” she said. “He’s so down to Earth and he’s so honest. He’s really put some of the joy back into teaching for me.”