GARDEN GROVE : Twins Hit Class--In Triplicate

Ginny Cocco will be seeing double for awhile, but her vision is fine.

The teacher at Dr. A.J. Cook Elementary School has the statistically improbable distinction of having three sets of identical twins in her kindergarten class this year.

And a fourth set is coming soon.

“It’s like the school district is giving me a new eye test,” she joked on Thursday, the first day of school.

She’s not alone. Two sets of twins also are starting first grade, said Principal Frank Branda.

“In all the years I’ve been a principal I’ve never had this many twins,” he said.

While Cocco’s students all wear name tags now, the challenge will be to get the names right without them. She said she will try to identify individual differences to help her learn, because “I want them to know that they’re each a total individual.”

Complicating matters is that identical twins often dress identically too, which happened on the first day of class.

The four boys, Alexander and David Tran and Phong and Quang Phan, dressed to match their brothers. The girls, Diem and Bich Nguyen, wore identical pink dresses with pink bows in their hair.

“Basically, everyone’s saying that they don’t envy me,” Cocco said. “I really try to make a point of learning all their names on the first day of school, and I did pretty good I think.”

Cindy Tran, Cocco’s bilingual aide, said she knows the challenges that twins can cause for instructors. Last year, she mistakenly chastised one child for something his twin had done.

Still, Tran, 19, added that she was happy to have the twins around.

“I think they’re cute. They sort of look out for each other and they’re closer than brother and sister. Sometimes I wish I had a twin,” she said.

During class, Cocco kept the twins separated, but during recess they stayed close, often holding hands as they played on swings and ladders.

As the first day of school drew to a close, it became apparent that however much the twins may look the same, they don’t always think alike.

Alexander said he enjoyed class, and “I like blocks and the crayons.” David’s summation of his first day of school: “I don’t like anything.”