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Much to Learn from Cozzi and Alex in ‘Me & Chris’

These days, back-to-school time grows ever more bittersweet for teacher Chris Cozzi, as students who spent early years sharing their New Haven art classroom with him and his late dog, Alex, head for high school graduation.

Alex, a handsome Lab mix rescue (with perhaps a bit of beagle and Rhodesian ridgeback in there somewhere), passed away in 2009, after 10 years on the job in urban K-8 art space classrooms with Chris. The art educator now teaches grades 9 to 12 at Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School in New Haven.

A Guilford resident, Chris is an artist, teacher, designer, master stone mason, and now, published author. He spent years pouring his talent into a beautiful new book, Me & Chris—A Dog’s Story by Alex (Octoberworks.com /May 2018).

The book tells the tale of Chris and Alex spending 16 years together—much of it in Guilford—and the transformative impact their unique partnership had on young urban students who learned not only from Chris, but from Alex.

Told from the perspective of Alex, Me & Chris is much more than a story of a dog and his man. The 168-page tome is filled with photographs, drawings, sketches, and facsimile journal pages by the artist-author. The seemingly simple story carries a deeper message of the power of faithful friendship, as it documents their early years together at Circle Beach, the very first day Alex came to school to help Chris manage an energetic lot of kindergarteners, and creating the stone walls and landscaping of their home and cottage (dubbed “Camp Cozzi”) that Chris drew up, designed, and carved out—using 400 tons of stone along the way—on land off Durham Road on the West River.

Chris says Me & Chris started out as children’s book while also serving as “kind of catharsis writing” for him after Alex passed away.

“As I wrote, this voice started to come out,” Chris says.

As he wove the story from his dog’s perspective, the artist in Chris began to embellish his words with a caringly selected, beautiful array of photos, artwork, and re-drawn journal entries, culled from years of collected memories, until the book “became a collage,” he explains.

“It took six years to finish it,” Chris says. “As an artist, I’m a firm believer that if you don’t have a deadline, you can let a piece gestate and let it have the time it needs to take until its completed to your satisfaction.”

As a professional designer with an industrial design degree from Syracuse University and master of design degree from Domus Academy in Milan, Italy, Chris worked as a designer/artist for 20 years. He then spent a summer completing an alternative route to certification, which placed professionals in classrooms in their field of study. He became a visual arts teacher in 1999. He’s continued teaching in New Haven since that time.

Faced with teaching art from a cart for his first teaching assignment at West Hills Magnet School, the designer in Chris came to the rescue.

“I was not going to teach from a cart. I said, ‘There’s got to be some place I can use’—and I then I saw this doublewide trailer on the playground. I asked if I could please see it, and very reluctantly, the principal showed it to me. It was filled with storage. Everything was poorly placed and stored,” says Chris. “In the next day and half, I completely renovated it.”

Chris also recalls his excitement at greeting his first class of kids— but the feeling quickly turned to dismay. The word “unruly” doesn’t quite describe the chaos he encountered.

“That first day—I never had a more stressful day in my life! I’ve been in board rooms and given presentations to corporations, but 24 kindergartners will change your life,” says Chris.

If wasn’t for Alex, he likely wouldn’t have gone back for a second day, says Chris. He didn’t hesitate; he just brought his dog to school with him, together with a few of Alex’s favorite things.

“The first day I brought him, he was at my feet on the rug. He was rescue dog and did not like noise or chaos; if things got crazy, he went to his bed,” says Chris.

If things were calm, Alex was happy to show off a few of his tricks for the students, says Chris, who demonstrated the maxim for each of his classes.

“I said, ‘If you’re really good, you can pet the dog,’ and if they were really, really good, I’d do the demonstration,” says Chris.

The demo involved Alex’s favorite toy, a ball.

“Alex was only interested in the ball. He had such focus, and they weren’t used to seeing a trained dog,” Chris says.

Chris could give Alex the ball, tap anyplace around him, like the desktop, and Alex would put the ball on the spot. If Chris told Alex to “go to sleep,” he’d head straight for his dog bed.

Once the kids figured out that they had to be calm and quiet around Alex, “they would monitor themselves,” Chris says.

Once word got out there was a dog in the art room, it caused some consternation on the part of the administration (and several new administrators, in the years to follow), but they all gave in after a visit to see Alex in action. Alex passed his very first, very critical demonstration for an administrator who had concerns about insurance and liability in a time when therapy dogs (which Alex was not) were not as commonly seen in settings such as classrooms.

“He said, ‘I hear you have a dog,’” Chris recalls. “I said, ‘I have my dog, Alex; please just watch what it does for the class.’ I was not to be dissuaded, and finally, he relented and said he would observe. There was one very difficult class, and he couldn’t believe how good they could be with a dog.

“Alex was instrumental,” he continues. “Kids would be at a run, and he would pacify them. They loved sitting with him.”

Chris and his canine “teaching assistant” taught students together for 10 years, including two very special classes of students.

“One of my goals was to take a kindergarten class all the way through to 8th grade,” says Chris, who succeeded in taking two classes through the process, teaching them every year for nine years.

“All the lessons evolved around artists in historical time periods,” says Chris. “It’s amazing what you can teach little kids. I was teaching abstract expressionism to kindergarteners! Those kids know more than many of my high school kids.”

Except, that is, for the students he taught in elementary and middle school years who have now come into his grades 9 to 12 art classes at Co-op.

“The last of the kids who knew Alex are coming through Co-op now,” says Chris, adding they always ask about Alex.

When Alex’s health began failing in 2009, Chris says he recognized it was time for him to change his teaching venue and went into high school art education, his original goal when he first earned his certification. He has been teaching design, sculpture, and ceramics at Co-op since 2010, where he says he’s “blessed with a big, beautiful studio; a really great space.”

And, while he doesn’t have Alex in the classroom anymore, Chris takes what he’s learned from his canine companion—that focused kids can learn more than they ever imagined—and shares it with his high school students.

“There’s no phones, no talking, for an hour and a half. They need work ethic. I’m very strict. I’m really pushing these kids,” says Chris.

With the publication of Me & Chris, Chris is making himself available to give readings to classrooms and other interested groups. He’s also excited to see copies of his books on the shelf in his hometown bookstore, Breakwater Books.

Chris says he’s lately been considering opening his life to another dog, but he doesn’t think he will ever find another faithful friend quite like Alex.

“We were always together, so it’s hard to imagine...I could tell him to stay, and I could walk around the block, and he would be there,” says Chris.

Me & Chris by Christopher A. Cozzi (paperback, 168 pages, $33) is available at Breakwater Books, 81 Whitfield St, Guilford, and at amazon.com or chriscozzi.com. To read more about Chris Cozzi, his work, and his book, or to schedule readings or classroom visits, visit chriscozzi.com.