'It makes them feel special:' Dimondale teacher greets students with personalized handshake

DIMONDALE — Ty Cotter knows a lot of different handshakes. 

Twenty-eight of them, in fact. One for each student in his fourth-grade class at Dimondale Elementary. 

Every morning as the students line up to walk into his classroom, they do their handshake with Cotter. The plan was to only do it in the mornings, Cotter said, but now the kids want to do it more often. 

"I don't know what my kids are coming to school with," Cotter said. "I don't know what their morning was like. When they get to me, my job is to make sure they know I'm glad they're here today." 

Cotter started the handshake greeting in late September, he said. He'd seen a video of a teacher doing a similar thing a few years ago and thought it would be cool to try. 

He told his students: "You develop the handshake, I'll learn it." 

It took him a few weeks to memorize all 28 handshakes. Now he's got them down. 

"It's special, it's different," Cotter said. "The students told me it's different than if you just say hello, because you say hello to everybody. They have their own unique handshake, it makes them feel special." 

The kids put their own personalities into the handshakes, Cotter said. The more outgoing ones add dances and spins. The kids less comfortable with it can do something more basic. 

In the video, Cotter and one student end the handshake with a dab, a dance move popularized by Carolina Panthers athlete Cam Newton when he celebrated touchdowns with the move. 

They get off sync, and Cotter pulls him back to do it again. 

His wife, Jessica Cotter, who also works in the Holt school district as the executive director of curriculum, took a video of the morning handshake and posted it to Facebook Tuesday. By Friday, the video had almost 30,000 views and 800 shares, likes and comments. 

Ty Cotter said he was blown away by the amount of people commenting on and sharing the video. He said he loves teaching fourth grade — it's a fun time when the kids are mature enough to talk to like regular people, but are still little kids in a lot of ways. 

He's taught at Dimondale Elementary for five years, and has spent 12 years teaching at Holt Public Schools. Prior to that, he taught in Stockbridge for a few years. 

To him, the greeting is a way to make the kids feel special and welcome in his classroom. 

"Nobody is that pumped about going to school," Cotter said. "It's just one other way to show them I love them." 

Contact Kara Berg at 517-377-1113 or kberg@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @karaberg95.