Cameron Cornell rises at 3:30 a.m..

He reads 18 pages from Marcel Proust’s masterwork “In Search of Lost Time” and drinks coffee. He lives in Bellingham with his wife and their two daughters. Once he finishes his drive to Oak Harbor, he runs around the track on the play fields at Olympic View Elementary.

This is time to himself — the only time he’ll have for hours.

For the rest of the day, his full attention will be on his students.

The Oak Harbor School District employs 358 teachers who spend their days making a difference for the town’s children. This is the story of one of them.

Cornell has worked as a life skills teacher at the elementary school for seven years. It’s where he’d like to stay for the next 25.

He works with seven children with moderate to severe disabilities. They vary in age and span from kindergarten to fifth grade.

“I think he feels a bond with these kids,” said Principal Laura Aesoph. “It’s more than a student-teacher relationship. It’s almost a higher calling. We refer to him around here as ‘saint’ as a joke. But it’s not really a joke.”

Cornell exudes calm and patience. He’s a quiet person who brings a thoughtful intellect to his role. And he shuns attention; he was somewhat horrified by the attention of a newspaper story.

On a recent morning, Cornell sat with two of his students at a desk. One boy worked on a puzzle of the United States, his fingers pushing thick shapes into their proper locations. Another studied a word list and repeated the words to his teacher.

“Good job, Caleb,” he said quietly, after the boy gave the correct answer.

The other boy’s attention started to wander. Cornell gently put his hand on the boy’s arm. “Right here, bud.”

His classroom is clean, spare and bright. A bulletin board by the door announces the educational goal for his students: “Maximum Independence at Age 21.” That’s the age his students will leave the public school system. He wants them to be as ready for life as possible.

That’s different for each child. For some, it means meaningful work. For others, it means mastering the most basic skills of life.

Also listed on the board are activities that happen in his classroom: don backpack, doff coat, respond to greetings, walk in room, sit at desk, walk in line, pass ball, wash hands.

When an outsider might see only a difference with the children he works with — or perhaps might not wish to look at all — Cornell sees each child. Really sees them. He describes his students as “people of great depth.” Their minds work differently than the rest of us, he said, so naturally their behaviors are different too.

“Behind those differences lie worlds that are if anything richer and more complex than those of a typical distracted self-conscious ‘normal’ person,” he said.

The great challenge of his job is finding the best way to educate each child.

“No one tells you how to do it,” he said. “When you teach general education, they give you a curriculum, a pacing plan and your expectations. Everything is lined up for you. You come into special education and they say, ‘Here are your kids. Let us know what you need.’”

Several instructional aides work in Cornell’s classroom, so each child gets the attention he or she needs.

One teacher played a ukulele and sang sweetly to Maddie Watt, 8, a freckled slip of a girl with bright eyes.

Maddie was born with a rare genetic condition. She’s wheelchair bound, blind and unable to move independently.

Her parents have lived other places, and Maddie has received care at a center that offered far more resources, said her mother Katie Watt. But nowhere else did she receive a better education. Cornell communicates with parents nearly daily. He and the other teachers make sure Maddie’s not only safe, but loved. Maddie comes home with her hair braided. Sometimes, Cornell, who loves to sail, sings Maddie sea shanties.

“He said, ‘Don’t worry, I keep them clean,’” Watt said. She laughed at the memory. Then she started to cry.

Maddie is medically fragile. Other schools were anxious about caring for her. Not Cornell.

“He’s a once-in-a-lifetime teacher,” she said. “I feel like this is her second home.”

Cornell speaks of Maddie and all of his other students with great affection.

Sometimes all he can do for a child, he said, is provide a rich life.

“We just talk to her and keep her engaged all day,” he said. “I can give her a dynamic life experience.”

This is Cornell’s vocation, but it wasn’t his first line of work.

Cornell, 41, grew up in Oklahoma and earned a bachelor’s in art history from the University of Oklahoma. He worked in New York City, importing and exporting artwork for museums, galleries and collectors.

It was lucrative work.

Then Sept. 11 happened. He watched the World Trade Center collapse from the rooftop of his Manhattan office. He and his wife were ready to leave New York two years later when Manhattan residents were encouraged to buy duct tape, plastic sheeting and gas masks in preparation for an anthrax attack on the city.

They decided to move to the West Coast. Cornell knew he needed a new career, and he thought teaching might be a good fit. His wife is a teacher. Working with children with special needs was a natural fit for Cornell, who had previously volunteered at a community for adults with developmental disabilities.

“Once you spend time with these people, you realize there is a complex world behind the disabilities they’ve been saddled with,” he said. “It’s a real pleasure, it’s a privilege to be invited into their world.”

Another of his students’ mother, Angie Ward, described the kind and patient way Cornell works with her step-daughter. Alex Ward, 10, is a slim girl who is eager to tell visitors, “Hi!” She suffers from a rare condition that affects her physically and mentally. Her step-mother couldn’t say enough about what Alex’s teachers taught the rest of the family, too.

“He opened up our minds,” she said. “I always thought she’d be living with us her entire life. She might be capable of living in a group home or doing a job.”

This is a difficult moment for the class. Last week, one of his students, 6-year-old Jaqueline Merion-Ramirez, died. Some of his students like Jaqueline are medically fragile. They were warned it was a possibility but the grief remains.

Death is a part of life and Cornell is perhaps more prepared for it than the average teacher.

Cornell is mad at himself. He has a passion for photography, in particular vintage cameras. He built his own darkroom in his basement. He had been taking portraits of each of the children, as a surprise for the parents. He didn’t photograph Jaqueline in time.

Cornell doesn’t see himself leaving teaching or even his current classroom. Teaching was a deliberate choice. The question of what he might not like about his job confuses him.

“It’s really not a challenge,” he said. “I love this work.”