And Hayden is also a big fan of Internet site Wikipedia.
"Do you know what O-T-T-O-M-A-N spells?" he asked. "It's an empire. I'll show you on the computer."
Hayden is a little different, too, and it's not only because of his interest in things like the Ottoman Empire and extrasolar planets. Hayden is one of Kirk Allen's special education students at Enterprise Attendance Center.
Allen has shepherded a group of special needs children at Enterprise for 22 years now. He and a team of teachers helps the children become as adept and independent as they can.
"Our main thing is that we try to teach them self-help skills like toilet training and dressing and feeding themselves," he said. "But we also focus on independent living."
By independent living, Allen said, he means things like cooking a simple microwave meal or how to wash and dry their clothes.
The seven students in Allen's class are everywhere from 8-17 years old. He said Hayden, a great reader and avid learner, is one of the more advanced ones. There are others who are not as far ahead as Hayden is, however.
"Some of these kids are pretty verbal, and there are some that aren't," he said, adding that there is a student who has to be moved to a different bodily position every so often.
The children come to him when it is ruled they need to be taught in a special environment, but the state mandates that they spend one period a day learning with the regular classes as well. Allen said they spend physical education with the other children, and Hayden and one other student who is a little more advanced also take math with the regular special education class for children who are learning impaired with things like ADD or ADHD.
Another thing the children really get into, he said, is "community skills training," or the weekly field trips they make on Fridays to various places in Brookhaven. One that they really enjoy, Allen said, is going to Dairy Queen.
"It teaches them to do basic things like exchange money, or find the ketchup," he said. "It's different than when they do these things with their peers. They become more independent in ways you can't teach them to be - we try to normalize them to the greatest extent possible."
And for Allen, he said the 22 years he's spent weren't what he planned, but they've been worth every minute. Years ago, when he got engaged to the daughter of the then-principal at Enterprise, he said, he was offered the special ed job.
"I think he was trying to keep me from marrying her and taking her to Louisiana," he said. "And I fell in love with it, and we stayed."
Part of what makes the job so rewarding is knowing that because the children are special, so are their families, and there is a parent-teacher bond that goes beyond a normal classroom.
"When I first started teaching, I had a parent that told me that if you don't have the right kind of heart, you can't do this job," he said. "And another one that told me, 'When I drop them off, I don't have to worry about them.' That means a lot."
Through the years there have been different situations that Allen can remember specifically, but he said every child he has taught has been special.
"I just fell in love with them when I started working with them, because to them, everything is exciting," he said.
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