[Today’s run: 3.75]
Recent events had me thinking about my elementary school days.
I started school at Longfellow Elementary, which is long gone. We were bused in from the suburbs to this “inner city” school.
Kindergarten – I think my teacher was Mrs. Keller ? I’m not sure about that name. I remember taking naps on the floor and having the letters of the alphabet on big cards up on the wall. I remember that Randy Harvey started our class a couple of weeks late… he was “the new boy” for a little while.
First Grade – I don’t remember my teacher’s name. I remember that I had a problem that year with warts on my fingers. So on a few occasions I went to class with bandaged fingers. I had a friend, Glennis Yeager. She lived not too far from me and I remember going over to her house a couple of times. She had a dog named Snoopy.
Second Grade – My teacher was Mrs. Noyes. I remember that because she said to spell it like “no – yes” but it sounded like noise. I remember that we read a book in class “Tan – story of a wild dog”, and she let me take the book home on weekends and read ahead.
Third Grade – We had two teachers, two classes put together. I think one of them was Mrs. Thompson, not sure about that. I started piano lessons too.
Fourth Grade – Mrs. Machessney (?) I can say it but I don’t remember how to spell it. I had a friend named Jimmy Moseby. He was a character. One of the girls in my class was Karen Clay. She told me her cousin was Cassius Clay (I wasn’t sure who that was). This was the memory which is connected to recent events. I think this was the year when we had square dancing in the lunchroom/gym. And one time we all lined up (in the gym again) and got vaccinated for something, with air guns.
Fifth Grade – I started at the new school down the street from my house. No more school bus! Mrs. Sharp. Mrs. Sharp liked to wear low cut dresses (or so they seemed to me). One of the kids in my class was very good at swearing. So… I learned a lot of interesting stuff at the suburban school which I had not learned at the inner city school! We had a class on sewing and I made a vest.
Sixth Grade – The new school had “open classroom”, four classes in one large space with each teacher having their own bunch in one corner of the large space. We did some things in our corner and some with other groups in the open area. I did have music class in a separate room and some days the teacher wasn’t there. We had eraser fights instead. And we had an art class room too. I had two friends named Richard. One of the Richards was very good at chess. I went to his house sometimes and played chess with him. He always won; actually he just mopped the floor with me every time.
6 replies on “Elementary school thoughts”
Kindergarten for me was Mrs. Kline (sp?). I think her husband was a cop. Your second grade teacher was the “good” one. I had dreiheim (sp?) and she was a bit mean, as I recall. We once watched TV live coverage of aftermath of an earthquake in LA. I just looked it up – February 1971.
The open classrooms were a mistake, in my opinion. As apparently was the flat room – the building has a metal angled roof atop that now. I recall visiting Cindy Woodley at her farm house where the school was later built. There was a sewing spool secured by a nail through the center on the screen door low enough for her to reach it. I thought that was clever.
I think you are right about Mrs Kline, she was my teacher for K also! I had forgotten her name.
I think at the school with open space they eventually changed it over to more conventional classrooms. I’m not 100% sure.
I can’t recall her name, but the 5th grade teacher I had would smoke like a chimney in the teachers lounge, which adjoined the classroom with a wall of windows. She also taught art class and caused a heated beeswax fire that the principal extinguished with a water extinguisher – that didn’t work well.
We also had a teacher who wore blue jeans – can’t remember her name and she didn’t teach my unit. I just thought it odd that most teachers dressed nicely and she was so casual. The ’70’s.
I remember going to Willard for kindergarten. My teacher’s name was Mrs. Miller (I think), and I didn’t like her very well as she reprimanded me for running to get in line for recess when she called my name. So she called my name again to get out of line. We got vaccinated that year for something, but it wasn’t with the air gun. I believe it was a TB vaccination. That classroom had a huge bay window area. We were half-day kids, but one time we were allowed to troop into the lunch room for refreshments and the milk was in little glass bottles with the cardboard tops. I thought that was neat and felt like a “big kid.”
One of the girls in my class from Pleasant Hill – Linda Wicker – got in the paper that year because her hair was cut. It went almost to the floor, but must have been causing some issues for her (maybe like Gma Howard when she was a little girl and would get headaches from her heavy hair). Anyway, a photographer from the paper took before and after photos.
First grade was Mrs. Cooper at Longfellow. Nice lady.
Second grade was Mrs. Noyes. I liked her and was so excited to have a new young teacher. However, my excitement could not be contained enough to settle down to work, so she sent me back to sit in Mrs. Cooper’s classroom until I could control myself. That was memorable because it was the first day of school.
I had Mrs. Thompson in third grade and didn’t care at all for her as she was – or at least seemed – perpetually grouchy. She made a public example of the way I wrote my capital S in cursive when I signed my papers. It was wrong and not to be tolerated. She could have spoken to me privately about it, but I’m sure she didn’t think it was a big deal to put it on the board. Then she had a party for her class at the end of the year and I thought it was strange she suddenly wanted to be kind to all of us.
I could go on year by year, but will stop here, where we have some shared experience with teachers. In retrospect, my elementary school attitude shows clearly why I washed out of college all those years later. Ha! One thing I like about remembering some of these things is it really helps me when I’m dealing with children now. I don’t ever want to flatten a kid in front of a group – unless they’re totally out of control and the group expects someone to take the kid in hand. Even then, I want to privately – or publicly, if possible – praise the kid when they do something good.
I recall Mrs Thompson – I was thinking she’d be _my_ teacher after 2nd grade so I took care to flatter her once in the lunchroom when she was a monitor. I commented on a necklace she was wearing and she beamed. It didn’t pay off as I was in Pleasant Hill Elementary in 3rd grade, instead.
Moving ahead 25 years, in grad school I thought it would be fun to get straight A’s (I am not an achiever and never really cared what my GPA was) and used a subtler version of the same tactic one semester – it worked. In all five classes I managed to get noticed in the “right” way. Five classes – all A’s. Life is politics.
Haha! And it helps that you’re hilarious and likeable. It’s always a good move to help someone feel better about themselves and think of you fondly at the same time.