School Days

This morning I work up very early but stayed in bed, trying to go back to sleep. I thought about what I should write about on this blog. My last few posts have been rather uninteresting and I thought about the first few months when I had stories I was eager to tell. My mind was flooded with ideas I should write about. They have since slipped my mind, and I wonder where my inspiration went. This morning I had a good idea, and here it is.

My Elementary School Teachers

When you're a kid you never think you'll forget the teachers you had in school. Now, I don't remember all of them, but before they all leave my brain, here is a brief remembrance of my teachers and my early school years.

Preschool: Miss Mary, who taught preschool out of her house in our neighborhood. Her house backed up on Crystal Lake, and one of the fun activities during preschool was fishing in the back yard to catch sunnies using blue cheese for bait.

Kindergarten: Mrs. Dahlquist in Heights School in Oakland NJ. She was near the end of her teaching career when she was my teacher. I remember her as being a grandmotherly figure, and I generally liked her. I remember feeling very safe in her class. She maintained pretty good discipline. I got in trouble once (at least once, shall I say), playing with my friends when I was supposed to be quieting down for class. I had to stand out recess that day.

First Grade: Miss Bird, also in Heights School. She was young, probably a new graduate or one or two years out. She wore those mod '70s mini dresses in double knit polyester in bright colors, and she wore pant suits. She had reddish brown hair in a bouffant-like flip (much like "Nikki Blonski" character in Hairspray, the movie). She was kind of plump. I enjoyed her class, but it went too slow for me. My best friend Ellen and I cut up a bit because we were bored. By the end of the year Ellen and I got scared that we'd be held back, so we shaped up.

Second Grade: Mrs. Serio, in Lincoln School in Wyckoff, NJ. I was the new kid that year since we'd moved the summer between first and second grade. The other new kid was Judy Seaver. We sort of became friends. This new school was weird. It didn't have a cafeteria! We had to bring our lunch every day! You could buy milk and ice cream bars, though.

Third Grade: Mrs. Christie. She was known to run the classroom with an iron hand. I was scared of her at first, but learned to appreciate her over time. She was very thin and wore a neat teased hairstyle. She strove to teach us impeccable handwriting and would not tolerate our small fingers touching the exposed wood near the point of the pencil. "Fingers off the wood!" she'd exclaim. She also made us sit up straight when writing, not hunch over our work.

Mid year we "earned" our pens when our cursive script was neat enough not to have to be erased as much. I don't think I was the first to earn one in class, but I did get the first black pen (everyone else had blue). It was a badge of honor for me! Several years after she was my teacher, she became good friends with my mother, who had been elected to the school board in town. Reflecting on her now, I suspect she was a very intelligent lady. As I child, I naturally didn't appreciate that quality.

Mrs. Christie had a bulletin board in the classroom in which we all chose jobs around the classroom for a week. Some of the jobs that come to mind were "plants," watering the plants in the classroom, "erasers," clapping out the blackboard erasers, "messenger," run notes to the office or elsewhere for the teacher, "flag," lead the pledge of allegiance every morning and choose the patriotic song to sing from our repertoire, and "chairs," make sure all the chairs were put upside down on the desks at the end of the day. Certain jobs were coveted among the kids, especially messenger. Personally, I enjoyed doing plants; I was afraid I'd get lost in the school if I were messenger. Mrs. Christie set up her plants such that the pot sat in a deep saucer of water. These saucers were to be kept filled. I don't know how those plants survived, but they did.

Fourth Grade: Mrs. Orr, still in Lincoln School. I was delighted to have her because she had a reputation among the students for being nice. And she was super nice. Spelling was a big topic for fourth grade. In her class, I had a huge crush on Jimmy, an outgoing, ever-smiling kid with white-blond hair. It was not reciprocated. I think another little boy in my class, Steven, had a crush on me. He was a "bad boy" though and I never knew how to relate to him; so I concluded that I just didn't like him. Another milestone this year was wearing a retainer for my teeth. Braces came at the end of the year. Mrs. Orr had a retainer too, and she helped me feel not so bad about having to wear it.

Fourth grade we all learned how to play the recorder.

Fifth Grade: Mrs. Nally. I don't remember much about 5th grade. A few snapshots come to mind: two girls that alternated between being my friends and being my enemies: Gina and Rosalee. Gina was all hot and popular because her family knew the family of Ace Frehley of the band Kiss and she'd always talk about "so totally normal" he was in real person. That impressed us. She also developed breasts early. The boys were interested, and that whole dimension came into existence. Fifth grade is when we all learned about menstruation and adolescence.

I believe this is the year I started playing clarinet. I really wish I could remember the music teachers names! There were a total of four music instructors at the school. One guy did woodwinds. Another did brass and percussion. A third taught strings. The fourth one, the only woman, did the basic music teaching - singing and basic music concepts (which everyone had to take). Instrumental music was optional.

Sixth Grade: Alas, this is the first one I can't remember! Mrs. Stonebridge or something like that. She was an older woman, probably in her late 40s to early 50s. with salt-and-pepper hair in a stylish wave. I liked her well enough. A milestone I remember from this year was that this was the first year I made it through an entire school year without crying at school. Such things are important to the school age child!

Other topics in elementary school:
I enjoyed art class and instrumental music in school. I did not like physical education. I was shy and came from a reserved household in which girls weren't supposed to like gym or exercise.

One gym teacher I remember was Mr. Rydell. He was a good guy - he had an odd way of pointing at you using two fingers - the index finger and the pinky finger. Every year we had Field Days and the whole school was divided up into red and blue teams. Mr. Rydell was heavily involved in these activities.

My elementary school years were 1970-1978. It seemed like an entire lifetime when I lived through it. Now, 8 years go by in a whoosh.