A friend on fb mentioned that her sister wrote one paragraph about each year of school on her blog and I thought, given how much I loved writing Flashback Fridays, WHY have I never done such a thing? Consider this situation remedied. (And let's see how many of my teachers' names I can remember.)
Kindergarten. Mrs. Bauer! If we were at my elementary school right now, I could show you the exact classroom. I remember the smell of that paste in a jar (minty), doing a unit on Brown Bear, Brown Bear, and learning how to fold paper hamburger-style, or hot-dog style. And one time I was late to school because I was on an errand with my mom and we passed a hot air balloon stuck on a telephone pole (note to self: check this story with my mom).
First Grade. Mrs. Willis! She had a great smile and laugh. We did a project where we had to choose an animal to study and I chose the cockatoo. A guest speaker came in and taught us how to brush our teeth. We had something called Teddy Bear Club that we liked to earn points for.
Second Grade. Mrs. Oelschlager! And I even remember how to spell it (right, Mom?). I have very distinct memories from this year. We had a lot of ESL kids in that classroom and Mrs. Oelschlager gave us native speakers some perspective on how hard it can be to learn a language: "imagine hearing me ask you to pick up the floor and not knowing I mean to tidy it - imagine thinking I meant for you to actually pick up the floor!" She once gave us a trivia question: "what is the horizontal displacement of air?" It's wind. We studied Australia in-depth. She gave us lots of brainteasers. I had long hair at that age and people liked to play with it during circle time or whatever and Mrs. Oelschlager taught me how to tell people not to (I didn't like it).
Third Grade. Mrs. Bauer again! I had some really good friends in this class. We had two class pet rats that we voted to be named Itchy and Bart (The Simpsons had recently become very popular). We learned cursive. There was a British kid named D...Derek? in the class.
Fourth Grade. Mr. Wright. One time we had to identify books as being fiction or non-fiction and I said Little House on the Prairie was non-fiction, and he marked me wrong. I still think that was unjust. We studied the Oregon Trail in detail, culminating in a week-long daily re-enactment that is one of the things I am most sad that my kids will never experience. I learned the times tables and marked my progress with different colors of construction paper ice cream scoops posted on the wall. We did a class play of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and I got to be Goldilocks. We studied the US and my partner and I did our project about Nevada.
Fifth Grade. Mrs. Gober. This was the year to study the USSR, but it was also the year the USSR was breaking up, so we just didn't study it. I distinctly remember the teacher pulling down the pre-installed rolly maps at the front of the room and being like, "welp, this is all out of date and probably will be more so tomorrow!" I am still sad about this. We studied Christopher Columbus but it was the alternative (at the time) view of him.
Sixth Grade. Mrs. Mueller. This was a really weird year, not gonna lie. I didn't always get along with the teacher. But I learned a lot of sign language from a friend whose parents were deaf, and I wrote a rap about Manitoba, and I learned how to write italic script. We did a class play about something and there was a character named Mrs. Martinez, but the teacher insisted it was pronounced "MAR-tin-ezz" even though it obviously should be "mar-TEEN-ezz"...right?? This was the year my friends started reading stupid books about cheerleaders and horror stories - like this was a series, maybe? Where there were cheerleaders and scary things kept happening? We had segregated sex-ed classes that year, and the girls worked out a code that if we unexpectedly needed a feminine product during class, we were to go to the teacher and ask for "the envelope." The teacher also taught us that [reader discretion advised for this next part] um, certain things need to be erect before they can go into other things, because otherwise it would be like trying to put a bunch of cooked spaghetti into a pop can. And I've never been able to forget that, thanks (and you're welcome).
Let's end with elementary school for now. Isn't it strange, the things we remember?
