The things you remember from geade school

[Blackwater 53393]

6 hours ago, Michigan Slim said:

Public. Common practice at the time.

 

Yeah! My first grade teacher insisted on using the right hand to write.  Back then, (1959) teachers weren’t equipped to instruct left handed pupils nor were they knowledgeable in the possible problems that they were creating!

 

Public schools weren’t overseen and managed the way they are now and thus failed several generations of students by preventing them from exercising their natural abilities.

[South-Eye Ned]

1 hour ago, Blackwater 53393 said:

 

Yeah! My first grade teacher insisted on using the right hand to write.  Back then, (1959) teachers weren’t equipped to instruct left handed pupils nor were they knowledgeable in the possible problems that they were creating!

 

Public schools weren’t overseen and managed the way they are now and thus failed several generations of students by preventing them from exercising their natural abilities.

I was never directly discouraged from using my left hand to write, but on the first day of class, my 7th grade homeroom teacher insisted I look for a desk designed for lefties that I didn’t need or like.  It was a waste of my time.

[Blackwater 53393]

27 minutes ago, South-Eye Ned said:

I was never directly discouraged from using my left hand to write, but on the first day of class, my 7th grade homeroom teacher insisted I look for a desk designed for lefties that I didn’t need or like.  It was a waste of my time.

 

I wasn’t discouraged from writing left handed. I was, in effect, prevented from doing so.  It was Florida schools in the ‘50s.  I was reminded daily those first few weeks of first grade, that writing left handed wasn’t acceptable.

 

I didn’t know any better. I’m reasonably certain that if my parents had known, there would have been hell to pay.

[Buffalo Creek Law Dog]

I remember 2nd or 3rd grade learning how to spell words.  Arithmetic was - A Red Indian Thought He Might Eat Turnips In Church.  Answer - was A Noisy Skunk Will Eat Rolaids.  The first one you can't use today, besides, it's now known as Math.

[Springfield Slim SASS #24733]

My Elementary school had 2 rooms, the little room and the big room. In first grade 1st-4th was in the big room, but when I came back for 2nd we were all in the little room and 5th-8th were in the big room.  Shortly after 2nd grade started they built a real bathroom outside and we didin't have to use the small bathroom right there at the end of the classroom.

   We had 2 teachers, one for 1-4 and one for 5-8, who were sisters.  Mrs. Brazil was my 2-4th grade teacher. She taught us everything.  There were 5-7 kids in each grade, so she had 25-30 kids to teach by herself. For reading she would sit us all down, grade by grade, and we would read aloud, using any book she happened to have. Science book, health book, whatever. I was a pretty good reader, some weren't, but we all learned to read well eventually as she never gave up. She never scolded us for going too slow either, as she knew all kids were not the same. We had a library truck come by once a month and fill-up our book rack, and I would read them all before the month was over, maybe 30 books. I liked to read.

  Years later, when I was 50 and my daughter was in 1st grade, we had a conference at school about 3 months into 1st grade. The teacher felt my daughter's reading wasn't nearly up to par and she was asking to hold her back to do 1st grade again because of it, but I wasn't going to have that happen.  This teacher had been to Harvard, and had been "Teacher of the Year" for doing a video on how to teach kids to read and yet couldn't teach my daughter to read! "Too many kids, not enough time", she said.  I thought back to Mrs. Brazil, and what she had managed to do, and called BS on my daughter's teacher, and her whining. So I taught my daughter myself, and like Mrs. Brazil had done,  taught her the sounds of the letters, and had her read aloud to me every day like I had done in school(against her teacher's wishes, said it wouldn't work). By the end of the year my daughter was 2 levels above where she needed to be to move up. No more talk of holding her back from anyone. All the computers and money in the world will never replace a teacher who cares about her kids and doesn't give up. Thank you Mrs. Brazil.