elementary school – Go Retire Psychiatrist

We were reminiscing about our elementary school days following a discussion of news article about what some educators want to do with the school day schedule. Apparently, kids are pretty sleepy in class and teachers think it’s because they’re sleep deprived. Apparently, they’re not getting enough sleep at night and the proposal is that the school day schedule ought to be pushed ahead, the day starting at 9 AM instead of 8 AM.

Maybe the kids should be off their electronic devices a little earlier in the evening.

I guess there have been studies supporting this idea for years, but of course I hadn’t heard of it. Nobody seems to be in a hurry to change the system.

What we remembered were the consequences imposed by teachers and principals when we didn’t perform up to expectations in class, or misbehaved in class or on the playground.

Sena had a little trouble with remembering the vowels, a e i o u and sometimes y. She had so much trouble with it that she had to stay after school to write that out over and over on two big blackboards. It took quite a while. That was back in the days when blackboards were big and covered one entire wall of the classroom. There was always more chalk available if she ran out. Sometimes the penalty for her not paying attention was a few sharp raps on the top of her head with a No.2 pencil. Most often it was for talking out of turn or not paying attention.

I got caught a couple of times for throwing snowballs on the playground. I think it was at least a couple of times. The consequence for this infraction was to sit in the principal’s office drawing little circles resembling snowballs on a sheet of paper. They had to be small so that it took you a long time to fill up the paper. If you made them too big, the principal made you flip the sheet over and do it again. I think if you got writer’s cramp, you had to switch hands.

My brother and I had to walk to and from school. We had to get up early and sometimes the snow was up to our knees. It was about a half-mile walk to school. One winter day, I was walking home and found a dog frozen stiff as a statue next to the sidewalk.

I spent most of time after lunch looking at the clock, wishing the hands would move faster to 3 PM, when school let out. I would walk home and because I was a latchkey kid, I just let myself in the house.

I guess moving the time up so that kids can be more awake during the morning wouldn’t hurt anything. Maybe the curriculum will be simplified a little bit too. Things like geography could be easier. You could change the name of the Gulf of Mexico (or is it the Gulf of America now?) to something that makes more sense—like the Gulf of Water.

If you can’t learn that, maybe you need to have your head rapped with a No.2 pencil.

Teacher Appreciation Week this year started on May 8, 2023. I found my old report cards from Lincoln Elementary School in Mason City, Iowa. Lincoln was torn down many years ago to make room for expanding the Post Office. But I have my memories. I rediscovered reasons to celebrate the dedication of teachers. I don’t know how many people keep their grade school report cards. My mother kept mine along with old elementary school photos, including class pictures.

Jimmy!

Brief remarks on my grade cards remind me how supportive my teachers were—and how they expected me to buckle down. I was kind of a handful and there are indications that I had difficulty focusing my attention. My fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Cole, was instrumental in identifying my near sightedness, which helped me to get my first pair of eyeglasses.

It wasn’t a bed of roses. My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Myrton (who always smelled like cigarettes), once slapped me so hard it made my nose bleed because I bumped into her when I was running around the classroom. I don’t remember why I was doing that. She was really sorry for slapping me.

And there was the time me and another kid got caught throwing snowballs on the playground (I can’t remember what grade I was in), which led to the usual penalty levied by the school Principal, Esther Ahrens. We each had to draw really small circles (signifying snowballs) to fill a sheet of paper.

We (meaning the kids) thought Ms. Ahrens was a witch. On the other hand, on a really hot day shortly before summer break, my 4^th grade teacher, Ms. Hrubes, started acting really strange and was sort of wobbling at the open window in the classroom. There was no air conditioning in the school. Ms. Ahrens happened to be walking by the room and rushed into the room just in time to catch Ms. Hrubes as she was falling backward in a dead faint from heat exhaustion.

But other than that, along with the usual physical and psychological cuts and scrapes of elementary school, I remember those years as instrumental in turning me and other kids into smarter, nicer people and better citizens. We also learned how to make really tasty homemade ice cream the old-fashioned way, using nested containers, the larger of which had a mixture of salt an ice and a hand crank.

The notes and letters with my report cards often had illuminating comments:

“Jimmy has done well in Physical Education class. He has excellent aim and can hit a moving car’s windshield with a rock (yelling ‘bombs away’) with fair accuracy.”

“During this quarter, I was able to dissuade Jimmy from trying to fly like superman from the second-floor window of the classroom.”

“Jimmy reads well. He could apply himself more carefully in science. We were finally able to remove all the exploded paint from the gymnasium. It took only a few weeks this quarter.”

“Jimmy’s command of spatial relationships has improved a great deal! He can figure out how to fill his emptied milk carton with spinach in seconds, often without attracting the attention of the lunchroom monitors.”

I’m giving a great big thank you to all the teachers! You deserve it!