My SIL, who just went down to New Orleans for a visit, brought back my childhood report cards. (My brother is cleaning out my parents' house.)
I remember almost nothing from elementary school, except being sick most of first grade (chicken pox, then measles, then mumps, then strep throat -- I see that, according to my attendance records, I missed 31 days out of the 177 that school was in session). I do remember my second grade teacher, who for some reason disliked me intensely. Maybe because I spent a lot of class time not paying attention? I mean, that was probably it. School bored me non-stop, I remember that.
I remember I started writing novels in class in third grade, but I don't actually remember much else about third grade. And I remember fourth grade mainly because I refused to learn to spell or do the multiplication tables, which annoyed one of the two teachers I had that year.
Notes from various teachers say things like, "For someone who can read as well as delagar, it's a shame she will not complete any assignments." (Any is underlined twice.) And "Unfortunately, delagar does not seem to grasp long division." And, "delagar is a charming child, but does not put effort into her work." And, "delagar has not done a single homework assignment this grading period." That's from fourth grade, my second teacher, the one who made me take the same spelling test over each Friday from December through May. At the end, I was still spelling every single word wrong. (I remember spelling Australia as Alstrayah.)
I also couldn't write legibly, but I received straight A's in citizenship. I have no idea what that means. Did I not talk back, or could I converse legibly on the meaning of democracy and how nation-states work?
I received A's and B's in everything except math (B's and C's in those), spelling, and handwriting, right up to sixth grade, when I began failing everything, even English. I think that was because that's when my vision went. I could not see the board, so I never had any idea what was going on in class.
I also remember that I got sent to the principal three times: once for refusing to nap during nap time in kindergarten, once in the fifth grade for wearing pants to school instead of a dress, and once in seventh grade, when a teacher accused me of smoking in the bathroom. (It wasn't me, it was another kid, but of course I couldn't say that. Rat someone out? Never!) That's not in the report cards, though, where all my teachers characterize me as a wonderful but lazy child.
7 comments:
It takes some serious effort to fail the same spelling test that many times! Did it never occurr to the teacher to try a DIFFERENT strategy? (Mine gave me extra work so I'd stop reading a book under my desk 90% of class and I'm still not sure how I feel about that. Being told off to help the most-struggling students, I'm still resentful about, even though it was 31 years ago.)
Also you cannot POSSIBLY be enough older than me to make forbidding pants reasonable. Like that was true when my mother was in school in 1955! What even, the south.
Things that we remember vs what adults in our world thought were important!
I love the way you spelled Australia!
Jenny: We had to wear dresses to school until I was in the sixth grade! (Yes, the South -- my mother could wear them in Indiana as a kid, and did.) Even then they had to be "pantsuits," not just jeans. That's why I was sent to the principal's office: I was wearing jean-like pants under a long dress, and that wasn't pantsuit-y enough.
Bardiac: I mean, that was how it sounded! As I recall, there was no attempt made to actually teach us how to spell. We were supposed to memorize words, I guess? I finally learned to spell in college, by keeping a spelling dictionary by my desk and looking up any word I couldn't spell, and I only did that because I figured out it was hurting my writing.
My handwriting is still appalling.
It took me a ridiculous amount of time to spell correctly “probably.” I would pronounce it as a two-syllable word (proah-blee), so the first “b” would got lost.
would get
I still have words I can't spell. Sometimes I spell them so badly that the little gizmo in Word won't even take a guess at what I'm trying to say. "No idea, buddy, you're on your own with this one."
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