Elementary Backtrack

[Guest College Party]

A spinoff of the Site Feedback derailing. Share anecdotes from kindergarten to 5th grade. Elementary schools that had 6th grade were bullshit, far as I'm concerned. Pre-school counts too, sure. I skipped kindergarten.

 

When I moved from gifted school to public school upon beginning 2nd grade, it was less than a smooth transition. I had to be moved to a new classroom because I had the misfortune of having a batshit teacher. This went on to be a fairly common topic at the dinner table when my sister and I would encounter similarly incompetent public school teachers along the way (quite often), as we discussed how her pedagogical theories were actually well suited to older students, but for seven and eight-year-olds (and I was six turning seven), it was nothing short of utter chaos to concerned parents, and nothing short of utter fun for us.

 

First of all, we were each supposed to do an individual project, which we would negotiate with her before getting approval. My project, being obsessed with maps at the time, was to draw a floor plan of good old Betsy Ross-Annie Sullivan Elementary. Basically, I spent my entire morning walking around drawing a map of the school. Being a smarter kid than most, I eventually completed my project and did a good job. Other kids were not so lucky, and would spend day after day aimlessly screwing around. This was a cause for concern with other kids' parents, whom, without fail, kept invoking that "three R's" crap. My parents liked the idea of independent learning, but were a mite frazzled that on top of them indulging my cartography obsession by letting me buy maps at the Jewel-Osco every time I went, I would go to school and make maps, then come home and make maps. "Maps, maps, maps," they griped.

 

T'was not all fun and games in our classroom. In the afternoons, we were subjected to scrutiny from instructor and peers alike. We had to write "book evaluations," which were in turn evaluated by the teacher and a panel of classmates. However, the book evaluations more often took the form of Kid Evaluations, and the evaluations were often harsh ones. My harshest criticisms were that the kids read too slowly or too monotonously. Other kids just made it personal.

 

We had a box marked "Agenda Items." We would put our "agenda items" in this box, and these grievances would be aired in a group discussion. Serious business for stuff like "Michael eats the crayons" and "Charlie called me stupid." Classmates deemed to have been contributing too little were ejected from the circle by saying "I don't think Danny belongs in the circle." Then that person would himself be kicked out: "I don't think Brian belongs in the circle." Everyone was being ejected and reinstated with no rhyme or reason, the teacher who was ostensibly in charge would just watch it all go down, and all of us were unduly angry with one another because of the environment we were in. In retrospect, it kind of reminds me of this place. This more than anything was the breaking point. This teacher was nuts, for real: not only did she preside over the inmates running the proverbial asylum, she was (like me, eventually) on Ritalin. Good to know.

 

Sure, gifted school was expensive, and it was more convenient to attend the school right in my backyard (really, I walked through my backyard and the school was right there), but maybe I would've been better off staying with the same twelve or thirteen eccentric rich kids.

 

Celebrate your elementary school achievements, or ventilate your traumatic experiences. We're a nutty bunch, so I'm sure there was some similarly weird shit in your formative years, too.

[Dandy 0]

I was one of only two fourth graders to kick it all the way onto the steps in the playground in kickball. I was also in gifted classes, but not for my kickballing skills.

[King Kamala 0]

I was the class troublemaker in 4th grade and the first half of 5th grade until an actual troublemaker showed up. This was mostly due to my tendancy to start rumors and throw stuff. The highlight of my brief reign as a troublemaker was my feud with the school art teacher. I can't remember how or why exactly it started but I know it peaked when I started a popular playground rumor that he was cheating on his wife (This was during the period where I was watching a lot of Maury and Jerry Springer). I also liked to do funny faces and to The Alex Wright dance into his class window while I had recess and he was teaching another class. Oh and he was obsessed with building this giant dollhouse so needless to say I messed with that. The feuded ended when he took a sabbatical for several months in the second half of 5th grade. I took pride in driving him away for years but typing this I just feel like kind of a jerk. I can't even remember why I started giving him hell in the first place.

[Dandy 0]

When I was in Kindergarten, the teacher's aide was also my babysitter. My mother was the school secretary, and one day she dressed me in suspenders. I abhorred them and thought they were goofy, but it never struck me to take them off. Instead, I wore my huge winter coat indoors all day long (they had the heat on 80 degrees). During lunch, my babysitter came over and whispered to me and asked why I was wearing the coat. I told her I didn't want to wear the suspenders. She told me it was okay to take the suspenders off and mom never made me wear them again.

 

Also, by the time I made it to Kindergarten, I had already read all the Reading textbooks through 6th grade (highest grade at the school). I was a busy little guy that started reading the newspaper at the age of 3. Mom brought home the textbooks for me so I could learn stuff. Consequentially, this caused me to be very lazy in school, which caught up to me in Junior High, High School, and college. At the time, though, I was the man. I only missed one question in Kindergarten, and that is still disputable in my book.

[BruteSquad_BRODY 0]

I was yelled at in 3rd grade for printing my full name Andrew Lee L__________ because the kid who sat next to me was named Lee and it cheesed him off. I was probably doing it to tick him off anyway.

 

I was sent to the principals office in 5th grade for sexual harassment. Ahhh Ole Tracy had my heart...

 

 

[Dandy 0]

I was writing something in fourth grade when the kid next to me looked over and said, "you're a motherfucker, go fuck your mother." He was most likely trying to make a joke that he had heard earlier that day by an older student, but I stabbed him in the shoulder with my number two pencil anyway.

 

[Guest Smues]

Elementary schools that had 6th grade were bullshit, far as I'm concerned.

 

Fuck that. Having 6th grade in my elementary school meant I only had two years of middle school and not three, so thank god for that.

[Dandy 0]

We had K-6, 7-9, and 10-12 when I was in school. Now, it is K-8, and 9-12 in that area.

[Jingus 0]

Elementary schools that had 6th grade were bullshit, far as I'm concerned.

 

Fuck that. Having 6th grade in my elementary school meant I only had two years of middle school and not three, so thank god for that.

Yeah. Also, Czech's just saying that because he's a whippersnapper who came around right when they inexplicably changed the traditional K-6 model into whatever it is not.

 

the teacher's aide was also my babysitter. My mother was the school secretary

That must've been fun. I had my mother for a teacher once, in freaking Gifted special class of all things. She had us knitting quilt squares and other stupid shit. Mother was great at helping retards learn to read, but she had no idea what to do with the kids who were cloistered off into a separate classroom because they scored high on standardized tests.

 

Only two elementary memories come instantly to mind in terms of being bad. One was in kindergarten, where a rather aggressive girl suddenly decided that she was going to conduct an exploratory comparison of male and female genitalia, with me as her semi-voluntary partner. In the middle of the cafeteria at lunchtime. Oh man I got in trouble for that one.

 

The other one is still my favorite to reminisce about, though. I spent a couple years in Christian private school. In first grade, we had this hateful old battleaxe for a teacher. My memory of anything from that far back is usually nonexistant, but I have a startlingly clear recollection of her going off on an outraged rant in class about how we couldn't trust the Jews because they killed Christ.

[King Kamala 0]

I'll never forget the day in 5th grade where I saw my first pair of female breasts in person. Unfortunately, it was the incredibly butch, incredibly pudgy, class tomboy. One day she was wrestling with a boy at recess and somehow her shirt came off and she wasn't wearing a bra underneath. Needless to say, those who witnessed it were simultaneously amused and horrified.

[Guest College Party]

That's unfortunate. I went to a gifted school that was about 80% Jewish, so I never had that problem! I played with dreidels and ate potato pancakes; it was pretty great.

 

So I got some sunburn on Sunday. Should've seen it coming; there's a day with solar mishaps written allllll over it. This reminds me of the time that we went on a field trip to the Wheeling Aquatic Center in 3rd grade. My mom made sure I sunscreened myself before spending a day outside, but because of the shower-before-entering policy, all the sunscreen washed off and I got pretty much the worst sunburn I've ever gotten outside the state of Florida. That was a pretty uncomfortable week, but it also signaled the last day that I had to take Ritalin, so that was cool.

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

I want to a gifted and talented Magnet school for grades 2-6.

 

I got suspended in 3rd grade for reading a map of Africa near a black kid (go figure which country I pronounced wrong)

Whatever grade I was in in 1992 (3rd?), I was the only kid that voted for Ross Perot in the school mock elections.

I got suspended in 4th grade for insubordination for not sitting under my desk to read during English class because I couldnt fit under the desk.

I almost got suspended in 5th grade for putting superglue on the door knob of the classroom portable building causing it to get stuck and not open.

I was the Kindergarten Teachers Aide in 6th grade.

I won my School's Geography Bee in 6th grade and was 2 questions away from going to Annapolis for the State Bee (I finished in 2nd place in 7th grade too)

I never had to take Gym at any school level but it meant that I never got to participate in Field Day in elementary school, though I always got a "Participant" ribbon anyway...hmm

 

But, I never once was suspended in Middle School or High School, and never once had detention either. Hell, I never even saw the inside of the Principal's office in High School.

 

 

[Jingus 0]

I want to a gifted and talented Magnet school

No you did not.

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

I want to a gifted and talented Magnet school

No you did not.

 

Just because I cant type doesnt mean I didnt, though oddly enough the only class I ever failed at any point was 5th grade spelling.

[Guest College Party]

I want to a gifted and talented Magnet school

No you did not.

 

Just because I cant type doesnt mean I didnt, though oddly enough the only class I ever failed at any point was 5th grade spelling.

5th grade was my best showing in the spelling bee. I won the classroom, won the school, 2nd at the district, won the region, and made it to state before striking out on "grandiloquence" because I thought it was just a more grand form of eloquence. I don't know how I feel about the spelling bee. On one hand, it provided an avenue for me to excel at something that gained the respect of my peers in a school year where respect was only gained through dodgeball prowess. By the time I was making it to regional and state as a mere 10-year-old among middle schoolers, I could opt out of most class time to practice my spelling words from the Paideia, and since this necessitated dragging a second student out to read me the words, I managed to go from being an awkward outcast to a pseudo-celebrity whose company was highly demanded since it meant not learning. On the other hand, the pressure was a little much. I know some posters here have belittled me and other spelling bee winners, but I'm proud of what I accomplished and admire people who went further than I did. Rebecca Sealfon melts my ice-cold heart.

[King Kamala 0]

My elementary school never had spelling bees. The first spelling bee I remember participating in was in 7th grade. My elementary school didn't have much of anything really being a part of a completely broke school system. Once you hit 4th grade, you could do outdoor track, basketball, and if you weren't inclined towards the athletics, you could join the school chorus. We did have an invitation only drama club for one year. I managed to snag an invite to be a part of "Songs Throughout The Ages" (an original musical made up of random, popular songs throughout the ages) but since I frequently skipped rehearsal, I only ended up in two numbers. The first number was the showstealing "disco" number where me and two other actors cut up a rug to "Disco Inferno". The other number was the finale, which everybody appeared in, where we all sang "We Are The World". Even as a third grader, I could tell that finale was terrible.

[Jingus 0]

I vaguely recall being in some spelling bees around fourth grade. I think I stomped on everyone else in my school, but got to a regional bee and missed a gimme in the first round, more or less shattering my confidence and never doing one again. Come to think of it, any time I competed in any kind of regional competition, I never got to win. Even when I was "Bystander #3" in a one-act play and had no effect on the outcome, we still lost anyway. (That particular nonhypothetical example was especially infuriating since we lost to some incompetent dumbasses who must've had close friends or blood relatives among the judges.)

 

And the only time I ever got suspended was for hitting a kid. It was this cocky little asshole who spent three years making fun of me, and one day in the library I just snapped on him. Teacher dragged me off after only one or two punches, though. Which was a pity, since I was like twice his size and was taking karate classes three times per week, and it would've nicely fulfilled my fantasy of at least once in my life having beaten the everliving shit out of someone who deserved it.

[BUTT 0]

Elementary schools that had 6th grade were bullshit, far as I'm concerned.

 

Fuck that. Having 6th grade in my elementary school meant I only had two years of middle school and not three, so thank god for that.

Yeah. Also, Czech's just saying that because he's a whippersnapper who came around right when they inexplicably changed the traditional K-6 model into whatever it is not.

Oh, bullshit. 6th grade in elementary school is so lame. By 11, I was ready to get out into a class environment where I didn't spend the majority of the day in one classroom. And what's the point of having a middle school that you only go to for two years? If you're gonna do that shit you might as well start high school in 7th grade like they did on Boy Meets World.

 

My school produced its own early-morning closed-circuit news broadcast. We wrote the stories ourselves and read them on air. Nothing special but in the mid-90s apparently this was a very progressive idea. We had help of course, from two teachers aides at the school. We also had the assistance of a nice man who was a local radio personality and part-time Odyssey of the Mind coach at our school. In 2002 that man was arrested for downloading child porn. Shouldn't have surprised me.

 

In fifth grade, there was a murder outside of our school. Some woman was picking up her daughter and her ex-husband shot her right in the parking lot. Then he stole the kid, drove into town and killed himself. That was plenty fucked up.

 

In fourth grade, I made it to, or at least near, the final round of the spelling bee. My ability to spell "boisterous" wowed my classmates in attendance. Conversely, the next year I was eliminated in the first round. I always thought "cocoon" had an "a" in it! I handled this loss with a characteristic lack of maturity that manifested itself into an outburst so ridiculous that I was still occasionally reminded of it in high school, long after it should have been forgotten. God, what the fuck was wrong with me.

[Guest College Party]

Again in 5th grade, I kicked a kid in the face for making fun of me and knocked him off the swing. I caught him at the apex of the swing's trajectory and back he flew. It wasn't as gratifying as it ought to have been, since I cried profusely for being disciplined. This was the first time I was ever punished at school.

 

Don't worry, Kreeser, I took the grandiloquence gaffe hard up at state. My parents told me that all I had to do was visualize myself alone on the stage having just won it all like I had been doing before. I maintain that this is Bad Advice. They should've told me to know every possible word. So yeah, tears were shed all the way home from Madison to Lake Geneva, for sure. Utterly inconsolable. Back to getting my ass waxed in dodgeball and only having abusive friends.

 

http://forums.thesmartmarks.com/index.php?showtopic=79963

This is why I'll never like Y2Jerk.

[Dandy 0]

1. Check the sig: 1991 Mingo County Spelling Bee Champion

 

2. Even though we had K-6 for elementary school, we rotated classes just like Middle School and High School from grades 4-6. This was '89, '90, and '91. So really, in that situation, what was so wrong with a K-6 environment? It beats the heall out of K-8 and 9-12 like they have there now!

[Red Baron 0]

My elementary school went from Kindergarten to grade eight, and a majority of years they were a split class. I remember in grade two all the classmates mocked at me for wearing a Montreal sweater. Low and behold, Montreal won the cup that year.

 

I was on the Chess team, and won city tournaments, but always failing at either regional or province wide tournaments.

 

I also cost my school the championship in soccer by not controlling the ball and letting the ball roll into the net. (Thankfully there is no youtube video...yet)

 

Like Czech, I also was involved with Geography and maps. It wasn't just countries and cities, but I mean I could talk about certain seas, bays, forests, parks, monuments.

 

[Timmy8271 0]

In Elementary school, I was in the S.L.D class(Specific or "slow" learning Disability). I'm not exactly sure why I was in the class but I was the smartest one in there. But my SLD teacher was the best teacher in the damn school.

 

I only remember 2 bad moments in Elementary school:

 

1. In second grade I got sent to the principal's office for sexual Harassment. I showed some girl my penis underneath the table while she was eating a hot dog. A teacher bailed me out of there so I didn't get suspended.

 

2. I forget if this was in Elementary or middle school but I was starting to watch WWF and I picked up this one skinny white girl in like a Gorilla Press. All the sudden this big black girl just punches me right in the face and I land in the Ant pile. Man It took hours to get that shit out.

 

Other than that, I was a honor roll student and in high school, I made a pretty good living doing stupid girls homerwork and helping with tests.

[Bruiser Chong 0]

Oh, elementary school. Nothing like the big fish-small pond atmosphere. It did me no favors to go to a mostly white elementary school, which allowed for delusions that I was good at basketball. I got set straight before my first week of middle school was over.

 

I could wax nostalgic about elementary school all day, but here are some notables:

 

- I became obsessed with getting into fights during the second grade. Most of these involved my only enemy at school. I can't even recall why we were at odd, since he didn't pick on me or anything. But we fought at least once a week. My most notable fight came against a different kid on the way home from school. He was picking on someone, perhaps my younger brother. I slammed his head into a phone pole. The bad ass aspect of it is negated by the fact that I had someone hold on to my glasses during all of this. Ironically enough, the kid who held on to them was the one I usually fought with.

 

- I ran for captain of safety patrol at the end of fourth grade. I was pitted against my best friend, who I liked or despised from the third grade up until high school, depending on the hour. I cried like a little girl when they announced over the PA that he had won.

 

- I got ill and shit my pants in class during the first grade. In my defense, it was one of those instances where it came out of nowhere. The best part was waiting for my mom to leave her class at the middle school, come pick me up, and have me FACE the front seat on the drive home.

 

- I got all A's until math in sixth grade. Grades were once a huge deal to me, so when my teacher in the fourth grade threatened me with anything less than A's on my report card because I spilled someone's All Sport on her grade book, I was devastated.

 

- My first crush was the worst-kept secret at my school from 1993 to 1996. Being the shy putz I was, I never made a move, which I guess in those days meant I never tried to sit next to her while we ate our hot lunch.

 

- I vividly recall the afternoon my fifth grade teacher threatened to sue one of my classmates after he'd told her a joke that ended with him smashing his palm into her forehead.

[Smartly Pretty 0]

I was in maybe 2nd or 3rd grade, and our school had an A Capella Boy Band come to the school to perform a concert. Our thousand year old music teacher, Mrs. Johnson, said that she though Ball In The House was going to be huge one day. They released a single about George Washington's hat. Their shining moment was a clorox commercial or something. I guess the demand for A Capella Boy Bands just wasn't what it is today.

 

Mrs. Johnson was a character. Her whole family was weird actually. My brother Jeremy worked with her son Kirk at a video rental place. Kirk was 30 something, but he lived with Mrs. Johnson. Sometimes my friend and I would go to the video store after school just to hang out with Jeremy and observe Kirk (I've been facsinated by the idea of people watching my entire life). Kirk would flirt with any customer in the store who happened to have a vagina and wasn't his mother. He had a moustache that made him very difficult to take seriously. Anyway, what was I talking about. Mrs. Johnson! On parent night or whatever, my parents stumbled into Mrs. Johnson, and asked where like, the art room was or something, and I don't know what she said exactly because I wasn't there but apparently she snapped at them. Her presence actually made my little brother physically ill. She's probably dead now.

[BruteSquad_BRODY 0]

I faked illness many a day so I could sit in the nurses office and read Garfield comic bollections she had in there.

The teachers were on to me.

 

I couldn't wipe my own ass when I was 6 so I was held back in kindergarden.

 

I was in the excellerated reading and writing class til 3rd grade when my writing was so good they told me i was cheatin'. Fuck it. Fucking hick school.

 

[Jingus 0]

And what's the point of having a middle school that you only go to for two years?

To keep the pain as short as possible. Middle school is like the 60s: if you can remember it, you weren't there. (Although in this case it has less to do with heavy drug use and more to do with extensive repression of agonizingly painful memories.) Middle school was such a thoroughly miserable time for me that I have a feeling of deep distrust and alienation towards anyone who says they liked it.

 

My school produced its own early-morning closed-circuit news broadcast. We wrote the stories ourselves and read them on air. Nothing special but in the mid-90s apparently this was a very progressive idea. We had help of course, from two teachers aides at the school.

Huh. I seem to remember my middle school doing this once as a special occasion type deal, but nobody took it serious, it ended up consisting mostly of this one girl attempting to track down Elvis sightings. We had an on-again/off-again student produced show in high school, but it never lasted. The A/V guys who made it were fairly rambunctious and kept getting into trouble. And we had one of the more sickeningly controlling and stifling public school administrations I've ever seen, who constantly brought the Simpsons parodies of rules-&-order obsessed officials to life. To even touch any of the school equipment, first you had to be cool with the video production teacher, and then you had to go through a crazy amount of red tape to actually broadcast it over the school. And sometimes they just said no, basically "Fuck you kids, we're grownups, we run your lives and you're gonna like it". We were mostly just forced to watch Channel One every day like everyone else.

[Jingus 0]

I faked illness many a day so I could sit in the nurses office and read Garfield comic bollections she had in there.

The teachers were on to me.

Heh, reminded me of something else. In middle school I was part of some kind of math competition team, Mathletes or Mathemagicians or whatever fucking lame name it was called. After we did our part in a field trip competition, we had an hour or two to kill, so we all went to a mall. I sat down in the bookstore reading, yes, Garfield collections. I lost track of time, and somehow nobody found me for like two hours, even though it was a fuckin' small mall so they couldn't have looked that hard. Everyone was pissed that I made them almost miss the awards ceremony. Of course since we naturally didn't win anything but the Official "Nice Try" Participation Certificate, I don't think it mattered anyway.

 

EDIT: oh yeah, one more thing:

In second grade I got sent to the principal's office for sexual Harassment.

 

How the hell is an eight year old capable of sexual harassment? They don't even know what sex is. Or, at least, most of them don't. I guess it's different if a kid has somehow watched porn or been raped or something.

[Nighthawk 0]

One good story was that I had zero tolerance for being picked on. In fourth grade the kids would sometimes take my cap and play keep away because I was the new kid. I let them do it a few times, then warned them not to again. They did. I did a running tackle onto the nearest kid, and rear naked choked him until he turned blue. I got a two week vacation.

 

Despite this, I was a very well behaved kid until middle school. I just did not like being fucked with. Never have.

 

I was also lead in the class play that year. It was about Jesus, but I was some shepherd or something, I don't know. In any case, I had the most lines.

 

Oh, in second grade, a girl was stealing my eraser, so she stuck in between her legs and said now I couldn't get to it, so I grabbed her crotch. Girls were always doing things like this to me. I was a sexy beast.

[Timmy8271 0]

How the hell is an eight year old capable of sexual harassment? They don't even know what sex is. Or, at least, most of them don't. I guess it's different if a kid has somehow watched porn or been raped or something.

 

Kids all the time use to bring in playboys at my school. I don't remember how it actually happened but she told one of the watchers in the lunchroom.

[BUTT 0]

Did anyone else not have the typical A to F grading system in elementary school? Until fourth grade, I guess they thought those letters carried too much of a stigma and would hurt the kids's feelings or something, so we got...different letters!

 

The school's K-3 grading system was:

 

O - outstanding

S+ - I can't remember exactly what this stood for but it was a step up from satisfactory

S - satisfactory

I - improvement needed

U - unsatisfactory

 

I never got a U! But I did get I's in art and behavior in third grade.