During this process I learned a lot about myself as a child as well as remembering all of the fond as well as not so fond moments with the teachers that helped me become the young lady I was when I entered the seventh grade. But that will be a whole other blog for another day when I sort through my academic work from grades seven through twelve as well as my college work.
I guess a good place to start this would be at the beginning.
Pre-School for me happened between the years 1991 and 1992. I don't really remember much from The Children's Depot, which sadly is no longer in existence. It is now lighthouse learning or something of the sort. I believe my teacher's name was Miss Donna and from what I do remember, she was pretty nice. I remember riding the tricycles at recess and playing with Fo Neal. Yes, that's right, folks. Forrest Neal was in my pre-school class...and he was in one if not more of my classes in elementary school. In my pre-school folder I found a picture of myself on a replica of the bike from "ET" complete with basket on front with ET in it. Yeah, I guess I thought I was pretty cool or something. I also found a bag of valentines from some of the kids in the class, or rather, their parents as we were all in pre-school and couldn't color in the lines, never mind write out valentine cards to our classmates. One of them was a Captain Planet valentine. I loved watching Captain Planet when I was growing up. (As a side note, I plan on dressing up as the Captain Planet crew with my friends some halloween......it WILL happen.) I also found a pretty sweet paper ice cream cone i made...complete with red, blue and purple jimmys. YES, I was cool. Don't knock it.
Kindergarten was an exciting time. We learned all about holidays for different religions like Kwanza and Hanukkah and the likes. This was also the year alex monteiro put stickytack in my hair. to make a long story short, he told me it was his grandmother's special gum, and i said i didn't want any so he did what any devious boy would do, and stuck it in my hair. Mind you, we were lined up at dismissal time for the bus so we all had to run to catch the bus because the teacher, Mrs. White, wanted to cut as much as she could out of my hair. When I got home, she had already called my mom and let her know, who finished the job. I will never forget that. Alex was also in my third grade class, where I must happily say, did not stick stickytack in my hair! I also don't remember too much from Kindergarten but i found a fish painting my teacher did for me. She painted a dead fish and placed it on paper. And it is a painting. And I have it. Moving on.
Grade 1 was a big change from kindergarten. This is where I learned to read and write in addition to doing arts and crafts. I learned in Grade 1 that I couldn't spell to save my life, yet as I got older, spelling was one of my best subjects. Miss Halkett was a great teacher, and to this day, I still see her sometimes. I help out at the library sometimes and she'll be in there eating lunch with the librarian. Although, she isn't miss halkett anymore. shortly after my class, she got married and started a family. I really liked her. She also comes to dunkin sometimes and I see her there. This is where i started being a teacher's pet. And an overachiever. Ok. Fine. An overachieving teacher's pet. Better? I think so.
Second Grade was alright. Nothing overly exciting happened from what I remember, but I was again an overachieving teacher's pet. Mrs. Garbackzeski was my teacher...no lie. Try spelling that when you're 6 or 7...let alone saying it. We called her Mrs. G. A lot easier, eh?
1995-1996 marked third grade. One of the most strange years of my schooling. I will never forget this year, mostly because of my teacher, Mr. Fred Hutchings, who was extremely eccentric. First of all, he was a scientist at heart...he really should have worked in a lab or something. This was the year where my math skills fell apart and ruined me forever. I never got them back, except in ninth grade algebra...but we'll get there at a later blog. I remember the first day of class very well. Although he looked like a crazy scientist, mr hutchings was actually very quiet and friendly. On the first day of class, he handed everyone a blue composition book and had us write our name, his name, our grade, our room number and the words....SKY WATCH. Yes, folks, it is what it seems. Watching the sky. No matter what the weather, rain, snow, hail, sun, fog. You name it, we were out in the courtyard watching the sky first thing every morning. Then we wrote about what we saw. We did this every single day. Bring our journals out to the courtyard and write about the sky. It got old after awhile. When the school wouldn't let him bring us outside anymore because it turned to WINTER, he made us do it from the windows. He also did a science experiment once where he made this disgusting green foam hand that he called the friendship hand (or something like it) and it went on the student of the day's desk. It was creepy. Even more so up close. While other third graders were learning normal third grade spelling words like....well I don't know...I never learned normal third grade words...Mr. Hutchings class was learning how to spell words from nature or say the names of all the islands off of massachusetts including but not limited to martha's vineyard, cutty hunk and the entire elizabethan island chain. Also, he was fascinated with Native Americans. And thus, in the spring time not only did we commence sky watch outdoors, but we did an entire native american unit. While other third graders were out playing on the playground at recess or having afternoon reading time, Mr Hutchings' class was out in the courtyard making grass rope, weaving mats, building wigwams, drilling wampum out of shells to make jewelry and my personal favorite...making a dugout canoe using shells to dig out the ash from where it was burning. Yeah, you have the picture right. A bunch of third graders fulfilling our teacher's dream instead of learning things other third graders learned. We also harvested sap from the maple trees out front during the winter. And we made our own maple syrup in the school cafeteria. During this time, we'd check the trees every morning and yep. you guess it. SKY WATCH! In the front instead of the courtyard. Nice change of scenery, even though the sky looked the same from anywhere. This is also the year where I got myself my current allergist. Because Mr Hutchings decided it would be awesome to grow mold in the supply closet. Yes, you heard me. He grew mold as an experiment. This lasted the ENTIRE year. Like I said, he should have worked in a lab. For those of you who went to ORR and know of/had Mr. Howie....i think they may be long lost relatives or something.
1996-7. Grade Four. I loved my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Proc. She was so awesome and I worked with her through the rest of my time at Sippican Elementary School on the School newspaper, The Sippican Scoop. I was on the staff from the beginning. I learned a lot. I remember our mediaeval feast and found newspaper clippings of photos of my classmates during the feast. I also did a report on elanor roosevelt and dressed up as her. I have a photo to prove it. If you want to see it, let me know. I might just show it to you.
1997-8 was grade 5. This was a good year. I befriended the classroom aide, Mr. Duval. He was awesome and helped out so much. He did this 50 states contest where he would list clues about which state it was every day of the week until friday when he would post the answer. I got the most correct out of the whole class, so I won a book from him...a collection of Walt Whitman's civil war poetry. My teacher, Mrs. Chute was really nice and I learned a lot from her, but I learned equally as much from Mr. Duval. When it became time to do a biography book report, I chose to do a president...and I picked President Dwight David Eisenhower, aka Ike. (yes, I also dressed up as him and have a photo...). He was a five star general in the united states army, and the only president to serve in both world wars. He was actually born David Dwight, but his mother changed it a little while later to Dwight David. Yes. Imma geek. :-) Anyway, Mr. Duval went above and beyond to help me with this report. Why, you might ask...well Mr Duval is a collector of all things Dwight Eisenhower AND a history buff. That is one thing we share. He has a huge eisenhower collection and he was written about in the standard times (http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/02-99/02-21-99/c06lo113.htm). He started collecting eisenhower memorabilia after seeing him in 1952 when he visited New Bedford, MA while campaigning for presidency. Among his collection is a letter he wrote to Eisenhower about his admiration for him and he got a letter back from eisenhower which he gave me a copy of. He also gave me a copy of the picture he took of eisenhower in 1952. Because he was so excited that someone in the class was doing a report on Eisenhower, I couldn't help but be excited to learn more about eisenhower. Even though Eisenhower was a republican, and I mostly lean toward democratic thinking, even though i am unenrolled in a party, he is my favorite president, purely because i find his life so fascinating. He did a lot of great things for this country including the eisenhower interstate highway system. I took a huge break in learning about him, but I vow to rekindle my passion for the great Ike and learn as much as I can about him. Maybe write some papers about him purely for fun. But anyway, back to Mr. Duval. He even suggested that my family go visit the eisenhower farm in pennsylvania while on vacation there. We did. And I became a junior secret service agent. Haha. Yes. I was cool. But I loved touring that place and I plan to go back. And learn as much as I can. Years later, like four years ago to be exact..when i graduated high school he gave me an Ike pin, which is awesome AND a book of a trivia type thing he created, which is really cool. And now that I think of it, that is why I wanted to teach history, so I could use that in my classroom. But alas, I'm not a teacher. Maybe I should really do some serious soul searching and if this passion is rekindled, if my feelings for wanting to teach are still there, hey, maybe I'll get an M.Ed and a Masters in history, too. (But work as an english teacher to pay for the Masters in history haha). Maybe this is what I'm supposed to do. Maybe my destiny is to teach other students about important things that happened and even if just one shows great interest, that must be the greatest thing ever. Someday I would love to share my story of Mr. Duval with a student or two. Maybe even show them the photo and letter. Who knows. I must find his email and get back in contact with him and tell him I stumbled upon these things.
1998-1999. Sixth grade. A year of strangeness. Teacher: Ms. Silva. Instead of doing the typical sixth grade book reports, we did what Ms. Silva called Book Ads. Little short advertisements for books we read. We had to do one for each book. Yeah, it got old fast. Instead of going on the sixth grade hiking trip that the other two classes went on (I later found out that this was probably a preparation for the Jr. High's SURVIVAL trip...) Ms. Silva's class did a class play. We spent a good chunk of the afternoons for the year rehearsing a play. We did Fiddler on the Roof. I was a made up daughter (not enough parts, but everyone had to do something) and the cymbal player. (i was featured in tevye's dream sequence). Her boyfriend played the piano for us. He worked at polaroid. Yeah.
Well, I think i hit the highlights as best as I could. I tried to keep it short, but it ended up being extremely long. If you somehow make it to the bottom, please comment. I would like to know how many people actually read this. I would also be happy to answer any questions or if I must, show you the photos of the dress-up book reports. haha.
If you have made it to the bottom, I sincerely thank you from the very bottom of my heart. And if you were one of my teachers from sippican, I thank you very much for helping me grow and evolve into the person who I am today.
No comments:
Post a Comment