School days, school days. . ."

June, 1957 - Age 8 - Last day of school at the end of 3rd grade. Clarendon School playground

I don't have anything particularly interesting or significant or profound to write about today. But, I haven't written in a few days, and I'm fairly alert right now (having just guzzled an energy drink), so I'll sit here and "free-write" a little before I get back to work. I've been glued to my desk this week, trying to get finished before the July 22nd deadline we "summer work" teachers were given. With only four full days left, I still have 12 lessons to either write or proofread and edit -- hence, the energy drink. I could sit here and complain about my job, but I'm grateful to have it. Of course, I'd rather be 100 lbs thinner, teaching in a rural, country school environment instead of staring at a computer and teaching cyber-kids. I wonder how many of my students will even read these lessons that I'm spending hours researching and writing for them?
On the whole, I really enjoyed my own public school experience. Sure, high school was stressful, and I wish I now had the knowledge that I let slip through my fingers then. But I don't remember hating school or feeling anxiety about going. I anticipated the first day of school like I looked forward to Christmas morning. Even now, when I hear the locusts start buzzing in the trees, and the crickets chirping on summer evenings, I feel this urge to go out and buy notebook paper and pencils. School supplies were so much simpler when I was a child. I only remember ever having one bookbag -- some brownish, atache-type of thing with a handle. I probably inherited it from a cousin. Kids just didn't carry bookbags, and backpacks didn't exist. We carried our books in our arms. Clear through high school, in fact, I carried my books in my arms -- unless I had a boyfriend who would carry them for me.
There was such an air of excitement about the first day of school -- at least for me. I'm sure many students were not as enthusiastic as I was. Walking into the new classroom, learning where everything was, meeting your new teacher -- who always had her name written in large letters on the blackboard. (And we did have real blackboards, made out of real slate.) The desks were always in neat rows -- there were no "pods" or "clusters" or "circles" in our classes. In fact, in at least one school I attended, the desks were bolted to the floor. They were the old wooden kind, with the seat that folded up and the hole on the top for an inkwell. The classrooms were heated by steam radiators that hissed and whistled in the wintertime. Often, we copied our work from the board, or answered questions the teacher had written on the board. But when it was necessary to make copies of something for the students, they were made on the old mimeograph machines and the print came out in purple ink. As they were passed down the rows, the first thing you did when you got your copy was to hold it up to your nose and smell it.
It was a different time, then. There was not the fear of letting your child walk home from school alone. In fact, I don't remember ever having a parent walk me home from school -- even in kindergarten. A neighbor girl walked me home. We had a 1 1/2-hour lunch break, because everyone went home for lunch. After all, hardly any moms worked, so they were there to fix us lunch. We would go home at 11:30 and resume school at 1:00 and get out at 3:15. During the summer before my fourth grade year I broke my leg, so I began school with a cast and crutches. At that time, we lived about eight blocks away from the school, so I was given permission to eat lunch at the school during that period. I got to bring a sack lunch and eat in the classroom with the teacher (there was no lunchroom, of course). What a privilege!
I wish my children could have experienced school the way I experienced it. I wish my grandchildren could attend the kind of simple, back-to-basics schools that I attended. Even without the computers, the smart boards, the classroom TVs, and all the other high-tech gadgets that don't seem to have improved the quality of public education at all, anyway. We were allowed to pray and read the Bible and pledge to the flag. We had Christmas programs that were actually Christmas programs -- not "holiday" programs -- with traditional carols and a nativity. We learned American folk songs and Negro spirituals. We had pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in every classroom -- and we knew who they were. Homeschoolers can still experience that kind of education, but I'm afraid it is forever lost from the public schools. I am so very grateful that it was still there for me.