Today is the first day of school here in our town’s public schools, the parochial schools, and all the schools in the neighboring smaller communities. It is, if course, one of the hottest days we will have all summer.
I believe that all the school buildings in our public schools here have air conditioning. We certainly didn’t have it when I was in elementary school or high school. The public schools here didn’t have it until after our children started school in the 1990’s. I don’t remember being really hot in my unairconditioned classrooms. Perhaps we were just more accustomed to functioning in hot buildings.
What I do remember about the first day of school is the excitement I felt the night before and being unable to sleep. My favorite elementary teacher was Mrs. Remme, Grade 3, who was a really energetic woman who loved bringing exciting things like butterfly cocoons into the classroom and having us watch them hatch. She also could have cared less about neat handwriting, which was a good thing for me since no matter how hard I tried, I could never write neatly in cursive.
My least favorite elementary teacher was Mrs. Peterson, Grade 4, a bitter woman who complained how she was bilked by door to door bible salesmen after her husband died. She also talked a lot about cooking lentils, and how it was a sad thing that we didn’t have more lentils in our diets. She went on to be an elementary principal in Iowa somewhere.
Who were your favorite/least favorite elementary teachers? How is your handwriting these days? Memories of first days of school?
Trail Baboon 
Fifth grade, Mr.Olson was great. Weren’t elementary teachers supposed to be all female?!
My penmanship is excellent.
We never had school until after Labor Day. What happened?
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Well, you were in Minnesota, and they know not to start school until after the State Fair starts. The ND State Fair is earlier.
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i went to catholic school. they dont have favorite teachers there. 2nd grade was ms writer. she was close to miss landers on leave or to beaver. after it was getting used to crabby unhappy women and nuns.in je high when i finally escaped the nunnery i had modular scheduling . i knww this was for me and many teachers in jr high snd high school understood my agenda. life was better.english science math history all great. thomas was a science teacher who gave me a ride to school in jr high. radich was an english teacher i would visit in her uptown apartment in the summer in high school my mom taught there and i had my own car so the teachers were simply filling a teacher role and it was different with my mom down the hall. i was a disfunctional hippy not looking for anything but understanding souls who would help me reach my goals which were still in trsnsition.
first days were dread in elementary and commoradarie in jr and high school. fun to have a building full of friends
in 8th grade a new jr high opened and half my friends moved over there. a couple of them signed me up and gave me a gomeroom and class attendance sign in so i had a schedule. when they got caught misbehaving and were asked for a name and homeroom they gsve my name. it was pretty funny when i met the dean of students at the christmas dance when i escourted my girlfriend who went there. he thought that was the funniest bit hed ever heard.
i never could tolerate all the rules and unbending stuff associated with school so i passed on college after checking out a number of them. too bad i couldnt see the advantages. i was able to help direct my kids otherwise.
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penmanship was fine but im left handed and catholic school wrote in fountain pen. lefties had to do that weird over the top claw to keep from scraping across the fresh ink. i still surprise people when i see a lefty writing like that and am able to guess that they went to catholic school.
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I always ask clients I test who write with their right hands and who went to Catholic school if they were always right handed, as many Catholic lefties out here were forced to switch to write with their right hands once they got to school.
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That IS funny about your friends recreating you there!
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Mrs. Smith taught me to read in first grade. She was a well-known, kind, and popular teacher in Roosevelt Elementary in Owatonna. My aunt had her as a teacher at some point too. Mrs. Smith had been around for a while when I was in her class, and she taught for many more years after. I remember her patience as she showed me, letter by letter, how to sound out the word in my head. Something about the way she taught worked for me.
My second grade teacher was first to figure out that I couldn’t see. I was sitting in the back row. She asked me if I could see what she’d written on the board. I couldn’t. She moved me to the front, and asked again. It was better, but I couldn’t see it well. She told my parents I needed glasses.
Then I had Mrs. Fleener in sixth grade. She was a fun teacher, very patient, and everyone loved her. That class was memorable, and I still have Owatonna friends from the Roosevelt Elementary sixth grade today.
I’m told I have nice cursive hand-writing. I don’t do all the cursive letters the way you’re “supposed to,” but it’s legible. I’ve read that AI can’t read cursive writing. I don’t know if that’s true, but I like it.
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My first, second, third, and sixth grade teachers were all a trial for me. My fourth grade teacher understood me and altered some things for me. My fifth grade teacher, with the delightful name of Mrs. Arent, was along time teacher who was in charge of her classroom but understood the 4-5 intelligent students did not need all the drill-and-kill assignments. She centered my learning. My high school was a series of weak teachers with some decent ones here and there. Three superb ones. All the English teachers were awful until my senior year. He was decent. That was why I went back there, to fix that, which another teacher and I did.
My handwriting is very good if I print. Not my cursive.
A simple fact a neurologist taught me: you cannot change a person’s handwriting.
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Stopped to try to feed Sandra breakfast.
I told students they could type their papers, write in pen, or write in pencil, in print or cursive. I dealt with various handwriting issues over the years. I had about 10 students who could not produce a readable writing. I worked with them in various ways, always being patient with them. They had been beat up about it in grades K-8. In AP they would record it as well as write it or dictate it to someone else.
When I quit, computers were just coming into general use.
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
I had a rough start to school that also reflects the comments by Clyde and tim–unhappy, irritable women who were stuck with children they did not like. Garrison Keillor once said, “I was in school before teachers had sensitivity training.” Yup. That is it. (Husband had a fourth grade teacher who hit him over the head with a text book for asking a question she could not answer). I just remember anxiety and terror in elementary school. My school days also coincided with my father becoming ill, and my mother resuming her teaching career to support the family. Therefore, I always felt like the sands were shifting under my feet. The combination of all of this was pretty traumatic, and as a result I had difficulty learning early on. By 2nd grade I still could not read, and no one noticed that I was very near-sited. So not only was I traumatized, but I could not see the blackboard. My mother did work with me to help me learn to read. Once I got that things were much better and reading became my beloved activity.
Junior HIgh and High School were much better. I liked more of the teachers and we went from classroom to classroom throughout the day. By then I started band and my band teachers were quite good, with one exception. That all combined to help me be less anxious and more successful. I am still in touch with my HS band teacher who is quite dear to me.
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My mom, a music teacher (before air conditioned schools), said there is always at least one day the first week of school in or near 90 degrees..
I had all young women teachers till 6th grade, and Mrs. Latch was probably my favorite. Older, married (we’d moved to Marshalltown where this was allowed), and both experienced and creative. We did murals in the hallway, got to put our desks in a circle instead of rows, would sing and do art even when it wasn’t scheduled… let some kids help other kids learn hard stuff. I still remember her reading aloud The Secret Garden after lunch, in her own Irish (or Scottish) brogue.
Least favorite might have been Miss Shear for high school Latin 2. Not evil or anything, just sort of a dud.
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I didn’t have a least favorite in elementary school – they were, to me, all good.
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BTW in Two Harbors a hot day in school was a rare event event. In my early elementary years a sooty day was common.
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Well just speaking about elementary school, Miss Crandall was my first grade teacher and she was the typical old maid, little old lady teacher. Or at least that’s how I remember her. Wouldn’t let me out for recess until she had buttoned my coat to the neck and tied my hood tight. I hated it then, too.
Third grade was Mrs. Kuntz and I remember liking her. Sixth grade was Miss Marsolek, who got married and became Mrs. Milhulski. But I remember liking her.
Middle School there was an English teacher named Mrs. Wood. I believe she had a sarcastic streak and was probably a smart ass, and I believe I’d like her a whole lot more now as a teacher, than I did then. Not that I didn’t like her then, I would just appreciate her humor more now. And I can’t remember if it was her or Mrs. Powers that had us start journaling, which sent me on my writing path to this day.
So many good teachers in high school, Mr. Kolpeck the band teacher, Mr. Pavlish who was the AV technician which influenced my Theatre career.
Art teachers, Mr Lawn, and Mr Case. Mr Neeb, Mr White. Mr Aachor, who was New and Young, and probably a little too radical for administration. I remember him sitting on the edge of his desk and making some snide remarks about admin. And at one point showing us his empty billfold.
I always wonder what became of him.
Mr Hess, the older grizzled paratrooper from World War II who walked with a cane and told us stories about telling the docs if they cut his leg off he was gonna beat them over the head with it. That would’ve been mid 70s, so he was probably 50 something.
You never know what might stick in someone’s mind
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Didnyou attend Rochester HS, Ben?
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No, that was before my time. Rochester HS became Central Jr. High until it closed in maybe the early 1980’s when a new Jr. High opened.
And I was the only kid in my family not to attend the old one room school in the neighborhood. The schools all merged and I started Kindergarten at Jefferson in 1969. Then Kellogg Jr High, then John Marshall HS. At the time it was only JM or Mayo HS. Lourdes is the catholic HS. Now there’s Century HS out by us; our kids went there.
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My cousins went to John Marshall.
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Ha ha! That reminds me of my high school German teacher, Herr Engrav. Herr Engrav gave us all German names. Mine was “Lea.” He may have been a socialist. He loved to say things in German to see if we understood. One of his little sayings was, “Besser rot als tot!” (Better red than dead!) When I think back on that, it’s a wonder he didn’t get into trouble for saying things like that!
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My handwriting is kind of sloppy. In order to write nicely I have to write slowly. And I have too much to say to write slowly.
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OT (sorta)
I despair for school aged kids who take tours of Washington D.C and the many museums there. They are being investigated for “wokeness” which shall be expunged. Students will be taught the glories of the United States. Bad things in history will be ignored. Sad.
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Los Angles Unified School District K-12. California being heaven back then (50s/60s) attracted and held the best. Before the Reagan tax cuts, California schools also paid teachers decently. Good teachers and excellent education all the way through.
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I had two favorite teachers. One was Mrs Anderson, my first kindergarten teacher (we moved partway through the year to another town). When we moved, she told my mother that she had been teaching me to read a little bit on the side. She also told my mom she was concerned that I wouldn’t get enough stimulation in the new school and she sent workbooks and worksheets for me for the rest of the year and through the summer afterwards. My mom kept up the help with my reading so by the time I got the first grade I was in pretty good shape.
My other favorite teacher was an English teacher in high school Gerry Fugate. He encouraged me to try reading science fiction and fantasy, including The Earth Abides, which I reread every few years. He also organized a handful of students into The Poetry Circus. We went around to elementary schools in the district and read poetry to elementary age kids. It was a hoot, and it started my lifelong love of poetry.
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I think I’ve mentioned the least favorite before. Mrs. McCracken who I had in fifth and sixth grade. The grading system of that school allowed for a grade that was basically a B but the teacher “knew you could do better.” And she gave me this grade on a regular basis. This commentary rankled me no end and it still kind of pisses me off.
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Oh, my handwriting. Due to the fact that I don’t write as much out longhand as I used to. It’s not as good as it used to be. But it’s still cursive and it’s still legible.
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My handwriting now looks like my mom’s mom – practically illegible.
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Favorite teacher was Mr. Mrocek (sp?) in sixth grade. He was responsible for giving me confidence that I was good at something when he read one of my short stories aloud to the class and encouraged me to write more. He was also very funny and would get the whole class literally falling out of our seats with his stories. He really understood kids our age and encouraged everyone to be their best.
I have decent penmanship because I worked diligently at it. I also learned calligraphy in my teens.
I was one of those weird kids who loved school. The first day of school was probably my favorite day of the year after Christmas and my birthday. My memories are all happy ones. One that stands out was in middle school. Back in those days, everyone shopped for back-to-school clothes and I always had a special outfit for the first day. That year, I’d chosen a lovely navy wool skirt and yellow wool sweater. As luck would have it, it was a hot day, but I wore that outfit anyway and sweltered in misery.
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