School Memories Part 1: Grades 1 to 3

I was talking to Janice last night about when I was in school. I decided I should blog about some of those stories starting with grades 1 to 3.

When I started school we lived only about a half block from the school. In this picture our house is on the corner and the school is in the background. You also can see the back of my Dad's milk wagon on the right.

Here I am in my grade 1 class with my teacher standing beside me while my Mom came to take a picture. (In later grades I tried to convince my Mom not to come to my class to take a picture.)

These are my  grade 1 and grade 3 school pictures

I attended the same school for grades 1 to 3.   One of my clearest grade 1 memories is the first day of school.  After school the teacher said we should go home.  I said that my mother told me that she would come to get me from school so I did not want to leave until she came.   The teacher was getting more upset because I was the only one still in the class and I kept saying I had to wait for my mother to come.  It wasn't exactly the way to get off on the best foot for my first day at school.  Fortunately my Mom was convinced to let me walk to and from school on my own after that.

These were also the days of strict school discipline and marching in and out of school classes in lines.   I had the same teacher for grades 2 and 3 so most of the memories of those two grades are combined.    One day after school our class was walking in lines down the stairs from our second floor class room.  Some kids farther to the front of the line started to walk faster down the stairs so there was a gap in the line.    The principal saw this and after much shouting he had us marching in our lines across the main floor, up the stairs, across the second floor, down the stairs, and repeat this over and over.  (Our principal was also a major in the militia.)    Then back to our classroom  for more shouting and many kids getting the strap.   Another day someone put a tack on the teachers chair.  Here we go again with much shouting and kids getting the strap.

There were also good times in these grades.  I enjoyed learning and did well in school.   After two weeks I came home from school picked up the Readers Digest and said "What's the use going to school.  I haven't learned to read yet."  I was a good student and never really got in trouble in school in spite of the strict discipline of the early 1960s.   When Maryanne was taking a class including history of the 1960s she was able to use some of my stories of the extreme contrast of schools in the early 1960s compared to my school experiences in the later 1960s and 1970s.  But that is another story ...