I hope everyone is enjoying these threads as much as I am. Let’s advance to second grade now, shall we? I’ll start:
Second grade was the first time I showed any signs of being above average, which my school acknowledged by giving me (and the small group of other above-average tykes in my grade) harder work to do. Thus, this was the last time I showed any signs of being above average for a while.
Anyway, I must have missed a day or something, because I remember sitting in the circle with the reading teacher, Mrs. Johnson, and the other kids and her saying to me something like, “Kneady, I want you to start reading at the second paragraph.” Well, I could read out loud just like a-ringing a bell, but I had no idea what “paragraph” meant and I didn’t see any chance of figuring it out in the time it would take me to look down at my book, so I just started at the top of the page like I hadn’t heard her. If memory serves, a tall girl name Ellen stepped in with the correction and quite smugly, too. She and I never got along after that.
Some school play required me to be a clown. The bad part was the teacher put big red dots on my cheeks using lipstick. That was incredibly horrible for a second grade male.
We had a “post office” in the rear of the class. You bought “stamps” and mailed your work to the teacher. She mailed it back after grading.
I remember that my entire class (yep- all 8 of us) loathed our 2nd grade teacher. I don’t know why. We just did.
I do remember though that she always wore clip-on earrings shaped like X-mas tree ornaments, which was odd, becasue she was Jewish.
I think my favorite 2nd grade memory is racing a boy named Courtland out of the classroom, to our cubbies/coat hooks, grabbing our snack & then racing back into the classroom. I don’t know why we did that either. Just one of those potato-headed things kids do, I geuss.
My 2nd grade teacher was an older woman (ours was her last class before retirement) with extremely rigid ideas about proper deportment. She constantly sent notes home complaining that I was “untidy” because my blouses kept coming loose from my skirts and my hair would escape my pigtails. Apparently, if I had been a properly behaved little girl and avoided unnecessary movement throughout the school day, I could have stayed neater.
I remember Mrs. Susan Clark making write sentences (like Bart Simpson only on paper instead of the chalkboard). “I will not talk in class.” “I will not disturb the other students.”, stuff like that. She also told me that these sentences would go into my permanent school file. It worked. By third grade I was afraid to open my mouth in a classroom, which continued all the way into college.
She sent home a note to my mother saying that she needed to have a conference with her. My mother makes the appointment, worries for days until the time comes, shows up for the meeting and then Mrs. Clark asks her, “Why are you here?” “Because you sent a note home saying you needed to have a conference with me.” Turns out the other little girl in the class with the same first name was flunking a subject. Gee, I wonder why having a teacher with such attention to detail. :rolleyes:
This is probably the most vivid grade school memory I have. My second grade teacher was Miss Brown. She was very different from my kindergarten and first grade teachers, being rather stern as compared to their open, laughing personalities. She was not one to cross, and I thought she was rather cold.
One day, we were brought in early from recess. She told us Kennedy had been shot. Then she cried. I remember being very frightened, not only because the president had been shot, but also because she was the first adult I had seen cry. Several minutes passed and then she was finally able to pull herself together. We were sent home and watched the tragedy of JFK’s assasination unfold.
After that terrible day, Miss Brown opened up to us more and for many of us, she became a favorite teacher. She dared to show us a vulnerability we never dreamed she had as well as the strength to deal with it.
Grade Two saw me living on the other side of the country (in Western Australia) with Tanya (whose surname I’ve sadly forgotten) as my “girlfriend” - no we didn’t have any idea what girlfriend and boyfriend were but darn it we had each other anyway. I remember she drew the best trees in the class.
I also ‘starred’ in the year pantomine “If You Believe in Fairies (Fairies believe in you)” where I had to give up lunch time mischief for practice for a few weeks and had to wear green tights.
I’m not sure if it was grade two or three when I had my first short story published in the school yearbook though and my mum still entertains people with stories of my determination to make Ice Cream sandwiches (only known through comic books in Australia so I made my own with bread).
In second grade I wasn’t yet the heinous outcast I would be by fourth grade (it would culminate in four hellish years of middle school, and now that I’m in high school I’m mostly ignored, which I greatly prefer).
I had a “boyfriend” named Shane. He kissed me on the walk home from the Halloween party. He’d just eaten a peppermint and what I most remember of my first kiss was that horrid taste of peppermint!
I was finally placed in the “gifted and talented” program in second grade. During Kindergarten and first grade I was constantly being chastised for reading ahead and accused of cheating because I was further along the educational ladder than my classmates. The “gt” program in my school didn’t give us harder work – it gave us the same work as everybody else but with less time to do it, and with the time we saved by working fast we went on a field trip at least once a week. I think they were trying a “well-rounded liberal arts education” approach or something.
To learn about democracy and voting, we brought in a polling machine and cast our votes for our favorite things. I remember voting in “Musical Group” for New Kids On The Block.
To give a brief overview of first grade for me, the teacher (Mrs. Arnold) asked us the first day of class who could already read. Those who could, were placed in the gifted program. That is my only memory of first grade, and it is vivid, because it would set the course for my entire elementary school career.
I was a tomboy at this time. My second grade teacher was Mrs. Huddleston. She was kind of quiet as I recall. My main memory from this time is that I would get all excited when our Team (Team 2) would get almost caught up to Team 1 in the Lesson Book (the ones who could read from previously), only to have them move forward. I would read ahead, too, to no avail. It was damn frustrating. I had issues from a young age… [I was finally tested, and placed in the gifted program, in 6th grade.]
The other thing I remember from second grade is, that was the year we stopped saying grace before going to the cafeteria. I remember telling the teacher that she forgot, and her ignoring me.
Second grade was the year I learned to love reading. I had two teachers because they were best friends so they opened up the wall and we had two classrooms too. 60 kids in all, it was great. They noticed that I was reading ahead of the other students so they gave me the key to the soarage closet where they had a large collection of more advanced books. I read Charlie and The Chocolate Factory over a weekend and became entranced and kepr reading more and more intil I read everything they had. Then they put me in the gifted and talented program which was two kids working on logic once a week. It was cool. For a half hour a day we had writing workshop (WW) where we would write stories and ilistrate them. I drew the best little stick figures with a square and a line for a gun. Nazis dies by the hundreds for a half hour a day.
In second grade I fell in love with Michael, a short boy with glasses. Michael had a huge backyard, and we all went there after school to play baseball. Well, I sighed over him in silence for what seemed like a lifetime–maybe a week–and then one day I KISSED him. He told me if I did that ever again, I couldn’t come to his house to play baseball. Now, I might have been in love with Michael, but baseball was my life–I wanted to grow up to play for the SF Giants with Willie Mayes, until someone told me it wouldn’t be allowed 'cuz I was a girl–so needless to say, I never kissed him again. In fact, I don’t think I kissed a boy again until I was 15. But I did play a lot of baseball.
Miss Schramm was my 2nd grade teacher. I don’t remember much about her except her name. We had pull-out classes so in the afternoon I went to Miss Hyatt’s class for math. I remember getting the hiccups in class and Miss Hyatt telling me that she’d give me a dime for each hiccup. For some strange reason that scared me and my hiccups went away.
Years later when I was in my 20s, I was working for the school district in the Finance Office and Miss Hyatt came in. I asked her if she remembered me (why do we do that?) and she said “Don’t tell me. You have two sisters, JoAnn and Olivia. Your brother is Rudy and you are…Brenda!” She must’ve had one heckuva memory because that was exactly right.
