My daughter, our oldest, has her first day of real school today, just entering first grade. She’s been looking forward to this all summer. She went to the open house last week and got a big hug from the principal, saw her old kindergarten teacher, met her new teacher, and got to see which of her friends are in her new class. We also visited with the Computer Lab teacher, the Librarian and the Music teacher.
They just completed building the new school and it’s a nice facility, more simply laid out than the old building which was built in the seventies and was an experiment (that failed) with open classrooms. The new building is on the periphery of a satellite branch of the University of Cincinnati and has a cooperative agreement with their College of Education.
When she got up this morning and got herself ready, I gave her a Schultüte, a large paper cone full of goodies. This is a tradition we borrowed from Germany. It’s to give them a “sweet” start on their school career.
I start tomorrow, but my sister however started today. Fifth grade. This she did not know until 8:00 this morning. Apparantly everyone except Sophmores, Juniors and Seniors starts today, and I had to jump out of bed in my pajamas, no makeup, no shoes, and drive her 20 miles to the school. I was looking forward to sleeping in on my last day of freedom, guess that was shot to hell.
Aw, first day of first grade. How sweet.
I still remember how excited I was to be going to school and get to learn all sorts of fun stuff. Kind of went downhill from there though. By the time I was in high school however I was ditching class in favor of the Dairy Queen. But that’s just because I went to a crappy little county high school ten miles away.
I remember those open classroom designed schools too. I went to one in 1974-75 when it was a bright shiny new idea. As I recall we didn’t make it through an entire school year before they were putting up more walls. I also learned to play a ukelele that year.
The little one here started junior high (or as they call it hereabouts, middle school) yesterday. At least a full week of nerves and what-ifs culminated in, “I figured out my combination lock, I found all my classes, we can buy pizza at lunch, I joined Chorus and there’s a cute boy who sits next to me in Science!”
Life is good.
(I too, remember the open school experiment. Novel, but not terribly effective.)
I start school September 4th.
I can’t remember my first day of kindergarten, but I do remember the first day of first grade. Then on the second day we were sent home early, and didn’t return until the end of the month. The teachers had gone on strike, and when we got back, we had to have substitute teachers for most of the rest on the year.
But that’s just because I went to a crappy little county high school ten miles away.