# What do you remember about second grade? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 29, 2018, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-remember-about-second-grade/822161 "2018-09-29T12:05:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-remember-about-second-grade/822161/81 "2018-10-02T02:48:15Z")
2nd grade was the year I stopped being new at school (they didn’t have kindergarten where I lived) and started being good at it. Mrs. Serafino was my teacher - a nice older woman who would help me with arithmetic after school. It was the first time we were allowed to go to the school library, and I kept grabbing books meant for higher grades. It got to the point where I had to give a kind of a book report every time I wanted a book for a higher grade level, to show I actually knew what I was reading. By the end of the year I had made it to the 8th grade level. ---
**Author:** ![zombywoof](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/9e8a1a/32.png) [@zombywoof](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zombywoof)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-remember-about-second-grade/822161/82 "2018-10-02T04:14:05Z")
I’m surprised by how many people remember their teachers’ names…I remember the name of my first grade teacher, probably because it was the first grade, and 2 JROTC teachers from high school, because I spent 4 years with them in class, after school, traveling, etc…and that’s basically it, I can’t remember any more with any certainty from K-12. (Come to think of it, I can only remember the names of maybe 1-2 from 4 years of college on top of those.) ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-remember-about-second-grade/822161/83 "2018-10-02T04:38:08Z")
Ah, second grade. I remember it as the grade where I was in the “Slow Learners” box (not an actual box; it was on the chalkboard) almost every single day. My teacher was really nice, very sweet lady, but she just could not understand how I never knew where we were in the book. Then we had a test, and suddenly I was in third grade (this was the middle of the year). Now the thing is that I lived in a state where, owing to my birthday, I didn’t start kindergarten until I was six. And then I finished kindergarten and all of first grade at a base school in Germany. So at the point where I started second grade, in Oklahoma, I had already learned all the stuff they were learning at the beginning of the year, in first grade. And I was older than some of the kids, but not all of them. So the boost into third grade was not all that big a deal, except I got to learn to write in CURSIVE. However, the second grade teacher was really nice (although boy was she surprised that I made such a great score on that test; she really thought I was slow), I had lots of friends in second grade, and the third grade teacher was mean and had BO like you wouldn’t believe. So I generally feel like I missed second grade and shouldn’t have been moved. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-remember-about-second-grade/822161/84 "2018-10-02T13:11:19Z")
> [@zombywoof](#): > > I’m surprised by how many people remember their teachers’ names… It’s trivial for me to remember the names of all my grade school teachers. And I’m a visual, not verbal person. I even had 3 different teachers during 4th grade. I remember them all. It’s the high school ones that are harder to remember due to having 5+ of them each year. But I still remember the names of quite a few. Shoot, I remember the name of the Social Studies student teacher from senior year. ---
**Author:** ![Pabitel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbce88/32.png) [@Pabitel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pabitel)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2018, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-remember-about-second-grade/822161/85 "2018-10-03T17:32:29Z")
I remember I was taller than my teacher. I don’t remember her name but she was apparently a tiny woman and I was on my way to 6’4". ---
**Author:** ![Monstera\_deliciosa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monstera_deliciosa/32/109_2.png) [@Monstera\_deliciosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monstera_deliciosa)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2018, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-remember-about-second-grade/822161/86 "2018-10-03T18:24:59Z")
I remember my teacher, a gray-haired woman named Mrs. Holmes. When I was in first grade, she had a reputation of being “mean,” but it turned out she just had a stern demeanor. She was actually quite nice if you behaved and did your work. I also remember that everyone was assigned a book from the class bookshelf based on their reading abilities. Mine was a book about a mouse who was a detective like Sherlock Holmes. (I just looked it up and it was “Basil of Baker Street” by Eve Titus.) A not-so-'nice memory was that on Valentine’s Day, one very unpopular girl had most of her valentines ripped up by the recipients and thrown on the floor by her desk. I was one of the few kids that didn’t, even though she had called me “walnut-head” once, (my address was on Walnut St.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-remember-about-second-grade/822161.md?page=4)