We moved across the country when I was in the fourth grade. I think that, as a result, I don’t remember much from third grade or before, because my memories of names and faces weren’t reinforced by repetition. I remember vaguely the layout of the school, and the path from school to home (I walked), and that I had a teacher named Mrs. Youngblood. That’s about it.
I remember a lot. I actually remember and could describe more individual days from kindergarten. The whole idea of school was new, and meeting new people, and seeing the larger world than I experienced on the farm really made them stick. On some days, when the viewing memory window is especially clear, I can still recall the smells like it was yesterday.
As for grades 1-4, I have lots of memories of class subjects and special project days and particularly memorable recesses, I just can’t be sure what year they are from.
I remember 2nd grade pretty well. I remember my teacher whom I didn’t care for. I even remember her shrill voice telling me that I gave a wrong answer “Things change Michael!”
I remember math homework. Tons of math homework since they put me in the 3rd grade class for math.
I remember most of my classmates too, since I also went to middle and high school with several of them.
I only got through second grade because I spent first grade in a first/second combo class, and that teach always complained that I tried to do the second grade work. My second grade teacher sent me to the nurse almost every day that winter because I “looked pale.” And I wasn’t going to complain! My mom finally came up and was like, “Yeah, she looks pale because she is pale…I’m pale, the whole family is pale!” That was also the year of my first and only gymnastics/ballet recital, of which the less said the better!
I remember my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Rieky. She was young and pretty and I had a bit of a crush on her. She did not spank me in front of the class like my grade one teacher had (who I still also liked as I may have deserved it).
I probably do not remember the names of most of my other teachers, mostly because I have not spent much time thinking back to school, and it was 45 years ago or so.
Right before starting second grade, I had a swing mishap and knocked out my top front four baby teeth and bottom two front baby teeth. I was put in speech therapy for a few months by the school nurse, starting the first week. My teacher was Mrs. Penner, a very neat teacher. Every day we had 20 minutes of poetry - we curled up on the floor and she read to us. Everything from Shakespeare to Silverstein. We also had 6th graders come in weekly to help with reading. By 2nd grade, I was reading on an 8th grade level, so Mark (the 6th grader assigned to me) and I would just curl up in the coat hall and read for fun. Second grade was the last year I was not treated like a weirdo for being ahead. I remember being picked to run copies in the teacher’s office on the ditto machine - the smell of coffee and the ink, the Ka-Chunk of the machine, the feeling of privilege being in the office, unchaperoned. Mr. Vee (actually a long Polish name that started with a W) was our music teacher. In second grade it was mostly singing and playing woodblocks/drums/kazoos. But, he would bring in “real” instruments for us to try, as in 3rd grade we could join the Band class.
Recess was tetherball and four square for the girls. Boys played football and Red Rover.
I remember many names of my classmates, as 98% of us stayed at the same school from K-6th grade. There were only two classrooms per grade, so we were stuck with each other.
For both first and third grades my teacher was a mean and nasty lady who really had it in for me for some reason. So I remember second grade as a good year between those two horrible years. My teacher was Sister Barbara, I think. She was one of the younger generation of nuns who dressed more modern, not one of the cranky older nuns that still wore the full habit.
I also remember second grade as the year my grandmother on my dad’s side died. She was a scary old lady, blind and living in a nursing home. That may be the first funeral I ever had to go to.
I remember my teacher was Mrs. Miller. She was probably in her early 30s. She was a rather large lady and wore these dresses that made her body look like a giant square. Like you could show a movie on her backside. But, she was nice and she would draw a little doodle of a queen or a king on your paper if you got an A. She taught us “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” , which of course none of use knew was a show tune.
We had just moved across town the previous summer, so I’d be going to a different school. My old school was like 98% white, and the new one even more so. There were literally only 4 non-white kids in the entire school and two of them were my brother and me. Because I was quiet, my first teacher thought I couldn’t speak English and I spent the first week and a half in the ESOL class. It was super easy, I was having a good time in there, but eventually my mom found out and I got put back in the “regular” class.
That’s about all I remember.
Second grade for me took place in 1987-88. Looking back, it was probably my favorite year in elementary school. I had a really good teacher who ended up becoming a family friend. In fact, we still occasionally keep in touch. She could be strict, but was always fair. Believe me, I tested her. I got good grades, but was far from a teacher’s pet. Her voice was a dead ringer for Mary Tyler Moore (I was too young to know this at the time, it wasn’t until years later that I came to that realization), and she always kept a tin of pretzels in the classroom. Answer a question correctly, help yourself to a pretzel. If you had an exceptionally good day in class, she’d say “tell your mom/dad to give you a hug.” She told me many years later she used to say that because she didn’t want to hug a kid and risk getting in trouble.
Along those same lines, my gym teacher was fired about two-thirds of the way through the year for allegedly “touching” a female student in the girls’ bathroom. The teacher was male and quite a creep, constantly hitting on female teachers, etc. Once during gym class (I don’t remember if it took place that year or the previous year), he sent me and a girl to get some equipment out of a closet, then proceeded to lock the two of us inside the closet while telling the class we were kissing. He let us out after a few minutes, but it obviously did not sit well with anyone. Anyway, my mom worked at the school as a teacher’s aide and reported the incident. He denied it at first, but later admitted it and apologized. As far as the incident that got him fired, my mom said that the staff and administration doubted that it actually happened, but by that point were just looking for any reason to get rid of the guy. No charges were ever filed. He evidently filed a wrongful termination suit, but I don’t think anything ever became of it.
This is what I (did) remember from second grade. It was very new experience for me. I also spent part of 2nd grade living on a desolate farm in Montana, which I recently revisited. For some reason I have almost no memories of school there; I know I was homeschooled for most of my time there.
Jesus, that thread brings back memories. A lot of it is a lot fuzzier now. Weird.
I never interacted with my 2nd grade teacher after my 2nd grade school year. When I was a senior in high school, there was some occasion where I had to go to my old elementary school’s office. My 2nd grade teacher was in the office and we both immediately recognized each other. That I remembered her is not so surprising, but I was impressed that she remembered me.
What I think is the equivalent to second grade is really the first year I have real coherent memories of school. The school I went to then was small, around 80 students total (the one I moved to the next year was tiny, only 28 total) age 4-11. It was divided into three classes, and that year would be my first, and, as it happened, only year in the second class. I can remember probably around half the kids by name. This would be 1990ish.
The teacher who took that class was also the head teacher and she probably shouldn’t have been working with kids. Or possibly living organisms. Kids were divided into ‘could do no wrong’ and ‘could do no right’, apparently arbitrarily, then stayed there regardless of what they did. She wasn’t so bad to me, but she certainly was to some other kids, especially those from troubled backgrounds^. I found out later that a bunch of parents, including my own, had unsuccessfully tried to have her removed.
She did spend a lot of time shouting, I spent a lot of time ignoring her. I was certainly not one of the favourites, but I apparently had some uses. I was always paired up with the clumsiest boys when we did country dancing, which was a large part of the PE class, because I’d kick them back.
I remember us being given a sweet for good work or memorising times tables; she had a book in the desk of who had come and recited which ‘tables’, going up to 12, so you couldn’t do the same one twice (I remember carefully trying to spread the last few out). Occasionally, though I don’t remember the reason, you’d be chosen to walk, with a partner* to the shop in the village (a few streets away and across the road) and buy a new bag of sweets for the class rewards. I remember being sent once with the kid reckoned to be the naughtiest in class, who was one of my friends and him trying to draw out the walk as loooonnnnnggggggg as possible and me getting scared we’d be in trouble. Most of my friends were boys.
A new girl started that year, who became my best friend, who I tried to keep in touch with when I moved away. She came to visit once, but it didn’t last, and I’ve not seen any of that class since.
I also do remember basically bullying one kid, because the twit of a teacher told us that bullying was not allowed, and ‘Bullying is when you pick on someone younger than yourself, or a girl if you’re a boy’. By kid logic, a whole bunch of us decided that as there was an older boy who was gentle, didn’t have many friends, liked country dancing, studied hard and never fought back, we could do anything to him and it was totally OK, right? 
Sorry Michael, I’ve felt bad about it since.
I don’t remember much of the class work, it was just boring. I do recall being given a reading test, which was one-on-one out in the corridor, for some reason. I read all the words in the first section easily, she looked at me funny, asked if I could read the next section too, me reading that OK, then her going and turning to the back section and handing me that while almost laughing and me trying to read out words I’d never heard of until she actually laughed, smiled and said I could go back to class. Never got told any results, it was all very informal. It felt really weird because she was never normally nice to me at all.
I also remember the sex ed video we watched, mainly because it featured a family walking round stark naked and that was just weird and I felt sorry for the boy in it.
^ She outright bullied one girl who was really sweet and eager to please, but was very close to being taken into care, as she was being brought up by an utterly clueless Dad, who was maybe 19 when she was left at his ‘for the weekend’ by a mother who never came back. She washed her clothes by putting them on and having a bath and was once forgotten on a school trip and returned by the police.
- Apparently in the late '80s, early '90s being in twos made you magically safe. The terrifying safety videos we had to watch also dwelt on that rather a lot.
Hmm, you know, I have seen “What was the name of your xth grade teacher.” on security questions lists. Not sure if 2nd grade was ever one of them. 4th seems popular.
Next threads: Mother’s maiden names, names of childhood pets and what street did you grow up on? 
My second grade teacher was Mrs. Sly. It was a memorable year, because as others have pointed out, we were part of the baby boom era and they needed to expand our school. We held second grade in the education wing of the Lutheran church (where they have Sunday school classes). The room was the right size, and it had a full complement of blackboards and desks and books.
We were about six blocks from the main elementary school, so we rode the school bus there for lunch, and once a week, stayed longer for our library visit (I don’t remember any music lessons). We had art projects at our desk, ranging from finger painting (hated it) to coil-pottery.
I vividly remember the SRA reading system we used. It consisted of colored cards, each with a story, and if you answered the questions at the end correctly you got credits, which eventually moved you to the next color. There were two of us who were competing to get through the colors before the other. I got stuck on a story about Eskimos and I just couldn’t get the right answers; my teach said to skip it and pick out a different story, which was really good advice for life in general.
This was the year we also did multiple-column addition and subtraction. We had a blackboard challenge, where two students would go up the blackboard, ask for an addition or subtraction question, and be given two two- or three-digit numbers to compute the answer. If you answered it first, you won, and the other person would have to sit down, and the next person in the row would come up to do the challenge. I beat every other student in the classroom, mostly because I always asked for subtraction questions and I knew others would have problems with it. Eventually my teacher made me sit down and just watch. Looking back, I’m amazed that no one was really upset; it was just part of being a second grader.
That my teacher tried to put me on the short bus because I was left-handed.
Seriously; she literally thought that anyone who’s left-handed was mentally deficient and needed to go to the “Special” school.
I remember the second grade pretty well. My second grade teacher was the first adult I could openly admit to not liking. And I don’t think she liked me either.
Once, we were doing a penmanship lesson and she was walking down the aisles, observing our handwriting. She stopped at my desk and announced, loud enough for everyone to hear, that I’d never be able to go to learn cursive if I continued holding my pencil “that” way (the same way I still hold it all these years later, by the way). For some reason, in my seven-year-old mind, I equated not being able to write in cursive with not being able to go to college and I busted out crying.
I earned a C in penmanship. The first C I ever got.
I remember we had a teacher’s aide. I once asked her how old she was, and she told me she was 61. My mind was blown. It had never dawned on me that anyone could ever be that old.
I don’t remember the full roster of kids in my class, but I do remember one girl. Crystal. Crystal would sass the teacher sometimes. She was never really mean to me, but she wasn’t to be trusted. One time, the two of us were racing for the door and we collided with each other. Her watch slipped off her wrist in the process and she started yelling at me, like I’d caused it to happen intentionally. Of course the teacher was standing right there. Even though I was a “good girl” and Crystal was a trouble-maker, the teacher sided with Crystal. Yet again, I busted out crying.
Kurt, who unfortunately passed away shortly after high school, was privy to all of this drama. I will never forget what he said, because in retrospect it was a hilarious observation.
“Monstro is ALWAYS crying!”
I can tell you the names of all the kids in the class, except for Karen’s last name. That’s because I still have the class composite photo. It’s the only grade from k-12 from which I have such a thing. Mrs. Hahn was the teacher. The room was always cold in the winter. A new Coke machine was in the school, and if we were good all week, we could buy a Coke on Friday afternoon. The machine was one of those into which one dropped a dime in the coin slot, and received a small cup of cold soda with no ice. We usually weren’t good enough as I recall.
We learned cursive writing in second grade. I was left-handed and my teacher didn’t like it one bit. She kept moving the pencil over to my right hand, insisting that I’d do better if I’d only use that hand instead. I got C’s in penmanship all year. So I came to realize much later that my second grade teacher was an ignorant old biddy.
2nd grade I was learning who was good at what. Michael was good a math and sometimes I’d go over to his place after school but not for very long because his parents said he has to sleep after school. I was ???, but OK. The concrete playground had a large statue of a woman laying down with her head chopped off. Yes, it was a catholic schoool, why do you ask? Ms.?? (I don’t remember her name) taught us how to sweep a floor, and I remember being upset by the implication that this was important knowledge. I liked Kate, but Kate liked Andrew, and I was OK with that because Andrew was cool. His dad drove a bus and his backyard had a gate that led onto a football field.