I hated 6th grade. Too many changes all it once. I hated changing classes every hour and the constant anxiety of being late. (I was so obsessed with timeliness that I never stopped at my locker, choosing instead to lug all of my books with me. My back and shoulders still harbor resentment). The teachers were meaner and much harder to please I also encountered my first incompetent teachers, which was a real shock to me. Previous to that year, I had worshipped all adults. And the kids were mean too. Sixth grade was when everyone started using cuss words on a regular basis.
It was also when I became cognizant of how fleeting childhood is. I loved being a cute little kid. But it was my 6th grade year that I became an acne-ridden, sour-puss teenager against my will.
My family moved the summer between sixth and seventh grades. I wasn’t exactly a popular kid back in my hometown, but I at least had a handful of good friends and wasn’t completely ostracized. That changed at my new school. I wasn’t good looking, I wasn’t rich, I didn’t wear the right brand of clothes or shoes, I was horribly shy, and I was smart. Four girls in my class - Anna, Leah, Amy, and Jennifer, with Anna as the ringleader - combined to torment me every day. (I am quite happy to report that Anna is very fat now, and hasn’t aged well at all!)
Fortunately, the boys weren’t quite as insane at that age, and I became pretty good friends with a guy who was widely considered THE cutest and nicest in our grade. When I broke my arm over winter break, he carried my books every day until I healed, and - whether by accident or design - gave me a little bit of social entree.
Eleventh grade was a close runner-up for worst year, but I didn’t choose it because I literally have almost no recollection of it. My grades were fine, I worked and participated in extracurricular activities, I had a job, but I was barely functional. Undiagnosed depression is a bitch when everyone just assumes you’re in some teenaged hormonal funk, and that you should just “snap out of it.”
For me, it was easily 1st Grade. I went from having a caring, kind kindergarten teacher to a bitter, intolerant hag. I had problems writing some of my letters and numbers backward (possibly due to being forced to be right-handed although I was naturally left=handed), and she actually believed I was doing it on purpose. Also, I had problems concentrating in class (no one knew about Asperger’s back then), which she harassed me over endlessly. One day, she got so fed up with me that she sent me to the principal’s office. Mind you, she sent me, not took me. I went into the hallway, unaccompanied by any adult, and was at a complete loss as to what to do. I wandered the hall for a little while, and finally just let myself back into the classroom. Nothing else was ever said about it, but the memory of helpless confusion haunts me even now.
That harpy. Over 18 years of education, she is the only teacher that I can honestly say that I hate, and I have a really high hate threshold. There were other teachers I thought of as useless, but she was the only one who actively made me feel less-than-human.
I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but, looking back, my worst bullies in 6th-7th grade were girls, not boys. (Obviously, by my username, I’m a guy.) Physical blows and such can be brushed off or retaliated against. The mocking emotional crap certain girls pulled … not so easy to shrug off.
Decades later, I learned that the teacher did not want to teach 4th grade, she wanted to teach 6th grade, and she tried to teach us as if we were two years older.
3rd. I hated my teacher, and thought she hated me. I got no support at all from my parents. Years later, they told me I was right, and they hated her too.
In light of some parents who helicopter in and always take their kid’s side uncritically, I can respect their approach.
They were all pretty much equally fine for me, but, if I had to pick one, I think I’d pick fifth grade because of Sister Germaine. Even in the 80s, she was a relic of a bygone era. Only teacher I remember actively disliking. Actually, my third grade teacher is a close second, but I don’t seem to be as annoyed by her in retrospect. She just came from the stupid school of thought that repetitive punishments like writing out our twenty weekly spelling words ten times each was an effective deterrent for “bad” behavior (which was mostly of the form of talking during class.) Didn’t dissuade me one bit. My name was on the board nearly daily, even though I was otherwise not what you would normally call a “disciplinary problem.” She just had a weird, old-school method of keeping class in control.
I should explain this. Everyone who had a punishment due would have to put their name on the board. So, in class, if we were working on an assignment, and I’d tap my neighbor to ask him or her a question, if my teacher caught me, she’d bark out “pulykamell, put your name on the board!” and I’d add my name to the running punishment tally. And if your name was already there, you’d put a two (or three, four, etc.) by your name to indicate how many multiples of your punishment you needed to do. If you didn’t turn it in the next day, you’d have to do double what you were supposed to do. I have no idea what happened if somebody just refused to turn in their lines. I’d often just skip doing them at home and take the double punishment to keep my parents from finding out. The punishment certainly didn’t teach me anything useful, except perhaps contempt for authority.
Christ, this could have been my Year 2 teacher, Mrs Heart. I had issues with spelling and transposing letters and numbers. She acted like I was doing it just to spite her. I would be kept in during lunch and recess to practice spelling and if she saw me in the playground with friends before school (I got dropped off early by my parents on their way to work) she would drag me inside and make me write lines. I used to hide from her as much as I could. Pretty sure she would be dead by now so at least she can’t terrorise other kids.
I think eighth grade was marginally worse than seventh, mostly because I was so socially clueless that it took me six weeks or so at the beginning of seventh grade to figure out that I had suddenly become an outcast whom no one liked. But neither was good.
Had a broken leg in 7th, plus went to a newly bussed school that had to work out a few issues. It wasn’t bad but fewer positives than all the other years.
We had a nasty old harpy like that in 4th grade. Mrs. Triber, who has given us all a break by dying many years ago. I got sent home on several occasions because I talked to the person next to me. “Go home and tell your mother why you’re home early!” Yeah, right; fine with me, as both parents worked and never knew I had some free time away from that hag. One day, another kid was being a typically gregarious ten-year-old and she walked over to his desk (the old-fashioned kind with a lid that opens to a storage compartment) and slammed the lid down, breaking one of his fingers. Today she would have been fired, but back then nothing happened to her.
I had a pretty easy time of it in school, for the most part. But then my parents decided to move in the middle (!) of 8th grade, so I had to adjust to all new everything. That was not pleasant.
5th grade. I remember nights sitting at the kitchen table with my homework spread out, sobbing because I hated long division so badly. Remainders and proofs. "Whaaahhh! Mama I can’t do it. " “Yes you can”. “No I can’t it’s too hard”! “Well you’re going to sit there until you finish so stop your crying and get busy.”. What a nightmare.
Close call between 2nd, 5th and 12th for me. But I ultimately voted for 12th, just because I spent the majority of the year not being sure I was going to graduate. And by “the majority of the year,” I mean right up to the moment I was handed my diploma on stage.
