The Bite Size Memoir Challenge hosted by Lisa Reiter starts this week with the theme: "School at Seven." which I translated into "School in First Grade." My prose piece is when I was, as you say as a little girl, "Six and three quarters."
- 1.remember standing outside Miss Foley’s classroom - the outside door - waiting to see her, my first grade teacher. I prayed and wished and hoped but nothing prepared me for the wonder who was Miss Foley.
- I remember our little girl sized lockers. Part of the way through the year I started sharing with Nancy Davis.
- I remember Dick Sanford offering me his flashcards as a token of his admiration of me thus making us a first grade supercouple.
- I remember Miss Foley wore a wig every once in a while to give her short, Twiggy style hair.
- I remember checking out those red playground balls with that specific smell, like medicine balls.
- I remember playing a game that involved getting all tangled up in a big mass of first graders and I remember Miss Foley played it. She laughed as much as we did.
- I remember getting in trouble for drawing on the chalkboard when I wasn’t supposed to be drawing on the chalk board.
- I remember being chosen to participate in a ceremony for Mrs. Shannon, our retiring principal, where a student from each class got to put a piece of the plaque puzzle onto a poster replicating the future plaque.
- I am surprised I don’t remember the dress I wore on the first day of school or my shoes or much of anything outside of school. Those were clearly the most important (or memorable!) parts of my day.
- I remember we had our own bathrooms built right into our classrooms, which were part of an addition on the Linden Avenue School campus.
I wasn’t quite seven at the time of this memory:
September, 1968: Kindergarten at Linden Avenue School was a nightmare my former classmates and I still discuss. Miss Wick was a horrifying, quintessential educator-villain. This is ironic because my parents complained a lot about the high taxes in Glen Ridge being the price one paid for a quality educational experience.
I was an eternal optimist even as a child and I believed God wouldn’t leave me to a nasty teacher two years in a row.
First graders had their own wing at Linden Avenue School, an addition tacked onto the rest of the pale brick building. It came with the bustling baby boom school. This magical, tacked-on-addition consisted of a hallway that was lined with child-sized lockers rather than coat rooms and two classrooms.
There were two double doors on each end of the addition. On the southern double doors, I would wait for my kindergarten class to start. The doors were next to the stairs where I would sit when I opted out of some of the sillier, redundant games Miss Wick had us play.
I simply said "No, thank you," in my mind.
She simply said, “You are being put in the first grade class for the “slower” students," in her mind as she muttered and guffawed at the indecency of my refusal to play.
My blood knew all of this as I stood on the northern double doorways, hands shielding my eyes as I pressed my face up to the glass hoping and praying for a view of the teacher who would hopefully be better than Miss Wick.
This was how I was standing when I caught my first glimpse of Miss Foley, the second most beautiful woman in the world. The first most beautiful woman in the world was my mother, naturally. Miss Foley turned the corner into our hallway wearing a simple, deep fuschia colored dress. Her long hair was pulled away from her face and I gasped when I realized her hair was brown, like mine.
I knew as soon as I saw her first grade would not be like kindergarten.
I knew then everything would be just fine (and it was!)
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When I looked for photos to show places I mention in my post I learned there had been a fire at Linden in May, 1980. Thankfully the school was saved, but I imagine the Miss Shannon Principal plaque was melted in the fire. I read it was a doozy! I wonder if the floor plan was changed? I wonder if they still have the "big rooms" they put in the early 1970's? I wonder whatever happened to the Mummy and the chandeliers which used to be in the auditorium (which was converted into a "big room")?
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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming Spring, 2014 and beyond.
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