Posts Tagged “first grade”

by Una LaMarche
First Grade
Originally Published on The Sassy Curmudgeon

I was sitting in a trailer making a papier-mâché bust of Donkey Kong when I got into my first fight with a Deaf person. It was 1986 and I was in the middle of first grade at Reilly Elementary School in Austin, Texas, where my family had recently moved in order to facilitate my dad’s job defending free speech (and, some Republicans publicly argued, child pornographers) through the Texas Civil Liberties Union.

The deaf girl’s name was Meghan. She was one of four Deaf kids in our class, and because of them we had two teachers, our regular one Ms. McHenry and our sign language teacher Ms. Eckelcamp. I remember we spent a lot of time that year learning how to sign. For some reason the main tool they used was the song “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night. So to this day I can sign the sentence “Jeremiah was a bullfrog” but I can’t say “Where is the bathroom?” This is kind of like my grasp of Spanish; thanks to my diverse elementary school in Brooklyn (which I started once we’d moved back to New York from Austin), I learned to sing entire songs in Spanish but never learned the basics of the language. When I am in the Dominican Republic in April and someone asks me for directions, my only choice will be to say “En mi viejo San Juan/Cuantos sueños forjé/En mis noches de infancia/Mi primera ilusión/Y mis quitas de amor/Son recuerdos del alma.”*

*Translation: In my Old San Juan, many dreams I forged in my childhood years … My first illusion, and my grief of love are memories of the soul.

Anyway, back to Meghan and our rumble. Meghan was red-headed and pretty, and I was, as I have previously documented, a total (albeit cute) weirdo:

That’s her, behind me in the red penguin outfit. She is obviously jealous of my high-waisted sweatpants and awesome pigtails.

For some reason we had art class in a trailer about 200 yards away from the school proper. So the visual you should have now is: me, looking like a fashion-challenged Punky Brewster, and Meghan, looking like a little princess, sitting in a trailer in Texas making Donkey Kong heads out of paper and paste. I swear I did not provoke her. She just glanced over at my work and gave me a withering look.

“Mine is beautiful,” she said in her tiny Marlee Matlin twang. “Yours is ugly.” Fightin’ words if I ever heard ‘em! I totally went Donkey Kong on her ass.

No, just kidding. I started crying. I was seven. And even then I was extraordinarily passive. I’m like Buster from Arrested Development; I curl up into a ball and play dead at the slightest hint of violence.

In case you are wondering, here is what the signs look like:

“Beautiful“:

“Ugly“:

In second grade, perhaps inspired by Meghan, I made the following book:

It’s all about how this girl Cathy learns sign language so that she can learn how to say “Step off, you ginger bitch!” to a Deaf girl who insults her sweet video game-inspired sculpture.

Ok, that’s not true. It’s about how Cathy learns sign language so she can be friends with a Deaf girl named Zoelemonoe.

Stop laughing, that part is true. I was totally awesome at making up names.

Solveig Pederson Zarubin
Ages 6, 8, and 15ish

Scene: me, a little tomboy-looking girl, with short brown hair which was long and blond fairly recently. Sitting in a first grade classroom, with a worksheet in front of me.

I already knew how to read, and I could read well before kindergarten; it seemed like I’d been able to read forever. Many others in the class either weren’t reading or were reading much more slowly than I was. The teacher had given us a worksheet to do, and was walking around watching us work.

I had already finished the assignment. I was curious what everyone else was doing — and how did they do it? Which parts were they still working on? Nosiness that I still have today! So with nothing else to do, I was looking around…

And heard my name — and then the teacher sternly saying, “Eyes on your own paper!”

I didn’t realize she was talking to me, or what she was talking about.

“Not me!” I thought. “I was already done!” How could I be cheating? I was just looking around to see how everyone else was doing.

I’m pretty sure I got in trouble for that, and one lesson I think I unconsciously got from this was: “Getting too far ahead of the group, being too smart, or otherwise standing out from the crowd — can be trouble!”

Later on in second or third grade, we would be assigned to read a story from our reading books. It always felt like the teacher gave a humongous amount of time to read a story that was only three or four pages. I could always finish it really quickly, but then had nothing to do. Or nothing to do without calling attention that I was done so abnormally early — I thought that if I started reading or doing something else it would be so obvious that I was done way earlier than everyone else.

I didn’t want to seem different or weird. I thought that everyone must notice that I was done and think I had cheated on the reading somehow, like my first grade teacher had assumed.

“She must have been skimming, or just skipping parts. She couldn’t have read it already!”

So I would page back a page or two when I was done -– carefully checking around me to make sure I matched the page everyone else was on. I could be a bit ahead, but not too much. Then I would re-read that page, and then look around and see if I needed to re-read it again, until more people were done. I’d see people triumphantly finishing and then being happy to be “done” — yet I had been done for a long time and felt like I had needed to wait for them.

In upper elementary and moving on to middle school, I realized that raising my hand every time I knew the answer to a question could also be dangerous. I was worried about what people would think: “she’s a know-it-all” “She’s a goody-goody teacher’s pet…”

And I didn’t really want to raise my hand for every single question, that would get annoying to everyone. And isn’t it better for the others to have to answer the questions too?

Even though I knew the answers to most or all of the questions, I would try to figure out how many times I could/should raise my hand without attracting too much attention. Every third question? Once or twice per class? Just wait for the teacher to call on me?

This always felt very unnatural but also much safer.. Eventually I was thinking so much about how to spread out my participation, that I wound up just not participating most of the time in class. Safer, but also quite mind-numbing as a constant practice.

In high school, the grade in several classes, including U.S. History, was based on class participation. The history teacher was also rather intimidating, making it even harder to respond in class, although he eventually became one of my favorite teachers. Because I really wanted to keep a good grade, and I was so used to not participating, I had to really consciously plan that I would raise my hand at least once or twice every class.

Even now, as an adult, sometimes I still need to work on “raising my hand” (especially in a large group) and being comfortable with achieving and showing my talents.

Having good role models at work, joining public speaking/leadership groups like Toastmasters, and increasing my self-confidence by trying new things and succeeding at them has really helped this.

I still have trouble speaking out and expressing myself, especially with new people, but I think I’ve gotten better. (One co-worker told me after I joined Toastmasters – “When I first met you, you were really shy and you really didn’t speak up too much. But something happened – You seem
like a *real person* now!”). Um…Thanks, I think!

I really admire kids I see now, who understand that it is okay to be smart and to let your abilities show, without being afraid of being accused of cheating or “showing off.” Kids who are confident in their abilities and who have been encouraged by their parents and teachers to develop them.

by Dori Ben-David
Age six at the time

Betsy was small and frail. She barely had eyelashes. Her hair was thin and wispy and in my memory, it was silvery gray although I don’t know if it was really like this. We were six years old, Betsy and I and most of our first grade class. Betsy had a weak voice, high pitched and a little whiny. She also had some kind of skin disease. Maybe it was just eczema. Maybe something more serious. Her skin was very dry and easily irritated. White, flaking pieces dotted her body -– her arms, her legs, her face. Her hands were dry and wrinkly. She looked like a little old lady in a child’s body. She wasn’t supposed to wash with soap or even with water too often.

Our torment of her was relentless.

A few times a day, the class would line up in the hallway outside the restroom. Six at a time, we would go in, use the restroom and wash our hands. It was usually one of these bathroom breaks that triggered the torment –- we called her gross, said she was dirty, how nasty it was that she didn’t wash her hands with soap and water. She would protest and plead in her small, thin voice: “But I’m not supposed to use soap!”

I don’t actually remember if I ever said anything myself. My only memory is of standing in the group, a circle of us surrounding Betsy, tormenting. And of her protesting, defending.

Every afternoon, we were released for recess. Together the class walked across the huge grassy lawn towards the playground. Once we crossed an invisible threshold, we all took off running. This day I lingered behind and was one of the last to reach the playground. As I darted up one of the ladders, my teacher called my name — and immediately I was filled with dread. I knew what was coming: “Today you play with Betsy.” Great, just great. I slowly turned my body around and trudged disappointedly towards Betsy.

This is the third and last memory I have of Betsy. My Dad taught at my school so I stayed after every day, waiting for him to take me home. I would hang around in the front lobby, moving from couch to couch and chatting with Paula, the receptionist who always had a piece of gum for me. I was hanging around one afternoon when I heard Betsy’s high voice. It had a different tone than I was used to hearing from her. She sounded happy. I heard her excitedly yell, “Daddy!” and I saw from down the hall, a man coming towards her with his arms spread wide. Her face in a huge smile, she ran to him and jumped into his arms. He hugged her and spun around. I was bewildered. This guy clearly loved Betsy. Betsy, with the weird skin who didn’t use soap when she washed her hands.

After first grade, Betsy went to a different school and I didn’t think about her for maybe 20 years. Then she popped back into my mind one day. I’m not sure what made me think of Betsy -– Maybe it was having children of my own and thinking about their own vulnerability. Now I think about Betsy all the time. I hope she’s happy.

by Dan Moreau
Age eight at the time

At age eight, my parents enrolled me in the French School. Unlike the American School, which cost more and was farther from our house, the French School embodied my mother’s ideals of sophistication, culture and civility. She herself had been raised by French Catholic nuns and instead of rebelling against them, as so many other girls did, she embraced them.

We had just moved from Miami, Florida to Bangkok, Thailand. In Miami, I had just finished the first grade, but because I was starting at the French School with no preexisting knowledge of French, the principal thought I should repeat the first grade. My parents didn’t object, nor did I.

In early September my parents dropped me off by the front gate to my new school and wished me luck. I don’t know how, but somehow I managed to find my classroom. Our teacher’s name was Madame Unarat. She was petite and plump with short dark hair and owlish glasses. That first morning I sat quietly at my desk, pretending to understand everything that my new classmates and teacher said.

At noon, the bell rang for lunch and Madame Unarat let us out into the courtyard. All the other kids had brought packed lunches. Everyone except me. I think my parents had sent me off to school without lunch, assuming—and perhaps rightly so—that the expensive tuition they were paying would at least include meals. It didn’t.

As I sat by myself on a bench, biting my fingernails, my stomach growling, a woman who worked at the school approached me. She was wearing lipstick and perfume and the collar of her blouse was stylishly raised up. She asked me if I had eaten. I didn’t say anything. She repeated herself, this time in English. I shook my head in reply.

She took me to the school cafeteria. They called it a “cafeteria,” but it was more like a French bistro with a chalkboard out front that displayed the day’s specials. It was where the teachers and school staff gathered for lunch, coffee and cigarettes. She bought me a chicken drumstick and took me back to the courtyard where I devoured the drumstick down to the bone.

A boy from my class sat next to me on the bench. He was the biggest kid in our class and looked older than the rest of us with the lip shadow of a prepubescent mustache. He spoke some English and, unlike the other kids who as a rule ignored me, he was friendly to me. Too friendly. But where he was talkative and warm, I was aloof and tightlipped.

Though it was only my first day, and though I didn’t understand a word of French, I instinctively knew where this boy stood in the playground hierarchy and even though I had no friends I wanted nothing to do with him. Without knowing it, I had made a swift and vital decision. I would rather have no friends at all than be associated with this social pariah. In approaching me so early on, he might have befriended me before I caught on to what the other kids were saying about him. And in hindsight, it was the right decision. Slowly but surely, as my French improved, so did my rapport with my classmates. I made new friends; he didn’t. We never talked much after that.

Because of my age and because of the mistaken belief that children pick up languages like head lice, by proximity and by immersion, my parents thought I would come home one day, fully fluent in French. That wasn’t the case. I had to learn French like any adult would, through repetition, rote memorization and trial and error.

Every day after school I met with Madame Unarat for an hour or two. That was when my true instruction began. Her methods were simple yet effective. She would read from a primer, pausing after each word, which I repeated until she was satisfied with my pronunciation. It was painstaking, frustrating and laborious and sometimes she would raise her voice in anger when I couldn’t sound out a word correctly. But it worked. By the end of the year, I spoke enough French to get by on and was admitted to the second grade.

My second grade teacher didn’t have Madame Unarat’s patience and treated me as any other student. Monsieur Stricte was a dark, wiry, morose man. By then, I had quit having afternoon lessons with Madame Unarat. It was assumed that I was fluent. I wasn’t. I spoke a hybrid of playground argot and slang. Yet I went to great lengths to conceal my failings. I copied off of classmates, I cheated on reading comprehensions by looking up the answers in the back of the book and, most of all, I kept a low profile. To my parents and everyone else, I seemed to be doing just fine.

One day, in the middle of the semester, Monsieur Stricte asked me point blank if I spoke French. I had just handed in an assignment on which I had done better than everyone in the class. Like with every other assignment, I had cheated on this one too, but my mistake was to give myself too many correct answers.
Monsieur Stricte stared at me coldly. His eyes said it all. I knew what answer he was looking for. To say yes would be to perpetuate a charade he plainly saw through. It was also a lie. Yet the truth was more complicated. Yes, I spoke conversational French. No, my written French and reading skills were awful. After a few awkward seconds, I shook my head. The following day, I was demoted to the first grade where Madame Unarat welcomed me, literally, with open arms, wrapping me up in a tight bear hug in front of the entire class. I was never so happy to see her.