IT’S HOW THEY ANSWERED THE CALLING

continued from - ANSWERING THE CALLING

Lincoln Elementary School

Preschool
My Mom shared her memories of my first day at preschool, which helped me think back to when I was four years-old. She shared how hard it was for her to let go of me to the strangers in the preschool, even for a half day program. After reviewing some of my progress notes written by my teachers, I inferred this preschool program promoted school readiness. Did you ever notice everything in the educational arena has some form of acronym to call their programs? This program was the SPARKEY program, or Schools and Parents Assisting with Resources for Kids in Early Years.

It was the first time I remember being left in the care of adults who were not relatives or my parents’ friends. Although it was almost a half century ago, I have vivid memories of what must have been my first day of school. The first thing I noticed, was this person’s home looked different than our apartment building. We entered directly into someone’s home, through a door from the outside, where our home we entered from outside to an inside vestibule. This house had only one floor, my apartment building had three floors with four individual apartments on each floor. The house seemed to be larger than my entire apartment building. We stood and waited by the doorway when a polite lady came and greeted my Mom and I. I assumed my Mom knew who this lady was as they started talking. She greeted me by my family name, Bobby, as if she’s known me all my life. Until now only my immediate family and my parents’ Hungarian circle of friends called me Bobby. My senses were overloaded by the number of children in this woman’s home and all the toys scattered throughout her large living room.

This kind lady introduced herself as one of my teachers and she will be one of my teachers in the classroom at school. I thought I knew what school was from watching Sesame Street, but never been to one so I wasn’t sure what to expect a school was supposed to be like. I wonder if my Mom knew if this was a school she brought me to. Did she know she was going to leave me with this nice lady or was this supposed to only surprise me? With her warm welcoming smile, she invited me to join the other children and go play. I was excited to go play with all those toys, yet my shyness didn’t want to let go of the firm grip on my Mom’s hand. I wanted my Mom to be close by. I was overwhelmed by deciding which group of children to join their busy activities at different tables doing a lot fun stuff, coloring, puzzles, games, giggling, dressing up and even had a table with my favorite toys; LEGO building blocks with and die-cast cars in copious amounts more than I could ever imagine.

I read my end of year progress note from the SPARKEY program.

“Bobby has shown great improvement in his social development. He gets along well with his friends and in most instances is more than willing to share and take turns.”

Although it was at the teacher’s discretion to comment and further evaluate the subjective categories on the progress note, I found one and it read,

“Can express thoughts and contributes to discussion”

My teacher commented to this section of the progress note,

“Very well, and how well and often.”

I believe this is my first memory of being a storyteller as I either started early or somethings never change, but I’ll agree on both being true.

Endlessly, since I became an adult or old enough to understand, my Mom apologized for being an overprotective parent. In her eyes, she perceived both her and my Dad didn’t provide for me enough and didn’t let me stray out of their eyesight. Perhaps, she thinks I did not having a good or a happy childhood? The only negative I remember was our apartment building lacked young children my age and having only one car made it difficult to arrange play dates. My educational background tells me I probably faced social anxiety and social awkwardness or simply, being just shy. If anything, I believe my shyness was as a result of being around the same people and not necessarily new people and not often were there other children my age.

Elliott B Elementary School

I transferred to Eugene B Elliott Elementary School for the remainder of elementary school years with the exception of Grade 2. At my request, I began to ask to be called by my proper name and made sure all my teachers knew to use Robert from this point on instead of my family nickname, Bobby. My fondest memories beyond the teachers I remembered the most were the extras and beyond the academic school activities. Some of these activities included school-wide monthly award assemblies, marionette theatre, holiday music (choir/instrumental/brass) shows, art shows, field days, monthly after-school popcorn and a movie, safety patrol, school monitor clubs and a myriad of other activities.

When I compared the schools in south Florida were I supervised YMCA school-age child care programs in both diverse socio-economic and multi-cutltural/ethnic communities many years since my own elementary school days, my school was more organized, offered academic, enrichment oriented and was community-centered. The elementary schools in my current neighborhood start 8:00am and end at 2:00pm as opposed to our days ended at 3:30pm. We participated in both outdoor morning and afternoon recess year-round and went to an enrichment every day. I speculate my elementary school was ahead of its time not only in it its offerings but its much smaller classroom sizes lent itself to ideal staff to student to teacher ratios. This allowed the school became an extended family where every staff member took time to know each student by name was second to none. I challenge any of the schools in my community to compete with Eugene B Elliot Elementary.

Kindergarten
Miss Waytolonis was my Kindergarten teacher, a petite, chubby woman with her salt and pepper hair brought up in a beehive and always wore a sweater over her shoulders as if she didn’t have arms but wings like Tinkerbell. Kindergarten was much like preschool, but we started to learn to phonetically read, basic writing skills and simple math skills. I was introduced to “Curious George” books which started a lifelong love for all things Curious George. Miss Waytolonis, like a shepherd, managed her flock of lambs. Her eyes always watched carefully to ensure no wolf got into her domain. With her gentle voice or a certain look, she could guide the children into a straight line or if they giggled and made noises inside, she quietly reminded us to use our inside voices. Suddenly, the lambs silenced themselves and followed her lead, not wanting to disobey her, did as she asked.

This was the year I met two of my closest friends for the duration of my elementary school years, Kellie and Troy. Through several moves, I managed to keep in touch with Troy until early part of high school and found Kellie many years later on social media living several states away. We actually met up a few years ago on driving with my parents from their winter home in south Florida to their summer cottage in central Ontario. We remain friends, distant, but do catch up when time permits, still share a message or just check in on each other.

Grade 1
By the time I started school, I was already a year older than most of my friends since my December birthday required me to start school the following year. It wasn’t made easier when in Grade 1 I missed more than a month of school due to health-related absences for three separate surgeries for appendix, tonsil/adenoid and ear tubes. Mrs. Clancy, my Grade 1 teacher made sure I kept up academically, she gave a little push and extra help to catch up with the rest of the class. I was mastering reading levels rapidly despite missing so many days from school. I credit Mrs. Clancy for introducing me to my early love of reading and writing. Grades were either an ‘S’ for satisfactorily progressing or “NH” for needing helping. Mrs. Clancy wasn’t much to put subjective comments to any of the progress areas other than a comment of extra work in reading and writing beyond my grade level was assigned to me to keep my interest and not be lost in a daydream.

Tumpane Elementary School

Grade 2
At the end of Grade 1, my parents shared they decided to move to Toronto for the start of the new school year. The seamless transition from when I finished my summer vacation at the cottage to a new home, in a new city and a new school left me distraught since I never said good-bye to my friends and teachers. Tumpane Elementary School was different from Eugene B Elementary School in numerous ways. The school was two stories and resembled more like the houses around the neighborhood, just larger in size. For the first time, I walked to school rather than rode a school bus, we took French lessons, we ate lunch in our classroom not the cafeteria and all of our written work was done in composition books and not loose leaf newsprint paper and we did our math work on write and wipe off boards. All so different than what we did in Grade 1.

To my chagrin and anguish, I was being called Bobby, again. I thought I made it clear, I wanted to be called Robert. My Grade 2 teacher’s appearance was slightly intimidating, she was taller than an average woman, somewhat pale and ghastly looking. Her classroom was set up so the desks lined up in columns facing the blackboard and her desk. I think we must have moved desks around for group activities as I don’t recall a group table for reading or other small group activities. Miss Martin, whose name I only remembered when I saw my class picture and validated it with my progress report, where she wrote about my writing and oral skills.

On my progress notes I was hoping to find something which would catch my attention or to see if anything helped me recall anything worthwhile to write about. Regrettably, the comments were minimal and didn’t provide much insight into what happened in Grade 2.

“He frequently contributes to our discussions.”

“He is showing an ability to relate his experiences to our discussions and is willing to share them with the class. He has learned also to be more concise in his offerings.”

“He is developing an ability to write a good story.”

Grade 2 lacked tangible memorable moments in class with Miss Martin or Tumpane Elementary School as a whole. It wasn’t a bad year, just a year filled with a difficult transition to a new school, making new friends and adapt to new teaching styles. I had difficulty not understanding why I felt like the outsider trying to find my place, which is why I never really never found my niche in Grade 2.

Elliott B Elementary School

Grade 3 and Grade 4
Boomerang!

After the blizzard of 1976 or 1977, we moved back to Wayne, Michigan before starting Grade 3. I was ecstatic when I was told it would be the same apartment and the same school as before our move to Toronto. The one side of me was excited to reunite with my best friends Kellie and Troy. Yet, the other side was nervous to start over again and being the new face in the crowd, even if I was truly a returning student. Whether it was before school started or the first day of school, when it was confirmed Mrs. Bowling in Room 30 would be my Grade 3 teacher, I became anxious as I only heard only negative things about her.

Since starting my blog, YMeJourney, Mrs. Bowling has been mentioned in several posts over the years. With such vivid memories, I have enough material to write a good sized chapter or perhaps an entire young adult novel. My comments intertwined Grade 3 and Grade 4, as I had her for both years. Those two years were unrivaled when compared to all my other elementary school years. My two years with Mrs. Bowling was the most definitive turning point in terms of academics and personally the most formative of finding myself. It is also the ones with the memories I reminiscence fondly and most frequently about. She was the first teacher I had who took an interest in helping me become a better me, every day with the words, “always be better than your yesterday” being reiterated regularly.

During recess the first day, all of us shared who our teacher was and when I mentioned, Mrs. Bowling, some of my fellow classmates became totally speechless and appeared to have lost the ability to talk. While most of my classmates painted a negative picture of Mrs. Bowling, I didn’t want to find her guilty of this crime, so I just listened to the gossip the children rapidly spread words of fear into those amongst us who were undeniably in her class.

“She gives a lot of homework!”

They were right – Mrs. Bowling assigned homework every night, even on Fridays. This didn’t include any classwork you had infamously marked with a red Sharpie marker to “Redo!”

“She doesn’t let you go to recess because she makes you do-over a lot of times!”

The higher standard she held you to, was greater than your expectations of what you could do. She knew you could do better, simply she always knew you were not doing your best. There were more than a handful times I remember sitting in during recess to “Redo!” because my handwriting was not neat or that I didn’t get enough my math facts right.”

As Mrs. Bowling said on one of my Progress Reports,

“Robert is very careless in his written work in English.” Nearly always he has to redo his written work. Sometimes he does it three or four times.”

It was in Grade 3, I started wearing glasses for reading when at one of the parent conferences Mrs. Bowling recommended my Mom to have my eyes checked as she noted some of my difficulties.

“Robert has a bad time copying from a book. He misses words or misspells the words he copies.”

I heard another child say,

“She keeps the bad kids from going to eat lunch in the cafeteria, she makes them eat with her in class!”

In her eyes, eating in the cafeteria was a reward since you get to sit with your friends, eat lunch together, talk amongst those at your table and if you finished early, you were allowed outside for a mini-recess until class started again.

Mrs. Bowling would write in my Progress Notes,

“He works very hard to please me.” “Robert completes all his work, but he has to redo it sometimes, he doesn’t seem to mind it.”

I heard another classmate squeal as if he was being held hostage,

“She’s like my grandma, she never smiles and she’s super mean!”

Unlike my friends and classmates, I never had a grandmother growing up nor not one who lived with me or one who we visited, so I couldn’t relate to what the other children were saying. However; there was no doubt she was much older than many of the other teachers. Granted she didn’t smile often, but nevertheless, she genuinely loved her pupils (as she called her students) as if they were her extended family. She used both rewards and discipline equally in keeping her class in order and knew how to involve class participation in her lessons.

Mrs. Bowling made learning fun. From speed tests for our math tables to self-paced vocabulary testing. The speed tests for math tables was to see how fast we could complete our math tables with 100 percent of the problems correct. Each operation addition, subtraction, multiplication and division once we successfully got 100 percent on each one, three times we would get an award at our monthly school assembly. The self-vocabulary testing we would get a list of 15 to 20 words and had to write them ten times each, look up the definition and part of speech and then in our words define the word and use it in a proper sentence. At the end of the week, if we were brave enough to challenge Mrs. Bowling we would go to the spelling center and she would tell us one of the words and tell us to either spell it, define it or use it in a proper sentence. If we were able to do all of them with no errors, we were given the next list of words for the following week.

“Little House on the Prairie”, a popular the television show during these years, told of a family’s struggles growing up in rural America in the 1800s.  In addition to watching the television show, we read all the Little House books by the real Laura Ingalls Wilder and discussed the similarities and differences from the television show.  In one of the years I had Mrs. Bowling, we took a field trip to Greenfield Village which mirrored life the Ingalls family on television. Our arts and crafts projects followed the theme of living in the 1800s as they did on “Little House on the Prairie.” We converted an empty coffee canister into our lunch box and boys made hats and the girls made bonnets. Once we arrived at the village, we were transported back one hundred years. In a one room schoolhouse, we did our math lessons using a slate and chalk and read from the McGuffey readers and then proceeded to walk the remainder of the village and see different ways how people lived and worked back then.

“She talks funny!”

Mrs. Bowling was born and raised in the south, precisely, Kentucky and had a perfect southern accent and drawl. Personally, I found her accent added warmth to her beautiful presence.

In her accent, I can still hear her calling recess to an end.

“Boys and Girls – time finish up – you have five more minutes of recess.”

“Let’s go Boys and Girls, it’s time to line up.”

She was much like a police officer directing traffic at a round-about, with lines for each teacher’s class she supervised during recess.

As the years passed, from adolescence into my adulthood, I remained in contact with Mrs. Bowling until I was in my late 40s. She became an adopted family member, much like I had the quintessential Norman Rockwell inspired grandmother. I would call her regularly, and she would start our chats by asking how my parents are doing and then asked how am I doing in my studies. As I got older she asked,

“Robert has any girl find your fancy as of yet?”

I replied, it’s not easy finding the right fit when you go to school full-time and work a full-time job and helping care for a parent whose health progressively deteriorated over the years.

She genuinely took an interest in my collegiate studies all the way through my post-graduate school coursework. Probing my brain, much like she did when I had her in elementary school, as she called it back then “putting on your thinking cap” or as we call it as adults, critical thinking skills,

“How would you compare those two classes and how the professors taught?”

“What did you enjoy most and least of that particular class?”

“Why is this class important with your chosen course of study or work?”

I learned why we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday and the history and relevance of the cornucopia or horn of plenty to taking pride in all that I do and maintaining self-discipline and self-control. Thanksgiving and the cornucopia is another post for another time. Thanksgiving became one of those holidays which reminded me most of her and often was one of the days I would call her and she would share what her ginormous family would be doing to celebrate and how many pies she’s baked and sides prepared, so she could focus on the turkey and ham on Thanksgiving Day.

I kept in touch with Mrs. Bowling until Easter 2016 until my own father faced health issues of his own, which ironically took his life on Thanksgiving Day of the same year. Perhaps you may have read about Thanksgiving in a few of my other posts and its significance of learning of the holiday and how my family celebrated the holiday. This wonderful woman was the grandmother I never had growing up; always talked with a smile, offered countless words of advice and genuinely took an interest and loved me as if I were one of her many grandchildren. With overly generous praise and love, I cannot express my gratitude for her taking an interest in me, her patience in all that she taught me and not just by being my teacher but an extension of my family.

Grade 5
My final progress report with Mrs. Bowling wished me much success in Grade 5 and was assigned to Mrs. Ingersoll for Grade 5. In reality, Grade 5, I learned on the first day I had two teachers. Mrs. Ingersoll was my assigned teacher but I also had Mr. Valent, my first male teacher. Their classrooms were side-by-side. For math and science I went to Mr. Valent and stayed with Mrs. Ingersoll for social studies and reading and writing (language arts). As I look back, we changed classes for math and language arts to further address the differing abilities of the students. This was the first time, I remember my friends weren’t with me in all my subject areas.

Much like previous years, language arts lessons were taught through the traditional reading textbooks and writing assignments in workbooks related to our readings. Mrs. Ingersoll further supplemented additional readings with assigning various American literature classics as well as enthusiastically reading to our class some of her own favorites from the same genre. I remember looking forward to her reading us “The Hobbit”, “Moby Dick”, “A Tale of Two Cities”, “The Chronicles of Narnia” and others. She read us just enough to wet our palates and yearned for more, but she would often say,

“That’s all for today, now let’s talk about what I just read.”

“Tell me about what characters did you like? dislike?”

“What part of the story interested you the most?”

“How would you have changed a part of the story you heard?”

Her discussions, which were just as intense and interesting as the enthusiasm she exhibited while reading the books. She helped us develop and communicate our own thoughts and opinions through writing assignments which almost always preceded with questions to consider answering in our reports. In addition to her readings, we had to read an age-appropriate chapter book on our own every week and turn in complex book reports which asked us to summarize our readings, analyze characters (antagonist and protagonist), define the plot, climax and resolution. Some of my favorite books were “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “The Pigman.”

With the familiarity of how Mrs. Ingersoll taught, I looked forward to her sharing her love of history by storytelling and animating the key characters and bringing them to life. She also incorporated trivial pieces into each lesson often may have been a hidden gem, a twist of character or something that was not commonly known in what we just learned through our textbooks.

Mr. Valent with his black horn-rimmed glasses, he stood by the door when it was time to switch classes for math and language arts. He greeted each of us by name as we entered his classroom, I remember looking up to him, as he was a tall man who bowed his head to get inside the door. When it was time to switch back to our regular classrooms, he always had a positive, encouraging word to share with each student as they left his classroom.

I quickly figured out Mr. Valent taught the tortoises. Once we all took our seats, I looked around to see who switched classes with me, it proved what I already knew, I was with the students who were not the math superstars but those who needed additional help and extra time, be brought to grade level or like me, struggled to remain at grade level.

“Nice job on solving the problem at the chalkboard, Robert!”

“I like how you tried that difficult math problem today.”

Math was never one of my favorite subjects nor was it something came easy for me. The difficulties of understanding the basic concepts of math made it all the more challenging. It seemed like every time I thought I understood what was being taught and then given a couple of the problems I would freeze in my footsteps. As long as my teacher was working with me one-on-one, I seemed to grasp the concept and solve the problems. But once the teacher left my side, the concepts just vanished into the air. My difficulties were magnified when the way Mr. Valent (or any other math teacher) explained in class how to do the problem was totally different than how my father explained the very same concepts. He tried to help me with my math homework, but in the end left me confused and frustrated. In the end, it resulted in may late nights leaving me in tears when it was time to go to bed.

Mr. Valent taught his math lessons at the blackboard. When he would call me to the front of the entire class to work out a problem, I could feel the entire eyes of the classroom staring at me and laughing silently at my arithmetic ineptitude. Rarely did I get it correct on the first try, this further added to my math anxiety and difficulties comprehending the lesson. Mr. Valent rarely showed one-on-one at a student’s desk, but he would call the student up to his desk and put the problem on the blackboard and work the problem out with you and it just created an evil repetitive cycle of defeat.

Where Mr. Valent’s teaching of mathematics, or his lack of ability (at least not in way I understood and was too ashamed to ask for additional help) didn’t help me gain confidence in my worst subject, yet, his teaching science was contrastingly the opposite. He was able to bring science lessons come alive. His enthusiasm towards the space program to the wonders of our planet earth, his excitement was contagious. We all became explorers of our environment and perhaps future astronauts or the next archaeologists. geologists, biologists, chemists or some other scientist. His stories, in class experiments, demonstrations, scavenging hunts kept the class in amazement and quiet for the duration of the lesson.

When it came to progress reports, he wasn’t much for words in the classroom nor on the subjective portion, his words for my “Satisfactory” or “At grade level.”

Towards the end of the day, Friday afternoons, both classes came together where Mrs. Ingersoll played her banjo and lead us in song. We all looked forward to this special reward. We learned a few new songs; some were just fun and goofy ones while others were patriotic or folk songs. These were different from the songs we learned in music class with Mrs. Chartrand. Many of the songs I thought I lost the words to, I managed to quickly remember them many years later when I worked at the YMCA school-age child care and summer camp programs.

Grade 6
I mentioned here and in previous posts how I was brought up to always respect teachers. Perhaps it’s their academic achievement, or their chosen profession to be an educator or more likely I was a reflection of my parents and their parenting but more likely a combination of all of these. As much as I tried, I really did try but I couldn’t find the gumption to like my Grade 6 teacher. Perhaps, he was because my first all male only teacher? Or was it that I was lost in a boy’s body being flooded with hormones of puberty setting in prematurely? Or was it that this man was a grumpy, frumpy and dumpy older gentleman? As much as I would like to say I tried to like him, I have to be honest, I wasn’t feeling it. Maybe this was his way of preparing us for junior high school but I felt he chose teaching as a career for the summer vacation benefit and not the desire to impact the lives of youth.

I remember my reading and language skills were beyond my Grade 6 level but my mathematics skills further struggled with summer slide and were still not quite at grade level. Fractions, decimals and percentages continue to frustrate me since introduced to them in Grade 5 and just never seemed to resolve itself in Grade 6. I was hoping to have mastered these skills prior to exiting elementary school. Yet, knowing my history with math, it just wasn’t happening with a teacher who was less than interested in teaching than I was willing to learn.

Around January, or middle of the year, progress notes came out.

“Robert’s attitude had turn down and he seems to trying somewhat in correct it. Something seems to be bothering him.”

Again, either my shyness or embarrassment prevented me reaching out for extra help in my weak subject, mathematics. A good teacher would have picked up on my struggles rather than pointing out on a progress report something appears to be affecting me. Or even worse was when he wrote,

“If Robert tried harder, I can only see growth, but until he tries harder there will be no growth.”

For the very first time in my young academic career, I dreaded going to school. The only thing I looked forward to was enrichment or recess and even classwork or group work so I didn’t have to listen to this man’s voice. Recess was still twice a day albeit for less time and we picked our own enrichment classes. The focus was to prepare us for junior high school. Recess was a time for me to release my frustrations through temporarily escaping this academic nightmare. Lunch and recess provided time to chat with my friends from Kindergarten, Kellie and Troy without being embarrassed when I was reminded not to talk in class. If it weren’t for my friends and the non-academic and extracurricular activities I was involved in, I am not sure I would have survived this teacher and Grade 6.

And There Were a Few Others...
Although I shared all my academic teachers, I overlooked the other teachers and staff who made Elliott Elementary School a memorable experience. I didn’t get to know these people as well as I did my academic teachers, yet they deserve accolades as they were worth more than just an acknowledgment for remembering their kindness and lessons learned from them. Some deserved a little more as they too, left a memory worth remembering.

Both Mrs. Trains, who had the perfect name for both strings and brass music enrichment and Mrs. Chartrand for vocal music and chorus helped each student find their musical talent. Yet, both these teachers patiently taught those of us who realized early on lacked any and all musical talent whatsoever; whether an instrument or in my voice. Mrs. Chartrand’s beautiful voice led us in seasonal, patriotic and current popular songs and taught us how to stay in tune and on note and the importance of how and why lyrics were sung a certain way. Mrs. Trains us in proper form and key with our instruments and taught us how to “play on key”, whatever that meant. All of us had an important part in the fall, winter and spring recitals and concerts despite all of us having varying different talent and aptitudes. Both ladies found our gifted talents or found ways to bring out a hidden talent. From both, I gained an appreciation for various genres of both vocal and instrumental music from classical to early 1980s rock and roll.

Lunch time was a time to swap something from your own lunch with something from a friend’s lunch or those who had school lunch would try to bargain away their lunch from the brown-baggers. Those who bought school lunch often were from dual working parents or single family homes were always excited to see what us brown-baggers brought from our ethnic kitchens. Our cafeteria lady, Mrs. Stopchinski not only served those who brought lunch but served those who bought milk and treats through the lunch line. She also served the refreshments during our after-school movie days and our various family events. Starting in Grade 4, one boy and one girl was chosen each day to be the cafeteria helper. As the cafeteria helper you got to put on a kid’s apron, put on gloves and help Mrs. Stopchinski by putting milk, fruit and dessert on the food trays for those buying lunch. My friends and I got to know Mrs. Stopchinski by becoming her cafeteria helper or when she served hot chocolate when we came in from our safety patrol duty on those cold winter cold mornings. Without fail, she greeted each of us by name and a smile every day.

Mrs. Anderson taught Grade 3 and was also the enrichment teacher of student council. I was the classroom representative for student council. My involvement with student council taught me public speaking, compromising and debating skills as well as a love of learning about our American government. This contributed to my lifelong love of studying government and history.

Mr. Alan, the custodian, came into my class one afternoon and recruited a small group of us to help him the next morning fifteen minutes before school started. He was going to teach us how to properly unfold and raise our American flag proudly before morning announcements, pledge and our daily song. He dutifully shared the story of why we pay high respect to what our flag represents. Then prior to afternoon dismissal we met up again and he then taught us how to properly lower flag down with care and to fold it properly for the next morning’s crew. Mr. Alan also taught us to be mindful and respectful of keeping our school clean. He taught by example and made sure we took ownership of picking up trash and disposing of it properly, wiping down our tables after lunch and keeping our restrooms clean of trash. I imagine he must have been in the military at one point in his life as he was a stickler for order, cleanliness and neatness, most things ten year-old boys may have heard of but are rarely made up of.

Lastly, there were those despite not remembering their names contributed to making our school an extended part of our community. Although I know we had art class and gym class, I cannot recall the name of various teachers throughout the years but do remember enjoying participating in both extracurricular activities. In art, I remember the exciting projects we would create with all sorts of supplies and mediums. We could only wish to replicate these projects outside of the classroom as we never seen those supplies outside of the classroom.

Gym class we learned about different foods and how they serve as fuel for our bodies. We were told eating good food makes our bodies perform better and if we ate junk food both our brain and bodies would not function as well. We learned to play various team sports and on occasion played a good game of dodgeball or red rover. As the warmth of spring brought us out of the dark cold winters of Michigan, our gym class spent more time outdoors. We ended up having outdoor field days and color wars where we competed with our classmates in the same grade but with a different teacher and the winning class by grade level had a much-coveted tacky trophy prize to hold on to until the next match. The highlight of art class was the fall and spring art shows where our families came to the school and our gymnasium was setup to be an art gallery for the evening.

Mrs. Roach, a heavier set woman whose presence was always known as wherever she walked, she left a trail of her flowery scented perfume. Her distinct perfume would linger for a short time even after leaving a room. I am not sure what she did at the school but she was the personification of the cliché, albeit in female gender, “jack of all trades – master at none” as I remember having vision and hearing checks, height and weight checks with her while other selected students would also be picked up from their classrooms for different activities.

From the very first time I stepped into the school’s library to this day, the smell of a freshly opened book always brings me to my happy place. It my escape from reality, from my days of looking through picture books to present day chapter books, it allowed me to escape to an author’s realm and let my imagination paint the pictures and let the words tell the stories. I am not sure what grade level, but I remember joining the Elliott Bookbaggers, the forerunner of an elementary school based book club where we would read a book selected by Mrs. Drury, the librarian and then have an assignment and discussion about them. Being an advanced grade level reader, I believe this was a way to keep my interest in reading because the window in my classroom attracted my attention more than my grade-level readers.

Lastly, Dr. Albert A. Ward, our principal, was a tall, long-limbed man always well-dressed in a suit and polished shoes. His name still brings a childhood giggle as reminiscing at award assemblies he would be the emcee and signed our awards as Dr. A Ward – get it? Dr. Award. I digress, quite, juvenile humor, but no doubt still makes me giggle and reflect back at what a great experience I had at Elliott Elementary School. Just as we all knew him, he somehow knew all of us with his genuine warm greetings in the morning and reminding us as he would say,

“Be on your best behavior and remember to be upstanding citizens and scholars as you represent your families, your school and your teachers.”

This may not have been the exact quote he said, but in my years operating school-age child care programs, I had this quote posted at my sites and in my office.

His impressive presence at assemblies as emcee and when you heard his thundering deep voice call your name to the front of the audience to receive your award for your academic achievement, you could not feel but proud and honored to have Dr. Ward shake your hand and recognize you in front of your class and peers.

Under his guidance and leadership, the school was a symphony with every staff member, teacher and student having an important, key part of a well-tuned orchestra. With the exception of Grade 2 and Grade 6, all my teachers were outstanding. The exception was Mrs. Bowling who stood feet above the rest despite her short stature in so many unforgettable ways. As I got older, it became clear to me it’s how they answered the calling which made my elementary school years so memorable and time to move on to the second half of my public school years.

… déjà vu …

To be continued…

 

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