Confessions

If you want to know how this series of posts got started, read here.

1989-1990

Second grade deserves a post all of its' own. After all, it is the year my family moved from California to France!

It was Year One on the mission field for us: Language School. We lived in a sort of compound with all the other families who were learning French for missionary work. While the grown-ups were sweating it out, learning to be fluent in a second language, my siblings and I (along with all the other kids on the compound) were sent to the local public school.

In the mornings, we gathered in a special classroom where we were explicitly taught French. My teacher knew precisely two words in English: "shut" and "up". I wish to goodness I remembered how they taught us French. I vaguely remember picture slides of various scenes, then the teacher telling us stories about the slides. Then we wrote the stories down in a notebook.

In the early days, I remember playing outside at recess and trying to have a conversation with some French girls. I was getting increasingly frustrated because I didn't know how to say a specific word. My friends were being so helpful: guessing random words and asking me "Is it this? This? This? This?" Not surprisingly, they never did figure it out.

In the afternoons, we were mainstreamed into the regular French classrooms for math. Because, duh, everyone speaks numbers and there surely isn't any need to understand the words around the numbers. I was confused and embarrassed when the teacher jumped right into subtraction WITH BORROWING. And I had never seen that before and had no concept of what the heck borrowing was. And since they do their math all funny in France, it wasn't until I was in the States for college that I understood about hundreds, tens, and ones.

COLLEGE.

But I survived the trauma and I magically spoke French pretty fluently by the end of that school year. In fact, it had become so natural to speak it that I would start using it around the house with my sister and brother. Sometimes it would be come "Frenglish".

My parents tried to outlaw French at home.... they claimed they were worried we would lose our English. But I think maybe they were just jealous of our flawless accents!

What do you remember from second grade?

I've decided that since my kids aren't drawing cat pee this week, and in absence of any other shenanigans by colleagues or administration, I would revisit some of my own school memories. I'll add to this collection whenever my kids stop saying and doing funny things (hello, don't they know I have a blog to write?)

1986-1989 at a private, Christian school in California

Preschool: this one's easy. I don't remember anything about it. Not my teacher's name, not what my classroom looked like, and not one other person in my class. But I know I did go, because my mom told me I did, and she wouldn't lie. Would she?

Kindergarten: The coolest thing about Kindergarten was that it was connected via a bathroom to the first grade room. I used to "have to go to the bathroom", just so I could open the adjoining door a crack and spy on the big kids. I was so impressed by them!

I also remember writing on those sheets of paper with big handwriting lines. I would get near the end of the line and start to panic because I wasn't finished writing my word. "No worries!" my teacher would say: "Just write smaller so it will fit!"

Write smaller?? BUT HOW?!? This was a frustrating mystery to me. I almost quit school forever.

First grade: Thankfully I persevered through the Small Writing Dilemma and got to the first grade. The most salient memory I have is standing by my chair and sobbing uncontrollably because my white Elmer's glue had spilled inside my desk and had covered everything. The teacher had to bring my stuff to the sink and clean it all up. While everyone was watching. And I stood there crying.

It was my most embarrassing moment for a long time: I wanted to run away and go to a different school just to save face.

Luckily, my parents let me do just that when we moved to France the following year.

What fun memories do you have of Kindergarten and first grade?