I remember my first school with surprising clarity albeit that I was only there for less than 2 years. I remember a few incidences that happened while I was there, none least than falling off the brick stair wall flat onto my face and causing a real mess with busted teeth , blood everywhere, and after calling for my mother, the teacher trying to calm me down by feeding me Jelly beans..go figure? I attended many schools during my childhood in several cities but this one was my first......you can see the stairs and the wall in the picture where I fell..at only 6 years old it was very high!!. It's funny to think that, that building is where I learned to read & write.. 57 years ago... Apparently it was demolished in '97.... Do you remember your first school, and is it still standing?
Both my first and second school were one room buildings. Kindergarten was one then the second was 1st and 2nd graders combined and the teacher was Mrs. Neely. I really do not think that the buildings still exist because they were already old when I attended. (as was Mrs. Neely). I did like the combined classes however. I was able to glean knowledge focused on the second graders which gave me a jump when I hit 2nd and 3rd grades.
Yes, I remember lots of details. First became some sort of county government building, and in 2014 apparently became a private school. The only things that have changed outside are new windows and that ugly red thing out front.
I attended the same school for 12 years. First it was 1-12 grades. When I graduated from 6th grade, they lopped off grades 1-6. After I graduated from 8th grade, they dropped grades 7 and 8. When I graduated from high school, they moved to a new campus and made the old campus a junior high school. I always said that after I was gone, there was no need for those grades...…..LOL. Now the campus is a "university high school" where students graduate with an Associate of Arts Degree from a highly-respected liberal arts university in the state. Sure wish they had had that when I was there.
This junior high is the first and virtually only one I attended from 1st grade to almost the end, thus becoming functionally literate. It took me just 6 minutes in the morning to get there. Because the school became crowded, last year students had to go to another one which was farther away. So I had to attend the other one in my last year which was newly built at that time. Since I feel a need to get back to my roots I visit the area where I grew up regularly. The pics show the school with the repaint when it was being completely refurbished a few years ago. I remember it fondly. Just found this one: Ready for the first day.
A lot of us must have been a part of the baby boom generation, when the schools became suddenly overcrowded, and they scrambled trying to put us somewhere. Sounds a little like @Mary Robi 's experience? Did any of you have that situation? In 3rd grade they put us in the gymnasium with another class and a temporary wall between. In the 6th grade we were put in the bus garage with only a space heater. In 12th grade, all .the seniors (about 200) were together for home room, in the cafeteria. It was all fun to me. Something different.
I didn't take the pic , it was on a forum where people had attended the same school from as early as 1940's..through to the end!! I believe the picture was taken not long before it was demolished. ETA... as the school is in anther country to where I live now, I never saw it after I left as an infant, and we moved to yet another city, and then ultimately to another country
I know some of the schools I attended are still standing--the ones later in my "career". I went to kindergarten in a rescue squad/ambulance garage, and I attended 1st and 2nd grade in a school apparently built on an old landfill or something. The schools I attended for 3rd and 4th grades (two different places) are gone I think. Later elementary schools and Junior High and High School are still standing, though much changed from when I went there.
The school I mentioned earlier started out with three building huddled around the campus, the old elementary school that was the original high school (built back in the early 20's), the "new" high school building ( early 40's) and a condemned building (built sometime during the Jurassic Period). When they lopped off the elementary school classes, they moved us into the condemned building for 7th and 8th grade. It was absolutely decrepit and I'm surprised it didn't fall down on us and kill us all. We had to go to lunch at the high school building. The basement gym was frequently under water and the auditorium had missing floorboards and couldn't be used. We had to go to lunch over at the high school building. Elementary school had its own cafeteria down in the dark, dank basement, with the scary "lunch ladies" and grim food to match. And you sat at the table and ate it...….or you sat at the table until you ate But eat it, you did...…. It was a rare day somebody didn't upchuck or cry. By the time I hit high school, they had built an "annex" that was combination shop classes and cafeteria (where everything smelled like machine oil but they didn't care what you ate or even if you ate) and a "science building" (where everything smelled like formaldehyde). The main building had three floors and there was an UP staircase and a DOWN staircase and heaven help the student who got caught going in the wrong direction. Of course there was no elevator, but that didn't stop the seniors from trying to sell "elevator passes" to new freshmen.
yes @Mary Robi ...we too had the scary ''dinner ladies''...not in that school mentioned above, as I didn't stay for lunch as I lived only 5 minutes away, but in later primary schools, it was exactly as you describe, with kids forced to eat food they actively disliked until they were in tears, or puking... I have always hated tapioca , and sago pudding all my life because of those women forcing me to sit through the whole lunch break eating it, while everyone else played outside.. ,..
I started out in a tiny one-room school in Sandpoint. It was a Seventh Day Adventist school, and since there were not very many pupils, it went at least from 1-6th grade, and maybe to 8th grade. I don’t remember anymore. In those days, school started right after Labor Day weekend (first Monday in September was Labor Day), and we had gone fishing that weekend, and I think I stepped on a rusty nail. Anyway, my foot was in no condition for me to walk to school for at least a week, and by then, the public school didn’t want to let me start, so my parents put me in the SDA school. It was only a few blocks from our house, so my mom let me walk, as long as I was accompanied by the older girls who also went to that school. I went there for 1-2nd grade, and then they moved the school into the basement of the SDA church, and we had a few more people; So we had 2 rooms for the school. Grades 1-4 were in one room, and 5-8 were in the other room. By 5th grade, we had a new teacher who decided to combines classes, and since there were only 2 of us in 5th grade, he just skipped us right into 6th grade. There was a lot of background, especially in Math, that I had not learned, that we should have learned in 5th grade, so both myself, and the other pupil went from top grades to failing. When my mother asked what was wrong, and I told her we were getting 6th grade books, she said that couldn’t be happening, but I showed her my school books with the 6 stars on the binding. The teacher was adamant that he was not going to do it differently, so both Leslie and I ended up switching to public school in the middle of 5th grade. This school was one of the old square brick school buildings that were popular back then, and we actually had hot lunches, which was a new thing for me. The little school where I started first grade has long since been torn down and replaced, as has the church. The old Lincoln school is still standing (at least it was the last I knew); but I don’t think it is being used for anything anymore. Here is a picture of it, looking bereft and neglected. This picture is me (left) with Ann and Nyla, the two neighbor girls (see the lunch pails) getting ready to walk to school on a winter morning.