Hi, friends! I’m very excited to continue my “School Days” series by recounting some of my memories from third, fourth, and fifth grade. I had so many memories to share here! I went to three different schools, had five different teachers (and two student teachers!), participated in some new extracurriculars, and also experienced my parents’ separation. A lot happened!
THIRD GRADE (1996 – 1997)
- One of the cutest things my school did was have a little post office. Kids from all grades could drop off letters to their friends and then the “postal workers” would deliver the letters on a random afternoon. The third graders were the postal workers and I was so excited when my time came to be a postal worker. I had so much fun sorting the mail, accepting the mail, and delivering the letters throughout the school. So. Much. Fun.
- In second grade, our school did a school-wide spelling bee. (I forgot to mention this in my first School Days post!) I ended up in 4th place out of all the second graders (the word I lost on: cousin) and my brother placed 1st out of all the third graders (a feat he never ceases to remind me of. I believe the word he won on was Zurich.) Well, throughout all of third grade, my mom made my brother and I practice our spelling words every single day. She had a whole notebook filled with spelling words, what words we needed to practice, etc. Our school did not hold a spelling bee that year. !!! Mom has never lived this down with us.
- One of my classmates lost his mother during third grade. I still remember his name and how horrified I was that his mom died. He was so young! I couldn’t imagine losing my mom so young.
- For a period of time, there was an additional music extracurricular: learning how to play the recorder. I begged and begged my parents to buy me a recorder and let me join this new extracurricular, and they finally acquiesced. I went to 2, maybe 3, lessons before abandoning the practice. Sorry, Mom and Dad! Nowadays, kids can learn songs through watching Kids youtube.
- I participated in a talent show this year with a few friends. I honestly cannot remember what our talent was. I think we did a really bad dance routine to the Spice Girls. A much better trio of dancers won the talent show.
- We moved to a new apartment this year. It had three bedrooms, so my brother and I finally didn’t have to share a room. I think of this apartment fondly! One day during the summer while my brother and I were playing together, there was a call on our landline and my brother picked it up. When he hung up, I asked him, “Who was that, Chuck, Muck, or Fuck?” I did not mean to rhyme my dad’s friend Chuck with the f-word and I was horrified with myself. My brother held this over me for yeaaaaars. We still laugh about it today, and my mom is always like, “What did you think would happen if you told us this story?!”
FOURTH GRADE (1997-1998)
- I was at a new school in fourth grade. Actually, I went back to the school I was at in kindergarten and first grade. Like previous years, I had one teacher for language arts/writing and another one for math/science. I do not remember their names, but I had language arts/writing in the morning and math/science in the afternoon.
- Every month, we had a different project to complete. I only remember some of the projects (probably because my mom did most of the work). For one project, we had to create a foam doll that resembled someone from history. I think I chose Clara Barton. For another, we had to do a whole report on one state, and I chose Ohio since that’s where my dad was from.
- I was in the school play this year! It was a play involving a pet store and I was a fish. I even had a solo in the play and I still remember the opening lines I had to sing. When I told my mom that I was cast in the play, she didn’t seem all too excited but I later learned she was worried about the cost of getting my costume together. (Understandable!) In the end, I wore an orange shirt, orange shorts, and orange tights, lol. The other fish in our cast just wore swim shorts and one of those towels that goes over your head and had shark fins on it. How do you even make a fish costume in the age before Pinterest?! (I do want to say that my mom and dad were front and center in the audience during the play, so she was very excited for me to be in the play, just worried about the expense.)
- As I mentioned, I had one teacher (and classroom) for language arts/writing and another teacher (and classroom) for math/science. These classrooms were right next to each other, separated by a heavy, movable wall. After lunch every day, the wall would be pushed back and one of the teachers would stand in the middle of the two classrooms and read a few chapters from a book. I loved this so much! I remember that we read a lot of Roald Dahl during these after-lunch read-alouds.
- I was a cheerleader this year! My mom enrolled both my brother and me in a nearby youth football/cheerleading league, and I had so much fun. But oh my god, what a time commitment! We had practice four days a week and then games on Saturdays. Our cheerleading program went to competition after the football season was over, and we placed third in both competitions, which was exciting! I remember those competitions so well because we practiced so much and then got to have a sleepover at this really, really fancy house where we ate pizza and got our hair done up in these foam rollers that we had to sleep in overnight. The house belonged to one of the cheerleaders in our program and she had a fricken balcony outside her room. I was convinced she was a princess.
- We had student teachers this year, a male teacher and a female teacher. I had the biggest crush on the male teacher (all of us girls did! A twenty-something guy teaching a bunch of 10-year-olds? Lawdy.) and I thought the female teacher was so cool. I wanted to be just like her when I grew up! I have this very distinct memory of her walking into the cafeteria one afternoon to pick us up from lunch; she was wearing sunglasses and just looked so damn cool. I imagined she spent her lunch break with friends she knew off-campus and was so very jealous. (Hindsight: She likely spent her lunch break trying to eat as fast as she could while doing a million other things.)
FIFTH GRADE (1998-1999)
- I attended a new school for fifth grade and my teacher this year, Mrs. Chapman, was my favorite teacher ever. She was so fun and personable and wise and kind. I loved her so much that when I had to do some volunteer hours at a school during college, I volunteered in her classroom.
- All of the fifth graders in my school district had to participate in an economic educational program called Enterprise Village. We spent a few weeks in the classroom learning economic concepts like balancing a checkbook, applying for jobs, learning different concepts of a business environment, etc. Then, we went to Enterprise Village where we got to “work” for one day. Enterprise Village is set up similarly to a shopping mall with tons of different businesses: McDonald’s, Time Warner, the Bucs, etc. Every kid was given a business and a job. I was given the job as bookkeeper at McDonald’s, which meant I spent much of my day crunching numbers (go figure). It was such a fun day and my mom was a chaperone, although she was helping out at a different business so I didn’t see her much!
- I was excited to be a school patrol this year. Since I was new to the school, I didn’t know if I was going to get to be a patrol (something I had wanted for years) as patrols are usually selected at the end of fourth grade but I was added to the team a few weeks into the year. It was so exciting! I loved being able to get out of class a little early and basically just hang out with my friends.
- My parents officially separated this year. My mom, my brother, and I moved in with my grandparents. It was a tight fit as my uncle and his twin daughters (who were 3 at the time) were also living with them. My mom and brother had beds in the sunroom/office while we squeezed my bed in between the twins’ beds in their room. I continued to attend the same elementary school and my brother continued to attend the same middle school, but my mom would make the long trek to our bus stop every morning to drop us off. My paternal grandma moved in with my dad who was living in our old home, and she would “watch” us until my mom could pick us up after school. (We didn’t really need a babysitter at this time, but I was home a little earlier than my brother and my mom didn’t want me to be alone.) It was quite a crazy arrangement!
- We had to put together a “yearbook” for our fifth-grade class, as a sort of send-off to middle school. In the yearbook, we all listed out where we wanted to be in 20 years. Here’s what I said, “I will be a vet and I will have four daughters named April, May, Taylor, and Morgan.” DEAR GOD.
- I had my first real anxiety spiral this year, which showed up in some, erm, digestive issues. We were doing standardized testing and I just got so nervous about testing well and doing my best that I started getting really anxious about everything. When the testing was over, I had my mom pick me up from school because things were getting uncomfortable. Poor baby Steph!
Tell me a memory you have of your late elementary school years!