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Fifth grade was different in many ways. First, we were deemed 'the
other' classroom and were placed in the storage room area above the
art building. All the boxes from the year before had been moved out
of the space to reveal it to be in an 'L' shape. Given that the
space hadn't been intended to be a classroom, our desks were lined up
backing the walls, facing the center space of the 'L' which remained
open. The short end of the 'L' had a chalk board like square, though
it seems to me now it was more of a cork board than a writable space.
One side of the outside corner of the 'L' held the true chalk board
so students from either side of the 'L' could see it, though the
students against the same wall as the board could only crane their
necks to see the board from the edge. Often they would stand away
from their desks a little to get a better view, then return to their
desks for assignments.
Children's Scrabble pull-out was a thing of the past, at least
for me, and unlike the previous year where the teacher had been
strict but predictable, this time we got a guy teacher who was more
haphazard and spur of the moment. Having a male teacher was novel
and one who was more playful than authoritarian seemed a welcomed
change. But after the first month it became clear that his lack of
structure meant that one's success was more judged by his whim or
mood, rather than classwork performance.
As writing by hand had become more difficult and painful for me as we
transitioned from larger two line print of the early grades to the
smaller one line print required for third and fourth grades, fifth
grade introduced Script hand writing. Where my hand
would get micro breaks between each letter with print, with scripted
writing ''it was so much easier'' as you didn't have to lift your
pencil until each word was done. But for me this meant rather than
reaching writer's cramp by the end of the first paragraph I was now
there by the end of the first sentence. This was compounded by the
fact that scripted handwriting was naturally less clear than print,
thus one was to be extra diligent to make each scripted letter
perfectly.
To make matters worse, after the first month of class the teacher
came-up with a new concept assignment. Each day after recess we were
to return to class and write a journal of our lives, in script.
We were to detail our home lives and we were to make them ''good''
entries. These sessions were about thirty-five minutes and he would
then collect some of the students' journals to read through during
afternoon assignments. At the end of the day, he would make named
examples of our input by either saying they were not interesting
enough or they were well detailed and engaging. In my case, given
that I'd rarely make it beyond a few paragraphs each session, I was
deemed to just not be trying hard enough. By the second month of
this, a rumor started to make its way through the classroom that he
had gotten in trouble once the news of this assignment had reached
some of the parents.
Unlike a 'write what you did during Summer vacation' assignment, by
insisting on a detailed recounting of each day of home life, the
assignment had been deemed voyeuristic by some parents and this had
been brought to the attention of the Principal. While never
officially told this by the teacher, the assignment had become
voluntary. The teacher could have had us write about something else
each day during that time other than our daily lives but he wasn't
interested in that, so those students who found out, such as myself,
would instead use the time to get a head start on homework
assignments. This resulted in a little blow back by the teacher
where it was found that students still doing the journal entries
received slightly higher grades on tests than students who were no
longer participating. Thus a 'B' would become a 'B+' for the same
number of correct answers for a still journaling student. When this
variation was brought openly to the teacher's attention in class, he
marked down the better student's score because 'she had allowed
others to see her grade'. By the end of the calendar year, all but a
couple of students were using the time for homework and he scrapped
the journal concept when we returned from Christmas break.
Also with the new calendar year, I seemed to have a target on my
back. He would play this trick where, after calling class done at
the end of the day, he would ask me to stay for a moment just to
chat. About what, he was not clear, and after he saw the school
buses leaving the yard, he would lose interest and say I could go.
Effectively,
meaning I could
walk home. On the
second time he did this I kept my own eye on the buses and when it
looked like they were ready to leave, I left despite his protests
that I stay just a little longer even though, as before, he seemed to
have nothing in particular he wanted to talk about. This time I
caught the bus just as it was reaching the stop before it entered the
street and I was able to board. He tried a few more times to insist
I stay for a bit after class just to chat, but I figured once the
class day was over he no longer had any authority.
My scripted handwriting samples were not good enough and so recess
was no longer an option for me. Instead, I was to spend my future
recesses in the classroom by myself redoing my scripted writing
sample pages. As always it would start out fine for the first line,
then my hand and fingers would start to seize-up and smoothness of
the loops would be lacking. After the first week of this, without
anyone else in the classroom to see, it occurred to me to use my
other hand to steady the finger tips of my writing hand. This helped
the quality of the letters quite a bit, though the pain was just as
bad. With this, fewer script sample pages needed to be redone, but
recess was still not an option, so I would spend the rest of my time
alone in the classroom just to look around while my hand rested.
Sometimes the art room in the bottom floor of the building would be
empty and I would roam through it seeing what the students of other
grades had been up to.
One of our course focuses was on the art of the ancient
civilizations. We started out with Egyptian art then moved on to
Greek art, part of these topics meant we were to mimic their artwork
in drawing. Surprisingly, at least to me, I excelled at this as
drawing with straight lines and large curves didn't hurt much at all.
In fact my drawing output was deemed so good that a couple other
students asked if I could do their drawing homework for them. I was
happy to oblige as, surprisingly, it didn't hurt! Once
I was all caught up with drawing assignments, I came up with drawing
tasks of my own. I made many, many drawings of the Star Ship
Enterprise and even copied some panels out of my comic books. Then
one day I decided to draw something original... And was
completely stumped. Copying other images? No problem.
Coming up with images in my imagination to draw was more blank
than the page in front of me. Still, this experience left me with a
strange bug where I would marvel at artists coming up with new
artwork in their mind and watching them create it. While I could
copy, I just couldn't come up with anything on my own, so I would
watch with giddy fascination as others did it. Bob Ross's public
television show became a particular guilty pleasure of mine...
But Egyptian versus Greek art was more than just drawing assignments,
it was also the teacher explaining to us how Egyptian art wasn't
good because of its primitive style versus the good Greek
art because it was so realistic. Some of us found this black and
white comparison a bit too strict and one student spoke up saying
that he preferred the Egyptian art over the Greek artwork because it
did have some style to it, rather than being just perfect
reproductions of life. The teacher explained to him that he was
wrong, leading to a brief class discussion of how someone's
preference for a style of art could be wrong, but it
was put to an end by him assuring us that it was. At least he
didn't label the Egyptian art as being degenerate. Oddly enough, he
later lead us into a discussion of what selfishness was, he started
out by asking for examples and one student offered someone liking
vanilla ice cream so much that they would hoard it and not let other
people have it. ''Wrong,'' he said, selfishness was liking chocolate
ice cream so much that you demand everyone must have it. That was
what selfishness truly was. I found this an interesting view on his
part as he wanted everyone to agree that his opinion was always the
right one and we must all have it.
Toward the end of the school year the teacher brought in a book
explaining what peoples' first names meant. He had us all sit down
on the floor in the open corner of the 'L' while he pulled up a chair
in front of us and had us each ask what our name meant. By this
point in the year, I'd gotten tired of dealing with him and would no
longer participate beyond doing tests and assignments, but was
otherwise just waiting out the final month. He had started out by
having those interested raise their hands and ask what their name
meant. He would then look through the book, find their name, and
tell them. After the majority of the class had asked, he kept on
prompting the rest of us to ask what our name meant. Eventually, one
by one the remaining holdouts asked about their name. I didn't.
But apparently he was keeping track and kept on asking if there was
anyone one else, again and again. Finally one of the other students
put two and two together and raised her hand and asked what my name
meant.
For this, the teacher closed the book and explained
that my name came from my Indian tribal background and it was the
name of my tribe. And my people would run around the woods wearing
only little loincloth skins and hung from the trees making repetitive
grunting noises like apes because we didn't know how to talk
properly.
I admired his skill at combining my mixed race background with my
stuttering problem into a cohesive, unified, put
down which made all the kids laugh. This is once again
where I get to point out how great my elementary school classmates
were as, while they laughed when he told the story, they never
brought it up again or used it to make fun of me, just like they
hadn't with the first grade incident, or my stuttering during those
years in between. This would change by Middle School and High School
as more kids from other towns came into the mix.
By the end of fifth grade, I was glad to be through with my one
and only male elementary school teacher and I would never see him
again. As it turned out, the administration didn't feel he was a
good fit as an elementary school teacher either and reassigned him to
be the English teacher for sixth grade.
Oh, well.
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