Oh, Yes: Classes!

28

For me, sixth grade was an eye opener. Not for what was taught during the year, but for how it was taught. Gone were the box like desks and the separate chairs of Elementary School, instead to be replaced by chairs with built-in, right handed only, writing surfaces. But gone too was 'script' writing, we could now chose between longhand or print for our assignments and I never looked back. Homeroom was with the 'Social Studies' teacher, he remembered my not as older brother fondly and had high hopes for me. He would be disappointed.

I, too, was disappointed. Returning to school was going to be the first chance to see my friends since the end of fifth grade and, as luck would have it, none of them were in the same homeroom as I. Once classes started, I might see one or two in the same class, but that only left enough time to say 'Hi' before settling down as it started. It wasn't until lunch that we gathered for the first time to chat. It was cordial, but Pete seemed a bit distant. I would later find out that Pete had befriended an upperclassman and they had become the new best friends. If he was going to impress his new friend, letting him know he hung-out with a stuttering half-breed wasn't going to help. Jonathan, I had in math class, but as it had assigned seating I wasn't going to have much of a chance to visit with him.

So in the study hall time after lunch, in my homeroom, I decided I should try to make friends with some of the many new faces that had joined sixth grade... I would try to introduce myself but my stuttering would be the first impression I would give. This problem continued into my adult years at job interviews. Can you imagine how many call backs I got?

Still, I succeeded in befriending a kid named Mathew in 'Social Studies' class and since there wasn't assigned seating, we chose to sit next to each other at the back of the room. We spent the entire first quarter of the class visiting amongst ourselves and ignoring the class. This didn't make a good impression on the teacher and by the second quarter he had implemented assigned seating. Though no longer able to visit and thus my time undivided for class, the teacher still found me wanting and later in the year decided to assign my seat to sit before a kid with a known history of jabbing pencils into people's backs. Needless to say, that's what happened and the teacher wasn't interested in any complaints so I started to take up sitting sideways as I could keep my left hand ready to deflect any sudden pencil jabs. That, too, wasn't allowed by the teacher and I got to spend the next few days having to face forward while pencil tips were piercing my back. Then it occurred to me to try to befriend the kid with the pencils during non-class time and, sure enough, once we had a bit of a rapport going he was no longer driving pencils into my back.

The teacher noticed this within a couple weeks and promptly reassigned my seat despite the fact that we were in the middle of the quarter. Just my seat was changed with another unsuspecting student and I was now in the front row of the class. When it came to tests I always did well unless there was a question requiring a few paragraphs of discussion; then, with my hand writing problems, I'd keep those answers as brief as possible resulting in only partial credit for the answers. As my noggin seemed to soak-up class lectures and reading materials well, I didn't bother to take notes except for the occasional spelling of a historical name or the notation of a full date. Apparently that wasn't enough note taking for the social studies teacher.

One day, while he was pacing the front of the classroom as I watched him lecture, he walked up toward my desk and then suddenly lashed out his foot and kicked me and the desk to the side! Stunned, I just stayed there like that as the teacher continued lecturing as if nothing had happened. But now all the students were paying attention to me and not to him, so he ordered me to get up and right my desk. I did. From that point forward I paid less attention to his lecturing and more attention to his foot.

'Reading' class was simply a find a book to read and read it study hall followed by a one page hand written summary of the book to be turned into the teacher once you were done. The books you could read were based on those she had in the bookshelves of her classroom and only reading three books was required each quarter... I could read faster than that. By the end of the first quarter I realized that our class score was based on how many books we read in a quarter so from that point on I focused on the shorter books available and ended up with one of the highest grades for the class that school year.

For 'Science' class, I was sure I was doomed from the outset. The teacher explained her requirements and grading scheme quite clearly: We were to hand copy each chapter into our notebooks and that would comprise a third of our grade. Tests would comprise half our grade with lab work participation accounting for the rest.

Unlike previous science instruction in Elementary School, this science class was going to have 'hands on' experimentation and I was thrilled... But the copying of the chapters? Still, I gave it a try for the first two chapters. Effectively, she was going through one chapter each week and she would allow us twenty minutes classroom time to start coping the chapters, then we were to finish on our own time. I found that if I did no other homework but transcribing the chapters of the science book, I could do it using my two handed writing method in the privacy of my home; that was the method where I'd use the fingers of one hand to help steady the painful trembling fingers of the writing hand. But doing the science chapters only also meant doing no writing-based homework for any other class. I 'did the math' and realized that if I skipped transcribing the science chapters all together and focused on getting great test scores and correctly performing the lab work, I'd have a passing grade... Just barely.

And so it was a choice I made to insure I had a fighting chance to do the writing homework needed for all the other classes of sixth grade. The first week I turned in my notebook for her to confirm I'd copied the first chapter. The second week I turned in my notebook but forewarned her I'd only gotten two thirds done. For all other chapters, I flat out told her I didn't copy them and by the end of the first quarter she stopped asking. For the twenty minutes we had in class to start copying the chapters, I used that time for math homework, or finishing up reports for 'English' class or 'Social Studies'.

There was fall-out from this. Whereas the science mod I was assigned to the first quarter had my friend Jonathan in it as my lab partner, by the second quarter I found my science and reading mods had been swapped. As the same teachers taught the same subjects through the day at the same quarterly pace, we students could be swapped around which mod we were in and still have the same teacher, just different classmates. 'Reading', as it was solitary work, was the easiest to accommodate when other teachers wanted to swap a student between mods and thus I found myself with different 'Science' classmates for the second quarter. These were the science students that needed more attention, in reality the teacher just lectured in a louder voice. Though it made no difference as far as my boycott of copying chapters, it gave me a new lab partner who would become a new friend as well, 'Tim'.

Still, for the final quarter the science teacher again had me transferred to a different mod which was for her 'problem kids'. These were the behavior kids who just didn't give a rat's ass about science class. The class structure was slightly different too as she allowed more time for chapter copying in class, about thirty minutes instead of twenty and less lab work. I took advantage of the extra time to copy the chapters by doing more of my 'English' and 'Social Studies' work in 'Science' class. But with fewer of us in this mod, the teacher would rove our desks to make sure we at least had the science book open and were copying the first sentence. This was when she noticed I wasn't and I learned about detention. But as I was a student that lived in a town twenty miles away, I could only be assigned detention once a week when there was a late bus to take me home. Still I learned my lesson and from that point forward I had the science book open and the first sentence copied in my notebook so when the teacher glanced she couldn't assign me detention, but once the first sentence was done, I'd stare out the classroom window until the thirty minutes to copy the chapter was over.

But the new science mod also provided other challenges. Being filled with the problem kids, this was the first time I was openly mocked by classmates for my stuttering. While the teacher would tell them to knock it off, it was after the mocking had occurred; there was never any forewarning not to mock me. Further, when I would get back the science tests with 'A's, the other students would make fun of me, once they noticed. When belittling me for my high test scores didn't work, one of the students started to grab my tests from me once they were returned and tear them up. I assume he thought this was punishment for me as I wouldn't be able to show-off the good grade to my parents when I got home. In reality, my parents hadn't taken any interest in my class work since the first grade night I had to learn my last name by copying it all night long, so the torn-up tests just became a few less pieces of paper for me to take home and throw away there. Given the fewer number of students in the room, there was enough lab equipment for us not to need lab partners, which was fine by me as having one of these kids as a partner would mean not being able to do the experiment. Still, the kids tried to harass me from doing the experiments, but the teacher would intervene, presumably to keep the equipment from being damaged. While the 'Science' teacher had spent the school year disappointed and frustrated with me, I feel that by the end of the school year, hovering around me that last quarter as I diligently did the lab work, she just ended up confused about me and to why I was refusing to copy the chapters. She never thought to ask.

'English' class was with my previous year's fifth grade teacher. He was much the same, though he focused less on getting after me given that he had so many more students to keep track off. There were three memorable bits I took from his class, two of them positive, and one of those two was happenstance.

Alone at the apartment that preceding Summer, other than the time I'd work at the tree house, I started my first book. Writing that is, not reading. Having been pondering why I couldn't come up with original drawings on my own, it occurred to me that I could think of original tales of people interacting. And so I started writing ''The Infinite Voyage'' about three astronauts on a one way journey through space. Each chapter was like a television episode where they would reach a new place and find a different problem to face. My not as older brother actually liked one of the chapters so much he made a drawing of a scene of it into the pages of the manuscript itself. While it hurt just as much to write it by hand as classwork had, I at least enjoyed the creation of each chapter as a consolation. I had hoped that with the practice of writing it during the Summer I would somehow get beyond the pain writing by hand caused. It didn't help.

As the former fifth grade teacher had been so hot on us writing journals the previous year, I decided to bring in my manuscript for him to read if he wanted. He did and to my surprise actually wrote some positive comments in the margins! But once I needed to ration out my writing by hand for class work, the book was put aside and forgotten. Eight years later I got inspired and wrote a short story using the same three characters, but it didn't revive my interest in the book itself.

One of the segments the English teacher decided to do for class was a review and discussion of the lyrics of some Beatles songs from the White album. A record I knew well, I thought I was going to like the segment, but once again it became a session of his requesting others of what they thought the lyrics meant so that he could then explain to them why they were wrong and the only correct interpretation was his own. He assured us that if we thought it through, we would realize that he was right about his interpretations. In some of them he was flat out wrong as I learned in later years when I heard or read about what the Beatles themselves said they meant by the songs.

As far as classwork assignments went, I did well on the tests again, but had to strategically pick and chose the take home, hand written, work I'd do. I did all the shorter assignments and would typically choose not to do a long one or two during a quarter. As the long ones' grades counted as much as the shorter ones, once averaged out I was a 'B' to 'C' student each quarter.

The final good thing I got from 'English' class that year was another new best friend. 'Brad' had been randomly assigned as my partner on a project and as we had to work on it with after class time, this meant spending time at each others homes. This turned into my best new friendship and I saw Brad often throughout the rest of that school year.

'Math' class: Much like 'Science' class the teacher explained expectations right up front. A self study class like 'Reading', we were to read each chapter of the math book and do all of the homework problems at the end of the chapter. Once she had confirmed that it all had been completed and done correctly, she would let us take the test on the chapter. Our grades would be based on the number of chapters we got through combined with our test scores for those chapters. The answers for the homework questions were available in the back of the book, so the only challenge to the class was understanding the concepts and doing every page of homework. By the second chapter I tried to bargain with the teacher about doing every single page of the hand written homework, but I was told there was no flexibility, every page must be completed and turned in before the chapter test would be allowed. As a result, I only got two chapters done that quarter. That resulted in an overall 'D' grade. At the end of the quarter the teacher even felt the need to counsel me that, given that my tests were perfect, I just needed to apply myself more to getting the homework done. I didn't bother point-out to her that doing her work was the majority of my time for homework of any of my classes. Despite liking the material, my hopes for the whole class dimmed.

Second quarter started off with a surprise, we only had to do two thirds of the homework problems for each chapter, now, not all of them. As I'd already gotten much of the way through the third chapter, but just not finished it by the end of the first quarter, I was able to finish it and three more chapters by the end of the second quarter. This resulted in an overall 'C' grade. For the third quarter, she would only require we do one third of the homework problems, but she warned us that we should do more than that so we would be familiar enough with the material to get a good grade on the test. I just did one third, got through six chapters and received an overall 'B' grade for the quarter.

For the final quarter she wouldn't be checking any homework. We were to do as much as we felt we needed to do in order to pass the test, and nothing less. For me, this became one day to read the chapter, one day doing practice problems in class, no time needed at home, and one day to refresh myself just before taking the test that day. So I was clipping through about three chapters every two weeks. I finished the book a week and a half before the end of the school year with perfect grades on all my tests. The teacher felt the need to openly congratulate me in front of the class for not only being the most improved student of the year, but also being the rare student to finish the book before the end of the school term and the first for this year. My last week and a half I could use as quiet free time to do drawings if I wished, read a book, or work on things for other classes. I did. About a week later, a second student finished the book and by the end of the term a third student finished it.

At the end of the school year I spent some time pondering my score card as I reflected on just how much my problem writing by hand was directly defining my grades. And math class was the perfect representation of that fact for me with that string of 'D', 'C', 'B' and the final 'A'.

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