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And so we reach High School. Renown for many things, in my case it
would take my life in a totally unexpected direction.
The teachers kept classes light for the first Freshman week as, I
assume, they thought we might be experiencing a little shock. Gone
were lockers, in were 'cubicles'. No, not the office
kind, more like cubbyholes. The majority of the school was an 'open
concept' floor space with these large boxes on casters. These five
foot high boxes divided the 'hallways' from the 'classrooms', closed
on three sides with the fourth side an open face; this side had the
ten inch by ten inch by two foot deep cubbyholes and students got to
pick whichever empty one they found when they first started. Pete,
Jonathan, Van, Luke, and I found a group of free cubicles in the same
box that we claimed as our own. It turned out that Pete's elusive
upperclassman friend from the preceding three years had his cubicle
in this location so he became a fixture in our lives for the next
three years.
The entry hallway was lined with coat hooks, though no one ever used
them, likely due to the fact that they were so far away from the
cubicles, they seemed a little exposed to hanky-panky while students
would be in class. Actually, these coat hooks had a long shelf above
them and it left me wondering if perhaps these were the original
replacements for the student lockers when the building first opened a
decade earlier: A coat hook and a length of shelf above for all
your needs! The entry hallway was lined by cinder block walls
which divided the classroom open floor from the auditorium and
cafeteria. The school office door lay halfway down the cinder block
wall to the classroom space, it held the walled-off Principal and
Vice Principal offices, two walled off meeting rooms to the other
side, and the office staff in an open space between. This open area
continued as, behind the office staff was the 'Teacher Lounge' area
which held a couple tables, the school's walled off dark room, and
circling around in a 'U' a line of teacher desks making a row to the
back door of the office area which lead back to the entry hallway.
This administration section was sandwiched between the two typing
classrooms on one side and the two foreign language classrooms on the
other.
The center of the open classroom floor was the 'Resource Center',
essentially an open space library with two walls to either side for
ceiling high book cases, additional book cases were like elbow high
'X's spread-out across the area with a sprinkle of tables between.
Our group claimed one of these tables and it became our pseudo
homeroom as the High School didn't actually use the homeroom concept
before classes as Middle School had.
'Classrooms' were just a chunk of the floorspace with the cubicle
wall behind, and thin, portable dividers to either side. At the far
end was the chalkboard mounted on the exterior cinder block wall.
Actually, that whole wall was a never-ending string of chalkboards
between sliding glass doors. The glass doors were the only source of
natural light and acted as the emergency exits, sometimes they would
be open on fair weather days, though only very rarely. How much of a
chalkboard versus glass-door mix each classroom got was based on how
wide the space between the dividers, thus some 'classrooms' were
wider and used for the more in-demand classes, and some were only ten
feet apart for the smaller classes. These spaces had the same sort
of right-handed desktop attached to chair as Middle School had
featured. Some of the the dividers between classrooms included its
own built in chalkboard allowing that 'room' to face a different
direction.
At the far end of the open class area were the science classrooms
boxed between one of the Resource Center's bookshelf walls and the
secondary entry hallway's cinder block wall. Open area class rooms
made up the Science Rooms on the far side of which was a built-in
Science experimentation space with equipment cabinets and lab tables.
On the other side of the secondary entry hallway was the gymnasium.
I actually knew this entire building very well already. As I had
often taken Pete with me, during our elementary school years, on some
of the days my father took me to the ski area during the vacant off
season, Pete had once taken me to this building when his father went
there to catch-up on paperwork when it was closed. We'd had the run
of the place and explored all the nooks and crannies. Then the
preceding Summer before my Freshman year, my mother found there were
free community enrichment classes being held at the High School
building during the evenings. My mother took the art class and
brought me along. As the class was for adults, though, I used my
time there to reacquaint myself with the building. The Art Room was
behind the Auditorium with a Drafting Room next to it, then next to
the Auditorium was the Metal shop and Wood shop sharing the same open
space. The only walled classroom, the music room, filled the gap on
the far side of the Auditorium before returning to the Cafeteria
Space.
Once here as a student, I took my Freshmen classes. 'Social Studies'
was very successful. 'English' was with the father of the twin girls
of our grade, it went well on the whole. 'Science' suffered from
there being too much hand written material versus tests, but I
muddled through. For one period a day was 'Directed Study',
essentially the students were to sit in the auditorium chairs and do
classwork; without a flat surface attached to these seats, and the
dim lighting of the space, it was neither good for writing or for
reading, so I didn't see what the point was. I had this with
Jonathan and Luke and the only challenging part of this period was
finding out how much visiting we could get away with before a roving
teacher noticed and scolded us.
'Wood Shop' I pretty much completely wasted.
The first class of the morning, it turned out Mathew had signed up
for 'Metal Shop'. Our projects for both Wood and Metal shop were
self selected and the instructors would help and provide insight and
guidance as requested, but otherwise left us alone. The metal lathes
were next to the wood lathes and Mathew was doing a project requiring
the lathe so I chose a project placing me at the wood lathe. As an
echo to our original sixth grade Social Studies class, we spent much
of the time visiting. Though we did end-up finishing some projects,
in my case a pillar base for a wooden chessboard my eldest brother
had made for me and, once that was done, to have an excuse to still
be at the lathing area, I chose to do a bowl.
Unlike the pillar, which had been held by the lathe machine at both
ends as it spun, the wood for the bowl had to be mounted to a
screw-on plate, then that plate screwed onto the lathe head. I had
apparently not screwed the plate tightly enough to the lathe on one
day, it held on fine while spinning, but when I shut it off, the
machine stopped but the bowl continued to spin, unscrewing itself as
it did. Thoughts of the bowl completely unscrewing and either
zipping across the shop floor and hitting someone, or just bouncing
off the floor and breaking my work, lead me to stop it manually.
As my hands were full with tools, I panicked and used the skin of my
left wrist to brake the edge of the spinning bowl. It worked, but
left a large wound on my arm and I was off to the nurse's office.
Second degree friction burns now adorned my wrist, about two inches
wide and three inches long, it made a glorious scar and
provided me with a conversation piece for years to come!
Mathew was kind of cagey as to what his project was, though it was
made up of many component parts that took two thirds of the course to
finish. The teacher could grade him as the parts he had made were
well milled & detailed, but he too was curious what it would be
once all put together. It included a long metal rod with a grip
pattern at one end and screw treads at the other, a sphere with one
large screw hole and many other smaller screw holes in it, and then a
series of conical pieces with sharp points at their ends and screw
threads at their bases. It was done by third quarter and Mathew
fully assembled it to reveal it was a Spiked Mace. Essentially, a
Medieval hand weapon. Once the metal shop teacher saw it, he was
afraid what the administration would say if they found out he'd let a
student spend the course making a weapon and getting good grades for
it. He had Mathew sneak it home and had him spend the rest of his
time in shop class under a more directed course of work.
Oh, yes. 'Intro To Algebra', the forbidden class.
Also with Mathew, it was taught by Pete's father, Zack Hatch. And it
didn't have a dedicated classroom space and thus was in whatever
empty space there was each quarter during the course of the school
year. Once in the back of the auditorium where the semi balcony area
also served as three classroom spaces with chairs featuring fold-up
writing surfaces. One quarter it was in one of the open area class
rooms and then two quarters in a science class room. Starting out in
the Science classroom, Mathew and I sat side by side at the back of
the room and the stage was set for visiting rather than paying
attention. But as it turned out Zack was a very engaging teacher
and thoughts of visiting were soon pushed aside by the interesting
subject matter. Zack had been warned that he would need to 'guide
me' to a different math class after I failed the first quarter.
Grades were based purely on test results and in my case that meant I
was at the top of the class after the first few weeks. I'm not
bragging or inflating my ego here, it's just what Zack announced
to the class after he noticed my steady stream of perfect scores on
both expected tests and pop quizzes. Rather than
consider moving me to an easier math class, he was wondering if I
should be in the 'Advanced Algebra' class after the first quarter.
We talked about it but, as it wouldn't be with him, for all I knew
the teacher of the other class might be requiring vast quantities of
hand written home work. I didn't tell Zack that was why I didn't
want to change classes, but he accepted my decision and told me that
students of 'Intro To Algebra' had the chance to skip a level and go
straight to 'Geometry' the following year if the teacher gave a
recommendation. He was certain I would earn that recommendation by
the end of the year. And I did.
After the first quarter of Directed Study in the Auditorium, my two
friends Jonathan and Luke stopped coming. I finally asked them what
they were doing one day and they said they were getting notes from
their math teacher in 'Advanced Algebra' to use the school's
computer. Really? I asked, What do you do?
Oh, they played games on it.
I thought: I could do that!
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