Back to School

During the past year or so, I've become a fan of CaliforniaTeacher Guy's blog. He takes great photos and then writes haiku which so aptly fits his picture. Last year he shared his experiences at the Jewel School in Dirty Little Desert Town. Because of cutbacks, his position was not filled this year, and he is on his way to northern California for a new experience. Another teacher, Bellezza, wrote of soon having to go back to her unair-conditioned classroom to get ready for the new year. She teaches third grade, and I am sure that the children who come to her class develop a love of reading if they did not already have that love.

Visiting their blogs brings back memories of my own experiences in the classroom. I started teaching in the fall of 1963...wow, forty-five years ago. To look at me you'd never think I'm that old...just kidding. I went to a small private school in Ohio where I taught a combination second/third grade classroom. The children were lovely, as well as the parents. Many of these parents were in their early thirties, and when I would say "yes ma'am" to them, they would look at me sort of funny. It wasn't their practice. I still say "yes ma'am."

While I was in Ohio, I got my master's degree from Miami University, and then I went to Haiti and taught children of missionaries for three and a half years. I arrived in January, so I finished that school year and continued for three more. There I taught a group of sixth through ninth graders. Now that they are in their fifties, those that I've seen frequently call me Bev, rather than Miss Wright.

Then I came back to Florida, met the gentleman whom I would soon marry and taught for twenty-six years in the same school until I took the early retirement package that was offered in 1999. Times surely changed from 1973 until 1999. When I first started teaching at my local school, air-conditioning was unheard of; we had no carpet anywhere. Copies of work papers for the children were done on the old duplicators that produced a purple product while the fumes from the fluid made you a little funny. If you've taught for any time, you know what I mean.

When we put up bulletin boards, we used stencils to trace the letters that we needed for captions. The day that we got the Ell*son press that would stamp out letters and shapes for us, we were ecstatic. We used to have to make all our visuals, and then when we began getting money to use in our classes, companies sprang up who made lovely visuals that we could buy instead of creating ourselves. Then the laminating machine was a favorite tool to use to preserve those products.

That last two days I've spent at my old school in the classroom of a friend, helping her get ready for the new year. We put up background paper for the bulletin boards; I used letters that had been stamped from the Ell*son press to put up the captions. While I did that she was working on her home page for the school website. Every child has a laptop computer for his personal use at school. There is air-conditioning and carpet, white boards instead of black boards...no more chalk dust.

I stopped and looked in my classroom that I was last in. A first-grade teacher is in there now, and I would love to see the children as they walk in Monday morning for the first day of school. Her walls were adorned with all the things that one would expect...color words, number words, alphabet, classroom duty chart, and on and on. I wanted to take some pictures, but because I didn't know her at all, I didn't ask.

There is something about the beginning of a new school year. You get to get a fresh start with a new group of children. People have asked me if I miss teaching. I miss my comrades, and I miss the children...some of them. I'm glad I was able to go and help and then come home and take a nap. More on another day.