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What do you remember from your k-12 education?


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What do you remember from your pre-college education and does it affect the way you educate your children?

 

I went to average public schools. In elementary school I remember raising mealworms, wet field day, student government, Oregon Trail, an individual study on North Dakota (I STILL remember that Roger Maris grew up in ND)and a paper I wrote on Eva Peron (what 5th grader chooses HER to write about :001_huh:).

 

I have a vague memory of a neat English teacher in 8th grade, but that is about it for middle school. Actually, I do remember learning to read music in middle school chorus.

 

In high school I had a fabulous history teacher. I remember him encouraging us to inform ourselves about the world around us (this was the first time I had ever heard of c-span). I took dual enrollment English classes the last two years of high school. My professor had been an English professor at a prestigous university before "retiring" to teach high school and dual enrollment. He gave me access to his library and for the first time I read books like Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Leon Uris' Exodus. I remember complaining to him that Faulkner must have been on LSD when he wrote the Sound and the Fury (of course, I had only read the first chapter ;)). He also gave me an "F" on a paper that I had worked my entire senior year on. I was so proud of my work and checked it *one last time* before I turned it in. I accidentally switched the draft and final paper to different sides of the folder. He *knew* what I had done because the draft was clearly marked, but it was still wrong. I was angry at myself, but knew the grade was just. It brought my English comp grade down from an "A" to a "B", but the lesson I learned served me well through college and even now.

 

 

I want to apply what I have learned from this to my own children.For us, this translates to

 

Elementary school: hands-on projects, FUN, less is more (quality over quantity)

 

Middle school: :confused:

 

High school: Discussing good books; giving my children the tools they need to decide what they believe and why they believe it; as a teacher, I might have to do hard/unpleasant things

 

I"m sure there is more, but I would love to hear about what other people remember and how it affected them.

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DH and I grew up in the same rural Midwest town and went through the same school system four years apart. (He's older. ;)) DH graduated top in his class. I graduated, um, near the bottom? Like 120th out of 128 students? Let's just say - I graduated. :glare: Barely. (I had other things on my mind.)

 

DH remembers quite a bit about his school years.

I remember next to nothing. The few things I do remember, I would rather block out.

 

The funny thing for both of us --- We lived in the Missouri River bottom, land that had been river when Lewis and Clark went through. We went to school just miles from a big monument dedicated to L&C. We neither one knew, until last year, that Lewis and Clark went through the area!! :001_huh: How pathetic is that? Major piece of history right at our feet and we didn't have a clue.

 

Oh, wait. I do remember watching a Star Trek episode in 5th or 6th grade science class.

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I actually had decent school experiences for much of my education. And I have lots of memories - especially of learning specific things at different points in my life.

 

For K-4th, I went to a slightly hippie private school. I was in the gifted program where we basically did what homeschoolers might term child-led unit studies supplemented by Wordly Wise and a math textbook. It was kind of great.

 

Then there's this black hole of 5th-8th which mostly sucked. But there was this one amazing 7th grade biology teacher who had us dissect about twenty different things. And this amazing 7th grade English teacher who taught me to diagram sentences. Also the only really good math teacher I ever had, for 8th grade Algebra I.

 

Then I went to a really competitive, highly ranked public magnet school where I got to take challenging courses like "Psychology and Literature." I learned more there than in college in many ways.

 

Overall, I feel like I learned that I did best when challenged, but only when I felt like it was on my own terms or when I felt like I had some control over it.

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I remember reading Hop on Pop to a 6th grade class when I was a Kindergartner, and tutoring my peers in almost every class in elementary school. I was gifted, so my teachers were constantly giving me extra work to keep me busy - designing crossword puzzles, grading worksheets for them and the like. They worked hard to keep me from being bored, but I often felt like I was being punished for being too quick.

 

In junior high, I got picked on. A lot. Greased locker, spitballs in my hair - all of it. I begged my parents to homeschool me. I still have major self-esteem & trust issues since the girls who bullied me the most had been my best friends all through elementary school.

 

In high school, there was a whole group of us on the AP track together, and I remember that we all had a lot of fun. We worked together through a lot of the difficult geometry, physics & calculus, and two of our English teachers were really awesome about reading plays and books out loud in class. The camaraderie of the nerds (I was a band geek as well) was my favorite part of high school.

 

Translated to my life:

Elementary: Letting my kids work at their own pace. They don't have to be held back or doing busy work just because they are ahead. They can read as much as they want, whenever they want, and they can use as much paper as they'd like for ART!

 

Junior High: My kids don't have to navigate the junior high social climate if they don't want to. I don't remember learning a *single* thing in junior high. I hope my kids will have the opportunity to continue to enjoy learning at that age.

 

High School: Getting into a good co-op will likely be important at this age. :D

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What do you remember from your pre-college education and does it affect the way you educate your children?

 

I went to average public schools. In elementary school I remember raising mealworms' date=' wet field day, student government, Oregon Trail, an individual study on North Dakota (I STILL remember that Roger Maris grew up in ND)and a paper I wrote on Eva Peron (what 5th grader chooses HER to write about :001_huh:).

 

I have a vague memory of a neat English teacher in 8th grade, but that is about it for middle school. Actually, I do remember learning to read music in middle school chorus.

 

In high school I had a fabulous history teacher. I remember him encouraging us to inform ourselves about the world around us (this was the first time I had ever heard of c-span). I took dual enrollment English classes the last two years of high school. My professor had been an English professor at a prestigous university before "retiring" to teach high school and dual enrollment. He gave me access to his library and for the first time I read books like Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Leon Uris' Exodus. I remember complaining to him that Faulkner must have been on LSD when he wrote the Sound and the Fury (of course, I had only read the first chapter ;)). He also gave me an "F" on a paper that I had worked my entire senior year on. I was so proud of my work and checked it *one last time* before I turned it in. I accidentally switched the draft and final paper to different sides of the folder. He *knew* what I had done because the draft was clearly marked, but it was still wrong. I was angry at myself, but knew the grade was just. It brought my English comp grade down from an "A" to a "B", but the lesson I learned served me well through college and even now.

 

 

I want to apply what I have learned from this to my own children.For us, this translates to

 

Elementary school: hands-on projects, FUN, less is more (quality over quantity)

 

Middle school: :confused:

 

High school: Discussing good books; giving my children the tools they need to decide what they believe and why they believe it; as a teacher, I might have to do hard/unpleasant things

 

I"m sure there is more, but I would love to hear about what other people remember and how it affected them.[/quote']

 

You mean that you got a failing grade for putting a hard copy of your paper on the left side of a 2 pocket folder when the final copy was on the right side of the folder?

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1st-3rd grade were OK; I had decent teachers and lots of interesting projects. Fourth grade was the turning point; we had to write a report on a "hero of the Revolution" who was from NJ, and every. single. girl. in my class chose Molly Pitcher — except me. The teacher gave me my first "B" ever, not because my report was bad, but because she didn't like my choice of subject; she said I should have written about Molly Pitcher. :glare: That was my first inkling that school was less about learning than it was about learning to play the game. The only things I remember about 5th and 6th grade were two reports I did on topics I found fascinating: bioluminescent sea creatures and Finland. I also vaguely remember doing Algebra I in 8th grade and thinking it might be really fun if it was taught by someone who actually cared.

 

My memories of HS are not good. I remember my Blanche-DuBois-wannabe sophomore English teacher doing endless read-alouds of Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and giving me Cs on my poetry because real poems are supposed to rhyme. I remember my ex-military senior English teacher giving Cs and Ds to any student whose literary analyses did not exactly parrot the study guides, because there's only one correct way to interpret any piece of literature. Sometimes I played the game, and sometimes I couldn't be bothered and just wrote what I felt or refused to write at all. (Thank goodness for great SAT scores. :D )

 

I only had 2 teachers in HS who ever really taught me anything. One was a crazy summer school English teacher who was like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society — if only RW were older, fatter, and waaaay more cynical. :lol: He let me read Dostoevsky all summer and discussed it with me like I had a brain. That was a new experience. And in my senior year (I skipped 11th grade, except for the summer English class), I had a creative writing teacher who knew it was taking pretty much all the energy I had just to get through the year without killing myself. She made a deal with me: if I would write 10 poems that I was proud of and enter them in the National Scholastic Creative Writing Contest, then she would exempt me from every other assignment that year. I submitted 10 poems and won 3rd prize for Poetry, which earned me a check for $50 and a dozen copies of the magazine my poems were published in. Which not only made me feel a bit less suicidal, it made Mrs. Laird very very proud; her name was listed in the magazine as my teacher, and she carried it around with her for months.

 

That is the ONE thing, in my entire PS career, that actually meant something to me: that one teacher, in 11 years, was more concerned about me than she was about standards and grades — and in return for her kindness I was able to give something back that meant a lot to her.

 

I probably don't need to spell out how my own education has affected my homeschooling, right? ;)

 

Jackie

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I had a decent education but there's not much that I would carry over into homeschooling.

 

I remember having a very hard time in 3rd grade with subtraction with borrowing. I kept just subtracting up which didn't work too well.

 

I remember my fourth grade teacher teaching us a bunch of military songs - Over There, Battle Hymn of the Republic, some Marine songs that I don't know the names of even now. He used to give out these stuffed animals that were kind of pear shaped and came in all different colors and personalities that I don't remember what they are called but I finally got one for getting a home run in kick ball. I remember being a nurse in Yankee Doodle Dandy.

I remember learning "Fifty Nifty United States" in chorus and using it when filling in blank US maps years later. I can still sing all the states in alphabetical order.

 

In 5th grade I had a teacher that would make you write "shut up" 500 times if you said it to anyone. I was bullied - I had to write it a few times. I sat in the back of the room and he used to yell at anyone who leaned their chair back on its hind legs against the bookcases. Sitting in the back row it was impossible for me to resist and after 5 times I had to write "I will not lean back in my chair because it is dangerous to my health and because I didn't get special permission from Mr. McCann, I was wrong" 250 times. Thirty years later I still remember that - he's one of the few teachers even through high school and college whose name I remember. So I guess I learned that writing something out really sticks it in my mind. :glare:

 

I remember a really old guy teaching junior high english. He ended up losing it and shoving some kid up against a wall. I remember watching the Errol Flynn version of Robin Hood in 8th grade (social studies maybe?) - I still love that movie.

 

I remember a multi-course English class is High School where one of my quarters was Science Fiction and I got to read The Stand for class. Probably my favorite literature class ever. Another quarter was Creative Writing and I had poetry published in the school literary magazine.

 

I remember hating Early American literature and thinking Ralph Waldo Emerson ("I am a transparent eyeball") and Walt Whitman were BOOOORING. Although I guess it says something that I remember that quote all these years later.

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Let's see...I had to repeat K. Most actual memories involve the playground and sledding in snowsuits, or getting kissed on the cheek on a dare.

 

First...we had Spanish once a week, which I always thought was great fun. I learned how to spell "friend" by pronouncing it "fry-end". And I was way ahead of everyone in reading and knew it.

 

Second...most of what I remember was from G/T class. Wrote my first research paper, on dinosaurs. I still have a notebook for copywork with illustrations from that year, and vaguely remember practicing cursive on the chalkboard. I think this was the year I no longer had to use classroom landmarks to remember right from left. I remember getting freaked out one day when our teacher, who was a diabetic on an insulin pump, passed out at her desk and we had to send someone for help.

 

Third...new school, new state. I had this awesome math teacher who would read to us at the beginning of math class--I guess because we were the top-tier students she didn't need the whole class to actually teach us math. I remember races I didn't like because I wasn't fast with my facts. Concepts, yes, facts, not so much. Don't really remember anything else, except that G/T at the new school was boring. It seemed like all we did was sit in the computer lab with the computers off and do logic puzzles.

 

Fourth...I got pulled out weekly for group counseling with a special needs boy and some other kid. Didn't understand why. May have had to do with being bored out of my skull getting me into trouble. I also remember being ignored by teachers while crying on the playground because the other kids wouldn't let me play with them.

 

Fifth--started private school. Got to take Spanish again, high school Abeka Spanish at half-pace. Got to work at my own speed, which I liked. I resented the tendency to censor books I could use for book reports, though. This was about the time I started learning more from what I read on my own--worlds more--than I ever learned in school. That pattern continued through high school.

 

Sixth and seventh were much the same as fifth.

 

Then I started high school back in public. Most of my classes were a joke, too easy, too boring, I learned nothing much. I was always ahead of my math classes, except for geometry where proofs kicked my butt. Since I skipped 8th I had kids (often the same ones) by turns jeering at me to go back to jr. high and asking to copy off my papers. Except for a handful of kids I saw with at lunch, I was surrounded by hostile peers and hated it.

 

Went to an early admissions program at UNT my Jr. year of high school, and discovered that I didn't know how to study, and actually needed to. It was refreshing to have people on my level (or smarter than me!) to talk to. My year focused on personal growth, not academics, I made lousy grades, and had to go back to high school for my senior year.

 

Which sucked because all my friends had graduated. I had a crummy fast food job, took the classes I had to to graduate with honors, and joined the Navy because I didn't think I was ready for college yet.

 

In the Navy I was explicitly taught study skills. Thank you, Nuke school. When I went back to college after, maturity and study skills saw to my success.

 

Take home message for homeschooling: think outside the box, make sure she is challenged and learns how to think and how to study. The learning that sticks best is fun and/or interesting.

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I really don't remember much of my elementary school days. We moved so many times, the schools I went to all blur into one.

 

In high school I just ambled along not really doing much to stand out. The one thing I remember really well was our German teacher.

 

Our German teacher was a German lady who could hardly speak a word of English. The class I was in seemed to be made up of all the misfits, and due to the antics of some of my class mates, she had a nervous break down. Looking back, I do feel bad for what happened, but at the time, it just meant that we had a free period twice a week for the rest of the year.

 

I did learn some German. I can say that my car is broken, my glasses are broken and ask where the hospital is.

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I remember having great fun in elementary school. I remember making butter, learning about the Pilgrims and the Mayflower. I remember there being a total eclipse and we had to close all the shades in our classroom.

 

My second grade teacher had an orange clawfoot bathtub filled with pillows that he allowed us to sit in while we read. We had to earn reading time. I think that tub had a lot to do with why I love reading so much today.

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Good things I remember:

 

A fourth grade teacher who knew how to, despite having 23 students, make education individualized. She had no reading groups. Every youngster got to sit with her every single day and read outloud while she coached them. Everyone made significant strides in their reading that year no matter how good or bad they were at the beginning. She also took us on nature hikes, read outloud to us from wonderful books for 30 minutes after lunch while everyone laid their head down on a small pillow on our desk. If we fell asleep, that was fine with her. Some students really needed that nap, but if the book was engrossing, they just couldn't let themselves nod off! She also buddied up a good speller with a not-so-good speller for 15 minutes of study time each day. Spelling grades went up dramatically by mid-year. She had a take-no-prisoners attitude to classroom control and unique punishments so we didn't have a lot of nonsense in our room and no chaos. If the weather was nice and we were all behaving well, (which happened a lot because she was just that kind of teacher), we take our textbooks outside under a big oak tree and sit on the grass for English, history, and sometimes science. The day was packed with learning. Since I could read several grade levels ahead, she would get wonderful classical literature books from the high school library and bring them to me. I would usually get my work done quickly and could sit in the reading corner and devour books to my heart's content while she worked with others. Except in math...she assigned me to help a lot of struggling kids memorize their times-tables and increase their speed in basic addition and subtraction. Sometimes I didn't like being a tutor, but in hindsight, I think it was actually very good for me. She told me, "You are a natural born teacher and your classmates need your help. You should use your God-given talents in this classroom."

 

The following year, my fifth grade teacher did the exact same thing with the reading situation. She was probably not as great at teaching math but she was one crazy science teacher and we had a blast. She was creative in combining several disciplines into one project. So, when she brought in all of the different brands of mouthwash she could find, we were assigned to conduct a 30 day experiment using the scientific method to determine which mouthwash was the best anti-fungal. We soaked a slice of bread (from the same loaf) in the same number of ml of each mouthwash, placed it in a covered petri-dish inside a metal cabinet in the classroom, and then every single slice had a sample anazlyed under the microscope every day at the same time of day, for mold spores and quantity. We charted the results making elaborate bar charts and learning the statistical math needed to conduct experiments. At the end of the thirty days, we were assigned to write business letters to the various pharmaceutical companies to inform them of our findings. We heard back from several company reps and got some neat free stuff for our room as many companies were impressed with our work. We then wrote a "research" paper as a class. She typed while we all discussed and debated the content, structure, flow, etc. and she coached us on what good "grown-up" writing should sound like. The research paper was presented at a school board meeting. Apparently, they were impressed because she was promoted to principal of the school the following year. Oh, there was one class clown that was constantly trying to sneak a peak at her grade book so he could make fun of the kids who were not getting good grades. She got sick of it one day, caught him in the act, and whacked him three times, very hard with an oak paddle in front of the whole class. Many people would disagree with her methodology but the boy was a model student for the rest of the year.

 

7th grade - I had an English teacher that announced at the beginning of the year that she understood that we middle schoolers find the rules of grammar, punctuation, etc. quite boring and that she would make us a deal. She would administer a 7th grade English test to the entire class. Every person who received an 80% or higher would be exempt from doing more grammar study for the year but we had to help everyone else who scored below 80% learn the rules and get their grades on re-test up to 80%. Once this was accomplished, we would spend the rest of the year studying English Literature, having contests with the winning teams getting candy bars, and creative writing projects. It took six weeks to get everyone up to 7th grade level grammar and then the fun began. We studied Shakespeare sonnets by discussing and debating the language and then "translating" them into modern language or setting them to pop songs. We wrote new lyrics for the school fight song. She would give us writing prompts, "What's the best idea you ever had? What was the worst?" etc. and we'd be off and running. She was so enthusiastic and fun-loving that even the most dreaded student (by the other teachers) did well in her class and made big strides.

 

Worst memories -

 

1. The 2nd grade teacher who hated all boys with a vengeance. She was positively cruel and lived to make them all cry. She would have made a great maximum security prison warden. She also tried to convince the principal that every single male child in her room should be on big doses of ritalin. I don't know how she ever made tenure but at the time I had her, she had been torturing students for 20 years.

 

2. The 7th grade health and home economics teacher that wore completely inappropriate, low cut tops and had hickies all over the tops of her booKs. She'd get mad when the boys ogled her or the girls made snide comments and then SCREAM...just high pitched, ridiculous screaming which would always send the principal down to her room to tell her to pipe down. He never made her dress any better and she was apparently too ignorant to connect this display with the very apparent disrespect she received. I couldn't stand her.

 

3. The 8th grade physical science teacher who was meaner than mean. I guess the only way I can describe him is "militant atheist". No disrespect intended towards any of the atheists on this board...you would all hate this guy too! He would make inquiries at the beginning of the year to determine which kids went to church and then spend the first few weeks calling us up, one by one, in front of the rest of the class to tell everyone we were a bunch of dead-head idiots and that our parents were morons who shouldn't have been allowed to breed more morons because we were all too stupid to know that god was dead. He found one of his students had a Bible in her locker and went balisitc. He burned it in his trash! Though her parents brought it to the attention of the school board, he received no punishment for the destruction of personal property or the physical threat he made to her if she ever dared be caught with one again. This guy was 6'5" tall and weighed three hundred pounds - built like a line-backer - totally viscious temper. I suspect that even the administration was afraid of him. He was verbally abusive to everyone, including his wife who taught 6th grade. He was also known for having tantrums and throwing things out the window while he was lecturing.

 

4. The 8th grade social studies teacher who sexually harrassed us girls so badly we were terrified of him. He would always deny the charges and the girls who complained would be given detention for "lying". Of course, a couple of years later, he ended up getting a 13 year old girl pregnant. So, there was a very half-hearted apology from the school board and superintendent to the parents of the girls who had originally complained. He used to grab my back-side and I got to the place that I'd smack him hard. He never did anything about being hit. Once the rumor mill started amongst his collegues that he was a "perv", he began attempting to woo the 7th grade science teacher who was already dating someone seriously. Her boyfriend came to the school one day after the buses had left and kicked the "perv's" arse up and down the parking lot. When we came to school the next day, he looked like he'd been hit by a freight train and all the kids teased him relentlessly until his face healed! He did leave the science teacher alone after that.

 

5. The 8th grade boy in P.E. who did a strip-tease for the girls while the teacher was dealing with another miscreant in the principal's office. Normally we had gender segregated P.E. but the male teacher was home with pneumonia and our female teacher was handling both classes. She was not amused!

 

So, as a result of the above incidents in 8th grade, my parents removed me mid-year from the school and paid for a private school. The private school was nice and well ordered. However, I don't have any really good or bad memories from my time there. It was boring and unchallenging for me except French. Oh my word, I guess that is one funny memory. I could write French, read French, translate French into English, but apparently I could not speak in any satisfactory manner. The teacher would tutor me individually everyday and called it "Slaughter the King's French Hour". He and I spent a lot of time snickering at my inept tongue!

 

Faith

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I remember many things about my education. I went to public school in Ohio K-first 1/2 of 7th and Kentucky 2nd 1/2 7th-12th. Overall, I feel I got a pretty good education but I also put a lot into it. I think the school's expectations got tougher after the move to Kentucky. I lived in an excellent school district that placed high value on academic achievement. Even the biggest jocks at the school were honor students. There was no prestige in being academically below the curve. I had some excellent teachers (and a few crappy ones). My senior English teacher was the best. I learned more from him than any of my college professors. I specifically remember acting out The Canterbury Tales. We were each assigned a character that we had to act out for the class. I remember for mine, I brought in one of those horse head on a stick toys.

 

Socially, my early school years were ridden with bullies. After the move to Kentucky, it was much better.

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One thing that stands out to me as I read everyone's responses is that the middle school years rarely yielded anything at all, and the memories that people do have are not generally positive. My own experience is basically the same.

 

Elementary: Positive memories overall. I was gifted and skipped a grade, so I remember that even the older kids knew who I was even when I didn't know them. I do remember learning a valuable lesson in humility (a couple of them) when I didn't "win" certain contests or get picked for things. I was so accustomed to coming in first, or getting the best grade, or being somewhat of a teacher's pet that I was always shocked when I wasn't. This is when art and PE became the great equalizer for me. I was never good at either of these things, and had actual anxiety about participating because I thought I was failing. At 6 years old. That has stuck with me to this day, because if I know I'm not going to be good at something I'd rather not try at all. I'm trying to teach my own children a different way.

 

Middle: I have very few memories of middle school at all. Most of the ones I do have are related to hormones and things instead of actual learning. Lesson learned: my then rising 8th grade daughter was going to have no negative downstream implications from being pulled out of public school to come home. In fact, she was spared another year of hurt feelings, anxiety and depression, and has turned into a different kid in one school year.

 

High School: I went to a very well-respected, challenging, out of the mainstream public magnet school. I loved it. People were smart, the teachers treated us like we had brains and we had such an array of personalities and experiences there. Really an excellent experience that, because of its format and expectations, prepared me well for college.

 

Takeaway: Middle school is a waste. :-)

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For K-4th, I went to a slightly hippie private school. I was in the gifted program where we basically did what homeschoolers might term child-led unit studies supplemented by Wordly Wise and a math textbook. It was kind of great.

 

You had gifted classes all day? Ours was only one day a week in elementary school and one period per week in middle school. I do remember doing a simulation in seventh grade. The basic idea was that x amount of people were stuck in a building because there was a deadly virus (?) outside. There was only y amount of antidote and we had to decide who got the antidote and who died based on their descriptions A(single mom, child, grandma with cancer, etc...) Aubrey described something similar recently. I can't wait until my kids are old enough for this!

 

You mean that you got a failing grade for putting a hard copy of your paper on the left side of a 2 pocket folder when the final copy was on the right side of the folder?

 

Hmmm, I can't remember which side. I believe the final copy was supposed to be on the right side and the last rough draft on the left side. But yes, I got a failing grade on the paper solely for that reason.

 

 

1st-3rd grade were OK; I had decent teachers and lots of interesting projects. Fourth grade was the turning point; we had to write a report on a "hero of the Revolution" who was from NJ, and every. single. girl. in my class chose Molly Pitcher — except me. The teacher gave me my first "B" ever, not because my report was bad, but because she didn't like my choice of subject; she said I should have written about Molly Pitcher. :glare: That was my first inkling that school was less about learning than it was about learning to play the game. The only things I remember about 5th and 6th grade were two reports I did on topics I found fascinating: bioluminescent sea creatures and Finland. I also vaguely remember doing Algebra I in 8th grade and thinking it might be really fun if it was taught by someone who actually cared.

 

Sounds familiar :)

 

My memories of HS are not good. I remember my Blanche-DuBois-wannabe sophomore English teacher doing endless read-alouds of Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and giving me Cs on my poetry because real poems are supposed to rhyme. I remember my ex-military senior English teacher giving Cs and Ds to any student whose literary analyses did not exactly parrot the study guides, because there's only one correct way to interpret any piece of literature. Sometimes I played the game, and sometimes I couldn't be bothered and just wrote what I felt or refused to write at all. (Thank goodness for great SAT scores. :D )

 

Yikes! I had a high school English teacher who would write notes on my graded poems like "Do we need to talk"? She wasn't concerned about me, just one of those annoying people who tried to analyze every word out of someone's mouth. I started writing poetry about flowers and butterflies and she left me alone (snort).

 

 

I only had 2 teachers in HS who ever really taught me anything. One was a crazy summer school English teacher who was like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society — if only RW were older, fatter, and waaaay more cynical. He let me read Dostoevsky all summer and discussed it with me like I had a brain. That was a new experience. And in my senior year (I skipped 11th grade, except for the summer English class), I had a creative writing teacher who knew it was taking pretty much all the energy I had just to get through the year without killing myself. She made a deal with me: if I would write 10 poems that I was proud of and enter them in the National Scholastic Creative Writing Contest, then she would exempt me from every other assignment that year. I submitted 10 poems and won 3rd prize for Poetry, which earned me a check for $50 and a dozen copies of the magazine my poems were published in. Which not only made me feel a bit less suicidal, it made Mrs. Laird very very proud; her name was listed in the magazine as my teacher, and she carried it around with her for months.

 

YES!

 

That is the ONE thing, in my entire PS career, that actually meant something to me: that one teacher, in 11 years, was more concerned about me than she was about standards and grades — and in return for her kindness I was able to give something back that meant a lot to her.

 

I probably don't need to spell out how my own education has affected my homeschooling, right? ;)

 

Actually, I would love if you would spell it out for me :tongue_smilie:. I've been thinking that I want my childrens education to involve a lot less predigested curricula and more of what will actually make an impact on them. I find it difficult to break out of public school thinking. I decided after spending time in public schools (I substituted and did a few semesters of student teaching in college) that ps education was not what I wanted for my children. It still seems to be my default mode and I have to make a conscious effort to change. I did try to read part of the epic "out of the box" thread a few weeks ago but I had the uncomfortable feeling a child gets when listening to an adult conversation .

 

I had a decent education but there's not much that I would carry over into homeschooling.

 

I remember having a very hard time in 3rd grade with subtraction with borrowing. I kept just subtracting up which didn't work too well.

 

I remember my fourth grade teacher teaching us a bunch of military songs - Over There, Battle Hymn of the Republic, some Marine songs that I don't know the names of even now. He used to give out these stuffed animals that were kind of pear shaped and came in all different colors and personalities that I don't remember what they are called but I finally got one for getting a home run in kick ball. I remember being a nurse in Yankee Doodle Dandy.

I remember learning "Fifty Nifty United States" in chorus and using it when filling in blank US maps years later. I can still sing all the states in alphabetical order.

 

At least you sang something useful! We sang Yellow Submarine :glare:

 

I remember a really old guy teaching junior high english. He ended up losing it and shoving some kid up against a wall. I remember watching the Errol Flynn version of Robin Hood in 8th grade (social studies maybe?) - I still love that movie.

 

Oh my.

 

 

I really don't remember much of my elementary school days. We moved so many times, the schools I went to all blur into one.

 

In high school I just ambled along not really doing much to stand out. The one thing I remember really well was our German teacher.

 

Our German teacher was a German lady who could hardly speak a word of English. The class I was in seemed to be made up of all the misfits, and due to the antics of some of my class mates, she had a nervous break down. Looking back, I do feel bad for what happened, but at the time, it just meant that we had a free period twice a week for the rest of the year.

 

I did learn some German. I can say that my car is broken, my glasses are broken and ask where the hospital is.

 

It is funny how what you learn to say depends on your teacher. Our instructor used callete and gringos fairly often ;).

 

I remember having great fun in elementary school. I remember making butter, learning about the Pilgrims and the Mayflower. I remember there being a total eclipse and we had to close all the shades in our classroom.

 

My second grade teacher had an orange clawfoot bathtub filled with pillows that he allowed us to sit in while we read. We had to earn reading time. I think that tub had a lot to do with why I love reading so much today. Yes! This is what I'm looking for!

 

FaithManor-Thank you! There was too much food for thought to quote and address :).Have you applied this in any way to your own family?

Edited by Robin's Song
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One thing that stands out to me as I read everyone's responses is that the middle school years rarely yielded anything at all, and the memories that people do have are not generally positive. My own experience is basically the same.

 

Takeaway: Middle school is a waste. :-)

 

Why is this? Age/puberty/hormones?

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Why is this? Age/puberty/hormones?

 

I don't know, but I think that certainly contributes. Maybe our brains are undergoing such radical change during that period that we are incapable of fully internalizing what we're supposed to be learning.

 

Or, it could be curriculum focus. Are there many new concepts introduced during this time, or is it a lot of reinforcement of what has already been introduced? I remember Algebra, so that was new, but I don't remember anything else. I really don't remember....just throwing that out there.

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I remember a lot of projects that I did. In fourth grade we studied Native Americans, particularly the type that lived in our area (Northern NY). When we finished our project was to build a model long house complete with little people, etc. I LOVED that project. I spent so much extra time on it at home it's not even funny. I really loved that unit because I was learning local history and I felt connected to the area.

 

I remember journaling about books that we read in 3rd grade. We were reading a book about the pilgrim's passage on the ship to the US and after each assignment we had questions about what we think it would have been like to go through that.

 

I remember band and chorus concerts and practices. While I hated music classes I loved band and chorus.

 

I remember in 7th grade writing a paper on thunderstorms. I still remember some of what I learned.

 

I did a research paper on feminism in Shakespeare for my honors english in 11th grade and I got to go use the college library for research.

 

I was (and still am) a research nerd.

 

 

While I know what I loved in school, I also know that not everyone loves the same things. While I loved doing projects and crafts with various subjects and I felt I learned and solidified a lot of knowledge by doing them, my husbanded hated arts and crafts in school and even from a young age felt they were a waste of time. So while I look back and say I want to do more of the things like the longhouse project and go activity heavy because that's what I loved, I realize I need to look at my kids and take my cues from them. As they get older I'm hoping to follow their lead as to how they learn better and what works for them. Based on just looking at their very different personalities at such a young age, I'm not sure what works for one will work for the other. But we'll see.

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I also remember my high school trigonometry teacher was awful. He did not have a math degree, just a business degree with a math endorsement. He would give an example on the whiteboard and make a mistake every.single.time. The rest of the class was spent with the kids who got it correcting him and trying to show him where he went wrong and the rest of us lost. That isn't to say that you can't understand trig without a math degree, just that he was clearly lost himself.

 

Lesson learned: If I don't understand something well enough to teach it then I need to outsource. I won't subject my children to that torture for the sake of my pride.

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What do you remember from your pre-college education and does it affect the way you educate your children?

 

 

I remember daily frustration that the work was boring and irrelevant. I remember being treated like I had no life outside of school and that my schoolwork should be more important than my inner world and my emotional life (or anything else, for that matter). I remember being pressured to be like the other kids, even though my interests were different. I remember watching, participating in, and being the target of bullying and teasing. I remember the teachers behaving as though there was nothing they could do about unruly students. I remember students acting like school was nothing but a PITA. I remember feeling like I was just marking time until my real life began. I remember being overjoyed when I finally convinced my parents to let me escape (graduate) early.

 

Yes, all these things affect how I educate my children.

 

Tara

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Yep. Other than half a year of kindy and one year of private school, I had a crappy, public school experience (and I went to MANY different schools). Wonder why I choose to home and private school?

 

It was boring, teachers didn't give a crap (unless you were white, middle class, and from the area), and the kids were bullies.

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I remember half day kindergarten and being able to buy popcicles for a nickle during the last recess. I also remember in kindergarten the teacher reading Laura Ingalls Wilder aloud to us as we waited for the buses. My first name is Laura and everytime the teacher would read "Laura" most of the kids in class would look at me - as if I was the one in the story.

 

I remember loving school then having to move to a new state and not really caring for school. I was bored to tears at the new schools because they didn't really have anything or any plan available for a bright student working beyond her years.

 

I remember in first grade sitting outside on the playground talking to a friend and not hearing the bell. We eventually went in but I wonder how long we were out there alone. I also remember having to pour our milk in buckets after lunch and black bugs swimming in the buckets. Nasty!

 

2nd grade was another new school. I don't remember much beyond the teacher and being very fond of her.

 

In third grade my teacher had a mysterious bottle in the science area with something weird floating in what we thought was water. Finally, several months into the school year it got the best of us. When she was out of the room one of the braver students finally opened that bottle. It smelled disgusting and we still didn't know what it was. She came back, laughed at us, and finally told us it was her tonsils that she had asked her doctor to save for her when they were removed many years before. :ack2:

 

4th grade was the year I started my period -in October right before a friend's swimming party. It was also the year I chipped my tooth on a metal jungle gym, cut my eye lid on an open window, and my skirt fell off while I was playing jumprope. It was also the grade our school began teaching history and science. After being bored beyond tears the last 3 years, I found the new subjects very exciting. It was also the year the school began trying to offer advanced topics for gifted students. I was able to take photography, algebra, and a creative writing class. I remember my teacher reading Judy Blume and laughing out loud at the antics of Fudge.

 

5th grade was an election year - Reagan or Carter. My teacher was a huge Democrat. Everyday she wore something with a donkey on it - but not the political donkey because she would have been breaking the law. But we all knew why she was wearing the donkeys. The creative classes for gifted students were discontinued this year due to lack of organization. It was also the year I was introduced to American history and my teacher loved teaching it. This was the last year our school went without AC. Oh, I also remember watching the space shuttle land on TV at school. A parent brought her TV from home so we could watch it live. There was no internet, VCR, or cable. I rmember the discussion of whether or not the rabbit ears on the TV would get enough signal.

 

6th grade was the year I started wearing glasses. It was the year that 15 of us were pulled out of regular classes (there were 8 6th grade classrooms) and taught pre-algebra instead of regular math in a hallway. We sat on carpet squares and the teacher used a portable chalkboard to teach it. She was a math certified teacher working as an aid while waiting for a position. She had to create her own book since the jr high wouldn't lend any. I think I still have that large 3 ring binder. We loved the challenge but when we moved to jr high the next year the made us go back into regular math because they thought we were too immature to handle algebra. It wasn't until 8th grade that we could take algebra. On a side note, the 15 of us in the pre-algebra class together ended up being the top 15 when we graduated.

 

Jr high was just uncomfortable for me. All the social changes, the pressure from parents, personal insecurity thanks to all the changes, the continued boredom in classes. Most memorable were the smell coming from my locker after break because my locker mate left a tuna sandwich in the locker and being suspended from the bus after I hit the kid teasing my younger brother.

 

High school was amazing. I loved high school. I could write forever. Some of it was bad, but overall I had challenging classes, good friends, became editor of the yearbook, and so on.

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Guest janainaz

I went to 4 public schools from K to 2nd grade. I went to a private Catholic school in Oklahoma from 3rd through half of 6th (which I really liked), and then moved to CA and was in the ps school system. The 6th graders at my school in OK were on a different planet from the 6th graders in ps in southern CA. Everything was much faster and I missed my school in OK.

 

I really don't think the schools or teachers were terrible in CA in comparison to the schools in OK. I think over school experience is more about family life and I have a tainted view of my overall experience based on my home life. I really think that most schools can work for a child when there are involved parents at home and when the childs has a desire to learn. I can't blame my teachers or even my school environment for how I feel about all those years. I had some really great teachers, and some that were not so great. But when I think back to high school, I do get a pit in my stomach and I wish I had a different feeling about it. I can't seperate school experiece from the overall experience during those years.

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I remember a lot actually. Not too much of it pertaining to the academics. Ironically I remember more academic stuff from junior high (7th-9th) in a good way. I remember doing a report on Egypt in 7th, writing a story on the Holocaust in 9th. the teacher loved it so much he put a copy of it in the school library.

 

I went to two elementary schools. the first one I remember kissing a boy in kindergarten, yup the bad girl at age 5. :lol: I remember a teacher finding drugs near the playground and the huge house behind the school caught on fire and all the students went out to watch the firefighters.

 

In the other elementary school I remember getting bullied because I had curly hair, that was a delightful year. :tongue_smilie: I remember my hands shaking because I had to give an oral report in 6th grade.

 

In high school I remember my art teacher having the patience of a saint as me and another girl and two guys talked and flirted all through class. I remember my AFS friends from my junior years. I found two of them on facebook last year, made my week. They were three guys and one of them was my prom date.

 

I remember graduating early, January 17, 1985 to be exact. Me and three friends chose to do it because we disliked school, even through we were fairly good students. I remember not doing any homework my senior year, I kind of checked out because I knew I wasn't going to college.

 

Wow, that's the two minute flashback. :001_huh:

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I was paddled in kindergarten and it just went downhill from there. Almost failed first grade because I could not subtract. Second grade got a bad case of diaper rash because the teacher wouldn't let us go to the bathroom after lunch for the rest of the afternoon. Third grade was a split year for me because I moved so I don't really remember it much. Fourth grade was ok. Got my first bra because I wanted it to be popped but in reality didn't need one till 7th grade. Teacher also caught me forging my parents initals on a progress report but didn't freak out so she's my favorite teacher. My fifth grade teacher used to make us listen to Disney music in the morning which I hated. She also didn't like it that I didn't say yes'mam and no'mam to her and she took me out into the hall for an hour to force me to say it. She finally gave up. Sixth grade was totally awful. My teacher had some crazy thing for Lynda Tucker Wyndham. I think that is her name. It just convinced me not to be buried in the ground ever! In fact, I am being cremated because of those stories. This same teacher was really big on making us write sentences. I use to write a lot of sentences and when that didn't work she assigned sentences to the whole class due to my behavior. Also she watched as girls robbed me every day of my lunch money. Seventh grade I spent in the book closet due to in school suspensions. I read alot that year. Eighth grade I was in an experimental class that had all the kids who were fixing to drop out or were trouble makers. 18 boys and 5 girls. It was a horrible year but I made beta club that year because I had the hardest teachers. I was told I was voted homecoming representative for my classroom but the teacher wouldn't allow it because she knew it was done as a joke. Ninth grade was spent arguing with my algebra teacher that you can't add letters. Tenth grade was about learning how to drive. I used to drive 20 mph because I had never drove before because my parents refused to teach me. I also started Scholar's Bowl; think jeopardy. It was fun. All the smart kids were shocked that I knew anything at all. Eleventh grade I had my first ever boyfriend. And then Senior year, the first half was spent getting rid of crazy, stalker boyfriend and the second half was spent being pregnant.

 

I went to a small rural school which was not really good. I also was the butt of all the class jokes. School was a complete nightmare for me. I had dreams of going all Carrie on them but I was just too chicken to do it. But I ended up with a mid B average when I graduated. The only reason I know anything is because I love to read anything I get my hands on. People think I am smart but the truth of it is I am just well read.

 

I don't know how this effects my homeschooling because the only reason I am homeschooling is because my daughter almost got kicked out of school in the middle of eighth grade. This year is my first year of homeschooling. I have been unschooling since November. She is much happier now.

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A sweet, grandmotherly first grade teacher.

"The Mammal Unit" and learning times tables in third.

Having a male teacher and hearing the Hobbit read aloud in fourth.

Getting to take care of the animals in our classroom in fifth - mice, guinea pigs, a chinchilla, fish, a bird...I didn't like the snake!

Doing zero work, skipping lots of school and getting A's in 6th. (long story)

Learning to diagram sentences and enjoying Virginia history in seventh.

Great friends and struggling with Algebra 1 in 9th.

Making the varsity basketball team in 10th.

Loving A.P. Modern European history in 11th.

Being surprised at enjoying physics in 12th.

Senior English, "Modern Literature and the Condition of Man", fabulous.

 

Just beginning this HS deal. So I think I need more experience to reflect on how my own school history applies to our HS philosophy/style. Good question for thinking on....

Edited by ScoutTN
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Five things the most...

 

My 6th grade teacher who took the time to read an entire book to us (5 books, I can still remember each title!)

 

My 2nd grade teacher who made us all stay inside while the other kids hid Easter eggs b/c one child would not follow her no talking rule...

 

Senior term paper on Bleak House...only picked that book b/c the library had no other options, horrible book...read the cliff notes...spent 1 night on a year long project and made one of only 2 A's in the class...what can I say? I learned to write what I knew my teachers wanted to hear!

 

The 8th grade gym/health teacher that was horrifyingly perverted and all those touches/looks he gave to girls that made me want to scream for them...and how he charmed their parents...

 

My wonderful Calculus teacher who was just so relieved when students who had a hard time had an 'a-ha' moment, he would get sooo animated and excited...the best math loving man ever!

 

I try my best to not give my students junk that make them ask "why?"...and load them up with excellent literature....all this talk about organic...I feel the same about literature/curricula...forget the fast food curricula and jump into the fresh veggies/fruits/whole grains...

 

Tara

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It was a college class. My draft was essentially turned in as the final paper. It taught me more about attention to detail and taking responsibility for my mistakes than any "A" would have.

 

I'm glad you took it that way. :001_smile: I see it as more of the professor being a Type A, anal retentive jerk. And if you knew me, you would know that I don't say that lightly at all!:glare:

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What do you remember from your pre-college education and does it affect the way you educate your children?

 

This has been an interesting thread to read through... I'm amazed at how much people remember from their early years!

 

I was raised by a single mom/nomad - she dealt with problems by moving :001_huh:. So much of my academic experience (especially the early years) is a bit blurry. We moved to Germany at the end of my 1st grade year' date=' so not only did I have another school to contend with but had to learn a new language...

 

[b']K-1st -[/b] I don't remember much from my Kindergarten year (in Omaha, NE where I was born) or 1st grade (at three different schools - first in Omaha and then two different schools in Wichita, KS). I vaguely remember enjoying K but my first grade year was terribly confusing with switching schools three times. I just remember feeling lost and no one (not even my mom) was able to really help me.

 

1st-4th - We moved to Freiburg, Germany (to be near my mom's family - she was born in Germany but is now a U.S. citizen) at the end of 1st grade. I had to repeat 1st grade at a German school because I didn't speak the language. I spoke no German - and my teacher spoke only very little English. It was a very painful year and I remember nothing about what I learned - just remember standing around alone at recess feeling like all the German kids were laughing at me. But I learned the language quickly. We moved to a different part of town and I enrolled at a different school for 2nd grade. I remember riding to school on my bike each day with my neighborhood friends. Our teachers were tough ladies - I still remember my main teacher, Frau Jordy (a rotund, elderly lady with a perpetual stern look on her face). She would smack kids over the head with books and rap our knuckles with a ruler if we got answers wrong. All I remember from 2nd-4th grade was working hard, enjoying my German grammar classes (I not only learned the language - I mastered it!) and I have lots of fun memories with my school friends (but interestingly, they're not school-related).

 

5th-8th grade - I attended a German "Gymnasium" (the German school system is divided into three different "tracks" and your track is determined by your performance in 1st-4th grade - Gymnasium is the most challenging track which goes through 13th grade and qualifies for college credit in the U.S.). My Gymnasium was unique in that it was a dual-language school - German/French. Half of our classes were taught in German and half in French - with the goal being fluency in our non-native language by graduation. The academics were so tough and competitive that several of my classmates contemplated (and some attempted) suicide. I still recall one suicide attempt in particular in 5th grade that really shook all of us up. My main memory from these years was trying to impress a particularly tough German class teacher. I recall the day we got our report cards (I think it was at the end of 6th grade and this teacher happened to be the one passing out our report cards) - I got mine and opened it up, and I got a perfect grade in German class (a "10" on a scale of 1-10). I started crying because I was just so overwhelmed and I still remember her talking to me in front of the class and saying "What?? Why are you crying?" and I said "Because I'm so happy!!" and she just smiled. That was the first time she smiled at me in TWO YEARS and I just remember feeling so proud of my hard work and accomplishment in that class. My 7th grade year was awful because of bullying by a group of former friends (long story). In 8th grade, we moved again (to another German town) and I went to a different school. I remember almost nothing from that year, other than feeling terribly lost and confused.

 

9-12th grade - We moved (yet again) before the start of my 9th grade year. Mannheim (the town we moved to) had a private American high school that had been started up by U.S. missionaries a year or so earlier. Since I had always retained my U.S. citizenship and knew that I wanted to move back to the U.S. some day, we decided that I would attend the American high school to ease that transition. Since we were civilians, it was actually cheaper to attend this private school than the U.S. military school (D.O.D.D.S.) which was nearby. So...with my German accent (yes, I used to speak English with a German accent!) I began my freshman year at this high school that had only 10 students total! It was such a wonderful change from my previous year. In many of my classes, I had private 1:1 instruction (because of the size of the school) and much of the learning was self-paced, as long as I completed the material by the end of the year. I really flourished at this school and learned a lot. I was able to skip my 10th grade year (because of the classes I had already taken within the German school system) so I made up for having to repeat 1st grade back when we first arrived in Germany. My memories of that time are quite fond - both in and out of school - and I often look back on those years as some of the happiest years of my life.

 

How does this affect the way I educate my children?

 

Well, I never saw myself as a homeschooler - my mom had been saying to me (almost from the time my first child was born) that I should homeschool, and I always said "Nah, that's not for me." So, unlike some others who have replied, my experience did not "drive" me to homeschool. We homeschool for other reasons (different story for a different thread).

 

The takeaways from my academic experience that I'd like to apply to my homeschooling are:

- to provide a stable environment for my kids (both in terms of allowing them to enjoy growing up in one place and having a stable academic environment - neither of which I ever really had)

- to challenge them appropriately - but not so much that it becomes overwhelming (a fine balance!)

- to expose them broadly to different cultures - although my upbringing wasn't easy (we moved a lot and I feel like I was always "the new kid"), I greatly benefitted from being able to travel all over Europe as a child and a teen (we often drove over to France or Switzerland just for the afternoon!). I think there's great value in being exposed to, understanding, and appreciating other cultures - and I hope to provide that for my kids.

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K--I went to 2 different schools w/ 3 different teachers. There was lots of placement testing, the first teacher would read to us (circle time), which I loved. For the last school, we had to bring things to school for show & tell which started w/ whatever the letter of the week was. I thought this was really cool at first, and wandered around the house trying to figure out how to bring the water heater to school. Eventually, I realized I hated learning the alphabet when I could already read.

 

1--Wonderful teacher: Mrs. Matula. She wanted periods big enough to SEE. We watched the teacher go up in the spaceship--The Challenger. And it broke my heart when it exploded. I wrote a story about a dog, worked on it for WEEKS, never finished it, & she was so kind about it--she put "to be continued" at the end.

 

2--Sweet teacher, not so smart: Mrs. MacDonald. Read Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle to us, & for that I'm forever grateful. Wouldn't let us do homework ahead of time at school if we finished early. Lots of sitting & waiting. Finally started multiplication at the end of the year; thought it was fun; was disappointed we only went to 5x5.

 

3--Horrible teacher; counted math problems wrong if there were more (or less) than 4 to a row. I spelled things wrong on purpose if there wasn't a sentence to clarify (because I was bored); I did math problems wrong on purpose if there wasn't a sign--who gives a whole page of multiplication problems w/out saying, "Multiply"? I added. Learned to use the library, encyclopedias. Had a student teacher who saved me for a few weeks with her guitar, kindness, and "Coke Song."

 

4--Mrs. Frisby--no personality--Tx history, chili cook-off, a kid from Pennsylvania recited "Never Eat Soggy Waffles" for the order of directions on the map, & I still use that to this day. Began "algebra" & learning Logos programming.

 

5--Mrs. Johnson--favorite teacher--learned to write. (This was a big deal.) Read A Wrinkle in Time to us, told us she registered at hotels as H. Johnson so no one would know that a female was staying there alone. Have never had an opportunity to use that piece of advice.

 

6--Horrible year, but I remember it. Got dropped from Adv Math because I thought it would be clever to use decimals instead of r's for remainders on a test on long division. Oops. Berlin Wall felll. Won several races in PE. Life science, made models of cells, etc. Wrote a nonfiction story about Ancient Egypt, read really thought-provoking sci-fi about government-suppression of intelligence, got back into Adv Math, but had by then missed too much to keep up.

 

7--Played stock market in one class, woodshop, math--I forget what it's called, but when you count on different systems--like binary, etc. Took me forever to understand that, but once I did, I began teaching it to kids I'd babysit. Mean, huh? My parents divorced that yr, & I was in two different schools, so there's some fuzziness--I know we had to catch bugs in science & classify them. I offered to do another project instead. The teacher said no, & the 5 (out of 25) I'd caught so far got thrown out by the janitor or something. I failed my first class ever. I also failed to order a shark to dissect. (She told us we could order sm, med, or large w/ babies, but never that we HAD to order one at all. Boy was she mad on dissecting day when she asked me where my shark was, & I didn't have one. You'd think she'd have noticed sooner.)

 

8--Watched Dead Poet's Society in English & loved it. Wrote short journal entries responding to famous quotes & loved that kind of thinking & analysis. Made a movie about gangsters (1920s). Still bumping in & out of adv math, only now it's Algebra, & my favorite grmother's dying. Some horrible experiment w/ taking off one shoe, mixing them in a pile, & then trying to find your own. That's when I found out there was a difference between Keds & WM.

 

9--Private school--geometry w/out a teacher, Spanish w/out a teacher (I tutored, though, when I discovered the patterns verbs followed), Am Hist--I did projects on JFK, Thomas Jefferson, & 3 other less cool presidents; Biology--teacher allergic to formaldahyde, so I still didn't have to dissect anything; did a project on cows; read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock for the first time & loved the teacher who introduced it.

 

10--Remnants of private school after teachers left, some homeschooling myself. Mom tried to make me read Great Expectations, but having not read it herself & working FT, she had no idea what to tell me to do, & it eventually just disappeared. I did paces (horrible), read biographies of missionaries (fine, but not lit), took chemistry from a chemist friend (there's a unit of measurement that looks like a lot of things but is really just one, like a hamburger is made up of a lot of things but is one unit. What that unit is, I can't remember, but I know it when I see it--the whole thing was really a disaster, though); alg II on my own; health in one night, w/ my little sister grading my paces; a computer class w/ 7th graders.

 

11/12--AP English--Huck Finn, The Sound & the Fury, Much Ado, Hamlet (only Shakespeare I read in class before college), GT English--Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Stars My Destination; Honors Chemistry--the science made sense, but I couldn't do the math & the science together; Trig/Precal--ugh. I couldn't even figure out the calculator; Spanish--we watched Little Mermaid; Creative Writing--we wrote stupid stuff, & the teacher said up front on day 1 she didn't like me or people like me :confused:; Theater--an adv student came in & did a monologue from The Wizard of Oz that was pure genius; I played the VP in The Mouse that Roared or something like that. Didn't like it. Advertising Design: finally learned to type, but got transferred out before I got to write an ad

 

 

 

Hsing: I always knew I wanted to hs. Mom tried it in the early 80s & got scared out of it by the local school district. The biggest thing about ps for me was the boredom. Private school was worse. Next to that was the condescension of adults twd kids. I'm short, you know, not deaf or stupid.

 

So w/ my dc...when there's down time, they're free to read or play w/ sibs. Esp w/ math, I like that we can slow down/speed up w/out having to choose "adv math" or "regular" (ie, too hard, or too boring). Great stories mattered more than I realized. Thinking & talking are the main things that seem to stick. Jr high isn't a waste, but it is a different kind of time. Kids listen most to people who clearly care for them.

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Kindergarten: I was excited to go to Kindergarten. I wanted to learn how to read and my mother said I would learn when I went to school. I remember waiting a long time, but I wasn't taught to read (it was probably only a couple days) and I asked the teacher when she would teach me to read. She laughed and told me I wasn't old enough and couldn't learn to read until first grade. I remember feeling very sad and thinking school was a waste of time if I couldn't learn to read. I did like painting, though, and I got to glue a little plastic phone onto my name card when I memorized my phone number.

 

First Grade: I learned to read and won the class reading contest. My teacher told my mother to only send in the list of books I read once per week instead of every day because there were too many books. She stopped marking my chart because she said it would make the other kids feel bad that they weren't reading as many books as me. I remember choosing to be the ball monitor when it was my choice to pick which monitor to be for the week. It was when I learned about being left out because evidently the girls all played with the jump rope, not the ball, so no girls played with me for the entire week at recess. I never got to be the jump rope monitor because it was always picked before it was my turn again.

 

4th grade: I as in a split 3rd-4th class. I read the class assignments on the board and finished the day's work before lunch, then almost daily asked to go home because I was done with school. My teacher told me I should do my work slower. This is the year I decided school was a waste of time because I got done before lunch, but had to stay until school ended.

 

8th-9th grade - I had an incredible history teacher - Mr. Shopes - who taught history creatively. We didn't just read the textbook. We read real books. I remember wondering if he would get fired because he let us read real books in class. We played simulation games to learn about the medieval times (the games was Land Castle Blood) and the U.S. Railroad vs farmers. We studied people from the renaissance time, and put on our own Renaissance Faire for the school, then used the money we raised to go to the real Renaissance Faire as a field trip. This is when I discovered history was actually interesting, and I enjoyed it.

 

High school: The high school Honors and AP history teachers did their best to destroy all interest I had developed in history. My English teachers were excellent and they encouraged my interest in writing. We had to write in a journal for the first 10 minutes of each English class. It was not graded, only checked to see that it had been done. We had to turn in at a one page writing assignment every Wednesday. It could be anything. I did very poorly on the grammar textbook (I didn't care what the name of the grammatical thing was, but I could identify incorrect grammar and correct it, though.) I spent my time in other classes writing stories to turn in on Wednesdays, and usually received double or triple points, so I ended up with more points in the class than were possible, even though I usually just failed the grammar assignments because I couldn't name the grammatical problem. I couldn't convince the teacher that being able to identify poor grammar and fix it was good enough. No, for some reason she valued knowing the name of the grammatical problem more. I got chicken pox and did two weeks worth of school work in a few days. That's when I made the decision that school truly was a waste of time and I begged to go to school on Mondays to get my assignments, work at home all week, then turn them in on Fridays and take any tests. My mother told me that was impossible because no one could ever get educated that way and it would be against the law. I determined that I would never make my dc go through what I went through in school. I was bored, and hated school. I knew there had to be a better way to learn, but didn't know what it could be.

 

Application to hsing: First, I realized that hsing was the answer I had looked for when I was young. My dc have thrived with hsing. I have taught using real books instead of texts whenever possible because I realized that they made history and other subjects far more interesting. I also had my dc doing almost daily 10 minute writing in journals once they read and could write.

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