When it was time for me to enter first grade I was assigned to attend a little school in a town that was close to where we lived. This town was not the same one as on our mailing address, but the school board that made the decisions about these things enforced this rule. My mother was unhappy about this because she felt the quality of this school was inferior. I knew nothing of this unfolding drama. I just knew I was happy to be going to first grade.
I can remember the first day of first grade clearly because my sister made me cry. We were all piled together with some other kids who belonged to a friend of my mothers. This woman was driving us to school and my sister and I were in the back seat. For some reason my lunch box came open and my sister yelled at me about it, implying that as a first grader I should be able to keep my lunch box closed and since I couldn't they were going to send me to the principles office. I did not question her logic, with her being two grades ahead of me I figured she knew the laws of elementary school. I started to cry and she continued to tease me. As we got to the school my mother's friend stopped the car and turned to us saying to my sister, "Stop teasing her, you shouldn't pick on younger kids," and saying to me "Stop that crying. You better toughen up and stop believing everything your sister tells you." Normally once I started crying I would drag it out to wring every last morsel of sympathy I could get, but this woman's no nonsense approach and stern delivery stopped me in my tracks. I stopped crying immediately. "That's better," she said, and had me blow my nose. "No more crying the rest of the day," she ordered. It was nice to have such clear instruction so I followed them. No more tears for me in first grade.
First grade had a lot of attractions for me because I made friends easily and here was a new group of people for me to befriend. At the end of the first week I had many new girlfriends but more importantly, two boyfriends. One of my boyfriends was named Michael and the other was Tyrone. I liked them equally well and I thought that my having two boyfriends was perfectly fine since I had two hands and they could each hold one. They did not like me having someone else and kept petitioning me to choose between them. I ignored their complaints and played with them equally. Then one day in the second week of school I did make a choice between them.
We were playing on the playground and we decided to climb up on the jungle gym. At one end was a tall chin up bar with nothing but hard packed earth below it. Other kids were swinging out on this bar and walking hand over hand to the other side where they could climb down. As I tried it I learned something very important about myself that I had never known before. I had absolutely no athletic ability whatsoever. This came as a shock and I only realized it after I had swung myself out onto this bar. I could not let go with one hand in order to move the other hand and travel across the bar, so I just hung there like a plastic bag caught on a fence. I wanted to go back the way I came, but that way was crowded with my classmates. Tyrone was closest to me and he wanted his turn on this part of the jungle gym. He started shouting at me, "Let go!" I just hung there not able to move. He shouted again, "Let go!" and helpfully pounded on my hands. This caused me to drop like a stone to the hard earth below. I landed like a sack of potatoes and the wind was knocked out of me. As I lay there stunned my boyfriend Michael rushed over to me and put his arm around me. Tyrone gleefully swung across the bar oblivious to my plight. I turned to Michael and when I had enough breath to speak I said, "You're my only boyfriend now."
There were several trials and tribulation in first grade, but also there was a sense I didn't quite belong. The other kids seemed to need my help all the time and so I was constantly explaining things to them which got me bad marks in conduct. When the teacher read to us at story time she would ask one of us to read from the story she had chosen. The student would read a word or two until they came to a part they could not continue and she would read from then on. When she handed the book to me I was able to finish the whole book. She looked a little puzzled at me but said, "That's good dear." Our class visited the library and we were told to pick out a book and read it to the librarian. My classmates went over to the first grade section, but I ventured around reading the titles to many of the books. The librarian found me over in the third grade section looking at a book and she told me that I wouldn't like them because they were too old for me. I told her I liked the book I had picked just fine. "Oh, you think you can read it?" she scoffed, "Then come read it to me." I went over to the library table with the book and read the first chapter to her. She and my first grade teacher looked at each other. "That's fine dear," she said, but her voice sounded funny.
I thought it was strange that they seemed to find my reading as something unusual. I had been reading for as long as I could remember. My sister who was a couple of years older than me had shown me her 'See Spot Run' books one morning when I was four and I found them easy to read. That afternoon my sister announced to my father that I could read now and he said, "Okay, read to me." I had sat on his lap and read to him from the paper he was holding. Although I could not get every word, my sister had taught me phonics, so I could sound them out. He said, "Yep, you can read. Go read." And from then on I did, reading every book my sister read.
The school did find my reading unusual and they talked to my mother about it. This turned out to be the another piece of ammunition my mother needed to try and convince the school board that this school was too dumb for her daughters. She said we needed to be in advanced classes that this school did not offer. She insisted we be allowed to attend the other school. She said it was bad enough my sister had been languishing in this substandard school for her entire education career. She was not about to let me go down the same unchallenging route.
The school board continued to resist her, but this just made her more determined. She decided to schedule us a visit with our physician and have our intelligence officially tested. Dr. Pfeiffer was our childhood physician and she was a woman with a German accent, steel grey hair and a no nonsense attitude. She agreed to test our intelligence. Now, since we were so young, the intelligence test we were given was one which didn't rely on us reading anything. Instead we were asked to draw a person with as many details as possible. I can remember the test clearly. My sister and I were given a sheet of paper and some crayons. Dr. Pfeiffer said, "Cheeldren, you must draw everything zere ez on a person. Zis person must look like ze are real."
Well, if there was one thing in life I liked more than reading it was drawing. We set about drawing our pictures. I drew the head with hair, eyes, with eyebrows, the pupil and iris, eyelashes, top and bottom. I drew ears and added earrings. I drew a mouth and added teeth and a tongue. I drew the body and since it was supposed to look real I made it with round arms and legs instead of stick figures. I drew knobby knees and knobby elbows. I drew the hands with fingers and feet with toes and also the fingernails and toe nails. I drew on clothes and was concerned because with the clothes on I could not draw a navel. I started to draw some little hairs on the arms of the person. I finally couldn't think of anything else to add.
The tests seemed to cinch the deal for my mother. According to whatever chart they used to grade the intelligence test, my sister was at the top of the chart in her attention to detail, but I scored even higher than her. The school board folded like a house of cards under this new evidence and we would be allowed to transfer to the other school the next year. Meanwhile though we continued in the same school. My first grade teacher began to treat me like I was some sort of genius child. She had me read to the class during story time. When I drew a picture of horses running she had me take it to other classes to show them my artwork. It definitely went to my head. I thought that the new school was going to be great because this is how you were treated when you were smart.
First grade ended and eventually it was time to start the new school. Both my sister and I were placed in the advanced class for our grade. I started second grade in Mrs. Gartrell's class and I loved her. The thing was, she didn't treat me like my first grade teacher had treated me. First of all, she would not let me daydream and kept calling my attention to what we were studying. The lessons in her class were hard and although I excelled in reading apparently there was going to be more to school than that. I took to math like a fish out of water. There had been no math whatsoever in my first grade class and now I was expected not only to add, but to memorize addition of numbers and worse yet to subtract numbers. Gone was the feeling like a special child, now I felt like I didn't belong. I languished under this stress and I became sullen and moody. Instead of the straight A's I had been receiving, I now got only B's and horror of horrors, a C.
My sister on the other hand thrived. She finally had the challenges she deserved and excelled in her schoolwork. My mother had indeed rescued her from the drudgery of the other school and she was now growing like a plant in the sun. I, on the other hand, did not cope well. It was decided at the end of second grade that I was to be taken out of the advanced class and put in the regular class of third graders. This was yet again a change for me because it meant for the third time in as many years I had to make new friends. I could still see my old friends from the advanced class, but only at lunch time. Although nobody teased me about it I knew I had failed to live up to the expectations of the new school. My mother soothed me saying that it was because of the poor first grade class that I had not been ready for an accelerated class.
That might have been true, but I think the answer was simpler than that. Learning is not so much about intelligence as it is about being able to pay attention. The ability to learn cannot be measured by the ability to draw pictures alone. It cannot be evaluated by acquiring just one skill, such as reading. School is about learning new things and the way these things are presented sometimes conflicts with certain personalities. My first grade experience had not taught me to learn or pay attention, it had taught me to show off abilities I had already acquired. I had been able to learn things just fine on my own, but I now I was being challenged. Mrs. Gartrell expected me to pay attention and I preferred to daydream.
The third grade non-accelerated class, although it felt like a sort of punishment, had some good points as well. Being with more normal kids once again put me into a sort of limelight. I might not be able to pay attention enough to cut it with the accelerated kids, but I was the top of the heap of the regular class. In this class I could daydream and still get A's. I could practically ignore the teacher and just read the book on my own when I needed to know something. I had found that I liked to be the big fish in the small pond. Who needs to struggle for first when second place is good enough. In second place you can daydream.
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