In which I find my true home: the stage
March 19, 2012In fifth grade, we return to Good Hair. Which is all that matters, after all.
Look how happy I am! How confident! Except for the funky teeth situation, I look pretty good--as if I might just avoid those weird-looking teen years after all. I mean, how wrong can THIS go?
(Spoiler: very, very wrong.)
My fifth grade teacher was Mr. Townsend (I KNOW, I know, so many male teachers! It wasn't my doing, I swear), and he was FINE. After Mr. Klein/Klyne/Himmler, it was a relief to have a teacher who liked me. Honestly I remember very little about his teaching. What I remember from fifth grade is limited to this: my classmate Barbara getting something or other published in Kidsday--which was, OF COURSE, the kids' section of Newsday, the Long Island paper of record-- and feeling sick with envy; Mr. Townsend admonishing us, on a particularly hot day, not to fan ourselves with paper, because the act of fanning would make us even hotter (I thought this was the most insane thing I had ever heard in all my days); and performing a one-woman (one-girl?) one-act play for the entire school, in which I was a witch. (There were other acts, performed by the rest of the class, but for whatever reason I was on my own. Either I was a formidable talent, or my ego was a danger to others.) Mr. Townsend stood right in front of the stage mouthing the lines to me, so anytime I got stuck I would merely pretend to be thoughtful and look down to receive my cue. This is called acting, kids. That's a little trick used in the theater.
Next up: sixth grade. Right before the steep descent into Awkward.
How was your fifth grade year? Did you Work Well with Others?
DonorsChoose.org allows donors to directly fund projects for teachers in struggling schools. Any amount you can donate will make a huge difference for these teachers! To date we've helped fund EIGHT classroom projects. Holy cats, don't stop now! Donate any amount up to $100 and enter the match code FINSLIPPY at checkout, and your donation will be matched. Thank you!
Reader Comments (30)
Can't think of a single thing that stood out. Weird. Can't even remember my teachers name. (You did have very pretty hair in that photo--quite jealous)
I'm fairly certain, however, that I got along OK with people.
And you were in Long Island? Didn't know that. (I grew up in the Three Villages)
Fifth grade was my first year in public school. Even for a small school, everyone already had their cliques established. Luckily, my best friend had moved there a year earlier--we were reunited! It was glorious. That was the first time I rode a school bus or got school lunch.
That year we also got some version of "sex ed." It was as awkward as you'd expect. They split the class up by sex and let everyone write questions down anonymously on index cards and answer them. In retrospect, I feel kind of bad for my teacher. That must have been equally embarrassing/hilarious for her.
Fifth grade, the year we went on strike! Miss Peterson had refused the class recess (or maybe gym) because of our disruptive behavior. At lunch time a few boys decided to strike and Jerry (the same guy who kissed me in second grade) borrowed my pencil to make the sign advertising our strike. When Miss Peterson returned from lunch she took one look at our "rebellion" and went to the principal's office to recruit some backup. She was visibly distressed. The principal told us that we had better sit down and behave or we could go home and repeat fifth grade next year. I know I was in tears and feeling awful that it was my pencil that made that sign.
The thing that sticks out in my mind out the fifth grade was the axiety of the spelling test. Mr. Giles was my teacher and every week (or was it every day?) we'd have a spelling test and it was to be graded my the person sitting next to you. In my case, it was a boy named Matt. I would grade his paper and watch out of the corner of my eye for any "checks" on mine, terrified to see one. I have no idea what the punishment for a misspelled word was but it must have been bad (public humliation?) because it was the most nerve-wracking part of my day/week. One day I noticed, looking over to Matt's desk, that one of the words was misspelled. I remember asking, begging, in super hushed wispers for him to not mark it wrong, and he didn't, I was spared. Oh the relief!
I also remember Mr. Giles getting very angry with another student for acting up in class, his face was red and yelling (he had red hair and may have been Irish). Maybe that's why I was scared to misspell a word...
A fonder memory is that of Mr. Giles reading us books out loud after lunch and recess while we enjoyed chocolate milk or OJ. I really enjoyed listening to "Maniac Macgee."
The first thing that comes to mind about 5th grade is my photo. I had short yet feathered hair and wore a nice plaid button-down with a pair of... overalls. Hey, little farm boy! Despite all this, I sported a confident smile too. Must be the age. Blissful ignorance of what's to come.
My teacher was Mr. Harness. He kept a cloth handkerchief in his back pocket into which he frequently deposited coughed-up phlegm. He was a kindly teacher who taught us science and long division, except when he became angry. I remember him physically abusing two kids (boys) during that year. Whoa. He was justifiably upset, but he chose to handle things in a poorly (yet mercifully brief) way. Strangely, I was never scared of him.
This was the year I became acquainted with Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers. Remember those ooey-gooey roller ball devices? All the rage.
Also, we had moved from the idyllic semi-rural school to the hustly-bustly suburban school. Someone decided that since I moved "a lot," I must be a GYPSY. I enjoyed possessing the gypsy mystique while it lasted, but by the end of 5th grade it was gone. I guess my fair complexion and midwest accent gave me away. As not a gypsy.
P.S. You look positively beautiful in this photo!
No way! One of my teachers told us the SAME thing about fanning ourselves. I think it was in fourth grade (Ms. Mitchell!) Of course, we all thought that was insane.
The summer before 5th grade, my parents purchased a house in the suburbs of orange county. The sellers were going through a divorce, and their poor daughter, it was discovered, was to be one of my new classmates. I moved into her old bedroom, painted pink and stenciled with ballet slippers which she had only gotten to enjoy for a couple of years before her parents split. She and her best friend had written their names in the dust on the windowscreen, and it probably remains there 'till this very day.
I was The New Kid. The little girl whose home I'd (unfortunately) taken over was kind and popular and welcomed me into her circle of friends. They were all in girl scouts, so I joined girl scouts too. It was a good year, except that was probably the first time in my life I had awareness of my body shape and realized that I was the owner of a chubby belly. It's been chubby ever since.
Well, funny you should ask because I just yesterday unearthed my fifth grade class photo. I was tiny, which meant I got to stand in the middle of the front row and hold the sign. All of my other friends were wearing pretty dresses or groovy bell bottoms with matching babydoll tops, but for some reason I am wearing train-conductor striped shorts overalls with a red t-shirt, navy blue knee socks, and dirty, beat-up sneakers. (I was a bit of a tomboy, and I'm sure I believed this to be my tomboy-best.)
Other than that, strangely I have remarkably few specific memories of this year. I didn't like my teacher, Mrs. Willis, because she was ... really unattractive (I'm shallow! Don't judge me!) and not particularly interested in me. However, we got along fine, and she was better than the other fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Henry. Why, Mrs. Henry was tough on the hooligans in her class. She made them sit with a dunce cap or worse yet, she would draw a circle on the chalkboard juuuuuust higher than the hooligan's nose, and she made them stand tiptoe with their nose in the circle for the rest of the class. Sometimes she would mix it up and make them jump up and down, flapping their arms. In conclusion, Mrs. Willis' class was just fine with me.
All hail Alice's Glorious Locks! Shiny.
My fifth grade teacher was Mrs. Wayne. She looked exactly like Evillene from The Wiz. Her fingernails were the same length of each finger they exuded from. She. Was. Scary. And as tall as she was wide. She was my introduction into the topic of butt pads. Everyone said she wore butt pads. Her butt was HUGE! And it moved up and down when she walked. She seemed to like that this was an (untrue?) story about her. I still wonder. Outside of being deathly afraid of what she and her fingernails could do to me physically (have you ever seen someone w/talons try to write on the blackboard? Or someone with talons become enraged when fifth grade boys decide to play the fart game in class?), I actually enjoyed fifth grade. Mrs. Wayne liked the stories I wrote and constantly asked if I had more. I always had more. She also said she hated math and we rarely were required to do math of any sort. Yay!
(I'm the same Rebecca as above)
Wow, I don't know how I mis-remembered this, but my brother passed away that year. I thought originally that that happened in 6th grade, but no--5th grade. So actually, that was the most traumatic year of my childhood.
My teacher was really kind about it and pulled me aside when I returned to school. She told me about how she felt when her mom died. It thought it was nice that she made that effort. I was invited to one of my cool new friend's birthday parties but had to decline because I had to attend my brother's memorial service. He died in January so the second half of the school year was pretty awful.
That's a great fifth grade photo! I think I was cute up to fourth grade, and then between my teeth and hair it was pretty awful for a while.
My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Bradley, had a reputation for being mean, but most of the year she seemed pretty nice until some stupid girl told her I had been holding the boys' bathroom door closed so Kevin (who was sort of my boyfriend on and off for years) couldn't come out, which was ridiculous. I was tiny; there was no way I could have held the door closed. But instead of thinking about it in a reasonable way Mrs. Bradley just decided I was wrong and made me stay in during the next recess. ME, one of the sweetest, least troublesome kids ever. I'm still mad at her about that. The only other thing I remember about fifth grade is sitting between two boys who were cute and funny and were always throwing things over me to each other. I got very little work done.
Lovely hair, indeed!
Fifth grade was with the lovely Mrs. Naughton, who was sweet and kind. I had no friends in my class so on the first day of school when she told us to write down the names of two kids we'd like to sit with, I wrote down the names of the two prettiest girls in the class - My first brush with judging a book by its cover!
We switched classes for reading and I was in the highest class with a different teacher. In this class we all read those colored SRA cards, making our way through the box at our "own pace" and read self-selected book independently. I don't remember any instruction. The teacher would conference with us about our reading periodically. I was very shy and she intimidated me so our conferences were mostly her asking questions and me mumbling "I don't know" or "I forget." She must have thought I was an idiot and wondered how I got into the high group!
Alice, I've been amazed at how many male teachers you had. Male teachers were such an exception when I was growing up (in the 70s/80s) -- since I'm slightly younger than you, I'm wondering where all these guys came from!? My only male teacher in elementary school was in 4th grade, Mr. Setterlund.
In 5th grade we moved from northern to southern California and I was in a bilingual Spanish/English class. Since there were only about 3 non-Hispanic kids in the class, we were really the only ones 'learning' Spanish. My teacher, Mrs. Cowell, was Burmese, originally from Burma, and was very kind to me. It was a big culture shock to be in this place where it was really hot all the time and white kids were the minority. Also, the big game for girls on the playground was jumping rope, and we never played that at my old school. I had a lot of catching up to do. Mrs. Cowell let me stay after school and hang out with her. I don't remember what I did, but I remember we had a mutual fondness. This was also the year that I started going to the GATE (Gifted And Talented Education) program a couple of times a week, which was fantastic. My mother came to school and taught the GATE class how to type, for real, with our fingers on ASDF and JKL;. Thank you, Mom!
You're smiling! And that hair!! I thought maybe it was a Prell ad.
I don't have any specific memories coming to mind at the moment about 5th grade, but I, also, was told that crap about fanning yourself back in the earlier grades. Does Mythbusters have an episode about that? ; )
5th grade - 1954-'55 My dad was transferred from Denver to Seattle, landing the ever pudgier me in a new school in a new state. Mr. Mehrens was my teacher. Pez dispensers were sweeping the kid nation. And right there then I became the me I am today some 200 years later - voracious reader (that year it was Oz books, horse books, dog books), writer (that year I wrote the epic 'Art Ant Off To War'), and artist (drew like a madman). Was chosen to read 'Charlotte's Web' aloud to the class a chapter a day, the only time in my life I've ever held a crowd spellbound. Oh yes, Mr. George Mehrens holds the rank of Best Teacher I Ever Had.
I've tried and tried and tried to keep my mouth shut and not sound creepy online, but I can't any longer: In every single picture so far, you have the most amazingly beautiful eyes. Judging by your current pictures, it can't have been the photographers trick (unless you still use the same photographer? In that case, where do I go to get my picture taken?) because your eyes are still lovely.
In fifth grade I got to be the lion's tamer in our Christmas play. I liked that very much. Playing well with others? Not so sure.
Oh, you are so beautiful and sweet. You are bringing back hilarious memories of my cut throat competitive envy--although I also had serious delusions of grandeur and a firm belief in my intellectual superiority compared to EVERYONE ON EARTH.
But my hair was not at all as good as yours. Auburn hair!
Fifth grade got a real smile out of you:)
Fifth grade was TERRIBLE. Fifth grade was the beginning of middle school and all things evil. Fifth grade was when I discovered alcohol for the first time. Fifth grade is when my life was forever altered. I can't remember any of my teachers.
OMG these posts are absolutely amazing, you could fill a book with them. I would buy it and I suspect a lot of other people would too.
You were totally adorable as a kid (not saying you're not still, but you know...).
TALENT is something that no teacher managed to make you lose!
Mrs. Reitmeyer... but my grandparents taught me to call her Mrs. Wrongmeyer. I don't particularly remember why, except for that I would find things on my papers and tests that she had marked wrong that were NOT wrong and when I showed her, she would say "Oh, just take it, you got an A anyways." Fifth grade was so frustratingly easy for me... I think it was just a repeat of fourth. It was the year that I finally got moved up to advanced math. The first day of school, she gave the fifth grade math post-test and I aced it, so every day I had to walk up a huge hill to the sixth grade trailers for math class. I was finally learning new stuff... but still getting the highest grades. And too terrified to talk to anyone.
I was also hopelessly uncool, wore uniform skirts that were way too long with bike shorts underneath, and looooved baseball. Mrs. Reitmeyer liked the cute and popular girls, and I remember them staying in to eat lunch with her. I spent recess playing on the monkey bars with the other two 'smart' kids, or sitting on the tire structure with Elizabeth Crofoot, who everyone thought was in high school because she was so tall and had huge boobs.
I'll be teaching fifth grade next year. I'll try not to traumatize them.
5th grade---I, too, excelled at the art of the spelling bee. I got "capitalization" right which put me at the top of the fifth grade and onto the school bee. There, I promptly misspelled "business" and walked off stage pretty sure that the judges had gotten it wrong. Perhaps this was a sign of how business savvy I would never be.
Love these posts! Love your blog!
Fifth grade was Mrs. McCarty, who was utterly fantastic. She would hug the "problem" kids, which I'm sure you're not allowed to do now, and she was shaped roughly like Mrs. Claus only with gray hair instead of white. She didn't get mad at me when I read ahead in A Wrinkle In Time, we got to dissect owl pellets and cows' eyes in her class, and she always said such nice things. When my mom went for conferences, she told my mom that "Someday I'll say I knew that girl!". Haven't proven her right yet, but she was so, so WONDERFUL.
Good hair indeed!
5th grade was a good grade for me. I had been a bit of a loner after switching schools mid-grade-four, but in 5th grade two new girls moved in and the three of us became fast friends.
Also, I had a crush on a boy and he happened to live just down my street. I thought this was the most awesome luck in the world!
9th project funded! I've so loved your stories; I can't believe you remember so much!
5th grade. 1979-80. mr. baker. he was fabulous! truly the only decent teacher i had in the school district i lived in from K-7th. (how some of them kept tenure boggles my adult brain. i've raised 2 kids of my own and they had good teachers and very few lesser teachers, so it's not just my memory of crappy teachers...many of the adults in my life as a child were awful.) back to mr. baker - he was a lively bachelor, a former art teacher who headed his 5th grade class with joy and compassion. i learned. i looked forward to school. i missed him terribly the following year, when 6th grade found me in the class of a man who clipped his fucking toenails ON HIS DESK. see what i mean?