Sitting in the classroom, trying to look intelligent
So now you see that my wonderful little hamlet was swelling like a pregnant seahorse, ready to discharge hordes of baby boomers. Yipes! That ancient 40-year old school just won’t do.
So they built one kind of halfway down the hill, on a wide mesa atop the hills of my street. The kids up the big hill had to walk further, but hey, their dads all had big cars–f ’em if they can’t take a joke, right?
It just screamed ‘shiny and new’ packed with hordes of one-story imagination you see all over the country, as towns erected one-floor schools for us, America’s future. The linoleum glistened, the silver flagpole was the tallest thing we’d ever seen. No stairs, plain brick, with bright crimson doors and some shrubs struggling valiantly to grow.
Picture an upside down ‘U’. Now turn the right side up, so it’s kind of like a lightning bolt.. That was my first 7AM-3PM home. A brisk 5 or 10 minute walk from my house, surrounded by vast open fields just waiting to be trampled.
At the risk of sounding like I lived in 1875, the school had just seven classrooms—K through 6. The left side of the U was K-3, the right side 4-6 (plus a room shared by the music and art teachers). You saw the principal every day, and you knew your teacher next year and the year after that. Darkened hallways. Classrooms opened on the same vista (yes, big windows to let in the sun, as Grant said), showing a wide expanse of grass, sloping into a hill. All rooms had thick skylights, that ‘sort of’ let blurry sun in, but amplified heavy rain to air horn levels. Big hanging fluorescent lights (a new innovation for us–nobody’s house had such “new technology”) that beckoned paper airplanes.
Few distractions most of the time, but when snowflakes fell, the air sparked with visions of careening sleds and closing books. The principal walked room to room, whispering to teachers, but no fools us: we knew what he was saying. A dead giveaway was when younger kids down the hall got the news, they’d let out a yell that was probably heard in Miami. So the principal is at our door wearing a sheepish face. After that, we vibrated like corduroy-clad bees, waiting to be freed. You just know the teacher was as glad to dump us into the tundra as we were eager to confront the weather.
There was a full time school nurse in dress whites, in an office behind the principal. She had a full dentist’s chair and kiosk–all kids were required to go to brief training sessions conducted by a dentist, who explained how to brush and gave you toothpaste and toothbrush samples with animals on them. I later learned all elementary schools in the district had one.
The school had a feeble attempt at a playground—5 or 6 swings near the kindergarten, and 4 see-saws on the window side of the building. I think they chose an architect from the mental hospital. Boys always grabbed the swings, so conflicts were common. The 4th through 6th grades were up by the see-saws, so stay away from the big kids! Recess was just spent running around, in games of imagination that frequently involved boys vs. girls and ended with female tears.
A loud buzzer sounded five minutes before the start and end of the day, followed by a deafening bell/siren. No biggie, right? Well, both signals resounded from the right-side ‘U’ into my neighborhood. Mothers opened their back doors, and the sound could clearly be heard inside. Some got their cars ready, while others walked to a corner to meet their young progenies.
A large auditorium was at the base of the right-side ‘U’. The windows were two stories high and opened on the front circular driveway. It had a large wooden stage (scene of misadventures to follow) and two basketball hoops. The auditorium doubled as a gym in winter and on rainy days. All grades ate lunch together in the auditorium, with teachers patrolling like prison guards.
K-3 waited in an open area at the front of the school before 7 AM: there were doors by the Kindergarten and the hallway near the auditorium. 4-6 waited on the other side of the building, near the buzzer/bell hookup. Both areas were virtually uncovered, so rainy days found everyone huddled under small overhangs. You NEVER went in without permission; even when your kidneys were emitting air raid signals, you’d better ask before going in to the lav.