My
first grade teacher was Mrs. Ulrich. She was not as old as Mrs.
Endress, my kindergarten teacher. She was tall with brunette hair.
The classroom was in the new Boston Valley Elementary School, and we
were the first room down the hall after the kindergartens.
The
first kindergarten room just inside the big double doors to the
outside was room 100. I could not understand why that was room 100 –
where were all the rooms 1 through 99? They might have been down a
different hall, but as the year wore on, I came to realize there was
no such hall, and there were no rooms numbered 1 through 99. That was
confusing to me – why not have rooms numbered less than 100?
Reality
should not be that complicated!
The
first grade classroom was exciting. There was a chalkboard across the front wall with green cardboard strips above the chalkboard that started on the left with capital A and lowercase a, and went all the way through the alphabet to Big Z, little z. My heart pounded as I looked at them. I was going to learn how
to read! In those days, first grade was when kids first learned how
to read.
On
our first day of reading class, Mrs. Ulrich wrote an o on the
chalkboard, and then she put an h next to it. She said , “this
is the word oh.” I said the word in my head while looking at
it. “I'm reading!” I was ecstatic! After that came Dick Jane,
Sally, Spot, and Puff. I was cruising!
Wintertime in elementary school meant lots of boots and leggings and heavy
coats and mittens. There was a whole wall of the room dedicated to
the removal of snow gear in the mornings so they could be dry and
warm by the afternoon.
One
morning at home I put on my shoes and then my boots over my shoes.
When I got to school and took off my boots, I realized my shoes were
on the wrong feet – they looked all right (at least to me they
did). But they felt just a little bit funny. I decided to leave them
that way.
Well,
Mrs. Ulrich noticed right away that the shoes were on the
wrong feet and told me to take them off and put them on the right
feet! As I switched the shoes to their correct feet, I marveled at
how smart adults are, and I wondered if I would ever be
able to tell shoes are on the wrong feet just by looking at them?
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20150213 Oh and wrong feet
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