Sixth Grade

    There were two sixth grade teachers at Boston Valley Elementary School, and I got the one that I had been terrified of since first grade. Mr. Friar. He's the one who yelled at me for not smiling when he was taking class pictures back in first grade. I'm not sure if he remembered me from then or not. Mr. Friar's reputation throughout the school was that he taught and expected grown up stuff from his students! So of course, parents loved him, and my parents, especially, would not listen to any complaints from me about him.

      Mr. Friar requested us all to have a brief-case for carrying our books and homework. And we dutifully did.

      Each year the class went on a field trip to a bank, and the kids learned how to write checks!

      For social studies, we each had to do a special project for every unit and present it to the class. I envied the kids who did those flour and salt maps – how talented they were! One project I remember doing was a handwritten story of “a day in the life of a serf girl” which I wrote out the morning it was due in school before class started – totally lame – but Mr. Friar was too busy to watch the presentations that day, putting someone else in charge who did not rat on me as to how awful my project was!

      We also had an international day wherein everyone brought in a foreign dish to sample different foods from around the world – I asked the neighbor next door who was from Hungary for a recipe, and as I recall, I took a pitcher of something to drink for the international day festivities, but I do not remember now what it was.

      There were certain positions of responsibility that some of us had. On library day, which was once a week, the kids were supposed to report to me as to whether or not they had remembered to bring their library books from home that day, and I would turn in that report to Mr. Friar. When my folks heard about this, they called me The Library Rat Fink! My response to this, even after all this time, is that I was just following orders.

      Another job I had was to sit in the Main Office of the school, at the secretary's desk, and answer the phone or take care of visitors, for 30 minutes while the secretary was at lunch. This job was shared by, I think, five girls from each sixth grade class – so our turn came up once every two weeks. I was in charge of the schedule for the girls (seems odd now to realize that only girls were chosen for this task!) - and one time while writing out the schedule and marveling at how neat my penmanship was that day, I realized that I had accidentally left out one girl's name for one rotation. I did not want to start over because the list would not be as neat the second time around, I was sure. Maybe my classmate would not notice. But of course, as her turn was coming around, and M did not see her name, she mentioned it to Mr. Friar who was quite irritated with me and ordered me to rewrite what was left of the schedule. 

      It was really not a good idea to have sixth graders sit-in for the school secretary at lunch-time – once a girl from the other class was there at the same time I was, I don't know why, but while I sat at the desk stressing over saying the right words should the telephone ring, the other girl was going through the file cabinet behind me and reading stuff about the other kids, sharing some of it with me!

      While I wanted fifth grade to move slowly, (for reasons other than liking fifth grade), I wanted sixth grade to go fast – to get through with Mr. Friar and be done with him forever. But every day seemed so slow – stressful – was that day going to be one with a lecture about how we needed to grow up – be in our face about it? He used to say it was okay to not like him at the time, because he knew we would all like him later, when we were grown and reflect on how grateful we were that he was so strict and demanding – we would wish our own kids could have him for sixth grade.

      I'm much too stubborn for that.

94 20150404 Sixth Grade