Report Card Time

I spent my first 8 years at St. Justin Martyr School. It was in that big red brick building that I learned to read, write and pretend that I could do math. Amazing in a class of 66 kids with no teachers aide to learn those skills. I love to read, and obviously think I'm adequate at writing. But the math.......... well, in a crowd of 66 kids, some things are pretty easy to hide. And my math problem was one of those things best ignored. 

Amazingly, there were nearly 900 kids in my school, and a small staff of nuns and lay teachers that did a good job at keeping pandemonium at bay. It was there that I learned it's not a "bathroom" but a "lavatory". Not a "water fountain" but a "bubbler". And the "gym" was called "the hall". I could never figure out why there were never any science classes in the lav, no bubbles in the drinking fountain, and the gym was just a great big room with no halls in it. Maybe math wasn't my only problem.

I also learned a lot about what really made a teachers life difficult beyond the fact that they had to face a horde of children every morning. In 5th grade, I had a teacher that would get so frustrated with an out of control classroom, she'd stand at the front and scream "YOU IMPUDENT BOOBS!!!" at the top of her lungs. We were 10. And yes, she scared the junk out of me. In second grade we had a nun that threw chalk, erasers, and collegiate dictionaries when she got mad. I developed my ninja like reflexes in that class!! Another teacher, who also happened to be a nun, had an overabundance of spit, evidently, because when you had to sit in the front of the class, it was literally the "splash zone". Not all the nuns were bad. And not all the lay teachers were good. There was an equal mix of strong and weak teachers just like in any school.

 But I think one of the favorite times for all the teachers was report card day. It was the one day in the quarter that they actually got a break. Report cards didn't get mailed home, nor were they just given to us to take home. Our report cards were actually handed out with great gravity and ceremony.

On report card day, one of the priests from the rectory next door would come into the classroom and all the kids would immediately fall silent. It was usually Father O'Neil and he had a visage that scared even some adults. He was tall, stern, and always had a red face that made him look as if he was nearing spontaneous combustion. The long wool robe probably accounted for that. It was southern California and we ALL wore wool. Even the priests. But I think he kind of liked his "scary self" though. It made classes very easy to control. 

Father O'Neil would sit in a chair at the front of the room, and one by one, us kids would go stand in front of him. He would read the name on the front of the report card and look us in the eye. I went there for 8 years, and he handed me my report card 32 times and never once pronounced my name correctly. Not his fault. My name is a nightmare. Especially for an Irish priest. Anyway, after reading our name, he would slowly open the card and read the grades over and decide if we needed a scolding or a pass. A harsh look brought the girls that needed it to tears. My steady 'D' in religion was a continual irritant to him. But I was able to contain myself and not blurt "WHAT!!?" as he looked up at me. I was hopeless. If anyone had told Father O'Neil that one day I would be a Bible teacher, he might have actually cracked a smile. It would have been a disbelieving one, but a smile nonetheless.

I'm glad I wasn't a boy on those report card days. Because nearly without fail, Father O'Neil would drop the report card to the floor and when the boy went to pick it up, he'd give him a swift kick in the keester. They knew it was coming and could do nothing to stop it. But even as all of that went on, the teacher sat blissfully at her desk, peacefully looking out the window, enjoying the brief break like a mini vacation. 

And when I came to you, brethren,

I did not come with superiority of speech

or of wisdom,

proclaiming to you the testimony of God.

For I determined to know nothing among you 

except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

I was with you in weakness and in fear

and in much trembling,

1 Cor. 2:1-3

In between dodging flying objects in 2nd grade, I actually made my "first holy communion"

4th grade and under the tutelage of a wonderful teacher

First day of 6th grade with little brother, Bunns. He was just starting his educational career

My other projects

Learning Polish

I went to school for the first time as a 5 year old, when my mom packed me up in the Rambler station wagon and delivered me to Francis Scott Key School  to meet my teacher, Miss Hackamack. She was really pretty, and excellently and dutifully oversaw our half day plays. That's really all kindergarten was in those days. A lot of art and recess with some music thrown in. My favorite activity was painting at the big easels and in my opinion, it didn't happen often enough. To this day, I still love the smell of tempera paint.

But my first day in real school started when I was 6 years old and I entered the big brick building next door to Francis Scott Key. A large chain link fence ran the length between the two schools and each tried to pretend the other didn't exist. It was in that large brick building that I met my first real live teacher. She was wearing a long black wool garb with a huge rosary hanging from her belt and she had two points on her head. Her outfit had starched white material that totally hid her head and neck so that only her face peeked out, and she had boots on. Those outfits had to be a real drag on 90* days.

My teachers name was Sister Emmaline and she was as sweet as the day is long.......... at least for the few days that she lasted. I think Sister E was about 100 years old when the 66 children in my class showed up at her door;  most of us crying. 

One day when I walked into the classroom, Sister Emmaline was no longer there and had been replaced by a lay teacher named Mrs. VonEtchon. As soon as the bell rang, Mrs. VE proceeded to recite the litany of rules for the classroom, and then she demonstrated how quickly she could navigate all those rows of desks to take care of any infractions. I remember the wind in my hair as she sailed past me. And the sound that the pointer made when she smacked it down on some poor unsuspecting kids desk. 

The tears quickly abated under Sister Emmaline's sweetness, but all eyes overflowed under Mrs. VonEtchon's baleful glare, especially when she told us that we had ruined Sister Emmaline's health. She had steel gray hair that matched her wool jumper, crooked yellow teeth, and she wore sensible shoes. The better to catch us with, I guess. I felt really sorry for my friend Gisele, when I found out Mrs. VE was actually her grandmother.

Anyway, first grade was merely the the beginning of a  long school career under the tutelage of various and sundry nuns and lay teachers. They all had their strengths and weaknesses, and I applaud every one of them because having spent time at the front of a classroom myself, I'm not sure how it is that I not only survived as a child in such huge classes, but also learned how to read and write so well.  True, there were grueling homework sessions every night that lasted several hours each, but I still give them a lot of credit. 

Early on in my schooling, the principal, Sister Theogenia, decided that we needed foreign language classes. I would love to have been a fly on the wall in THAT faculty meeting when she informed the teachers that one more responsibility would be added to their list! But as it turned out, only a couple of the nuns would be responsible for the language classes, because only a couple of them were qualified to teach them. Sister Theogenia had decided that the most  practical language for us to learn, in Southern California, with the huge Spanish speaking population, was Polish. Yes. The nuns would be teaching us to speak Polish. 

Sister Theogenia was a thin woman, and seemed fairly intelligent and attractive  under her glasses with blue lenses. I never heard or saw her lose her cool, though she was known to drag boys down the long hallway by their ears. And it was in her infinite wisdom that Polish was the path we would take. I think it lasted a grand total of about a week. And it was the shining moment for my second language, for all I ever spoke after that was Spanglish, the tongue of SoCal survival. 

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God

with all thy heart,

and with all thy soul,

and with all thy mind,

and with all thy strength:

This is the first commandment.

Mark 12:30

Felician Sisters

Air Raids

I spent the first 8 years of my educational career in Catholic school. And the stories everyone tells are true. The nuns were an interesting lot, as were some of the "lay" teachers. I actually had a teacher in 5th grade that would stand at the front of the classroom and scream at the top of her lungs "YOU IMPUDENT B**BS!!" That was her way of correction and discipline. I'll cut her a little slack, though. There were 66 of us kids in the class and she was by herself. All day. Everyday. I think "crazy" was a part of the job description.

I'm sure some of the customs in the school I attended were very similar to any other school. Order. Keeping your desk neat. Not talking when the teacher was talking. Raising your hand. When the "raising your hand" thing became problematic, though, was when you were either: 1. sick to your stomach, or 2. had to go to the bathroom. In the case of #1, usually by the time a kid raised his or her hand, it was too late. Those are stories for another time. And in the case of #2, more often than not, the answer to a bathroom request was a resounding "no." Which made for several messes in the classroom on a regular basis. I always felt really sorry for the custodian who had to carry those bags of stuff to clean up after children. I was fascinated by how it worked, and thought it was some secret formula that only Catholics had, but I still didn't want to USE it.

We did a couple of things in Catholic school that weren't done in public school. Anytime we heard an emergency vehicle, we prayed for the person in the ambulance. It didn't really matter if it was a police car or a fire truck, we were just told to pray for the person in the ambulance. We didn't stop what we were doing to pray, it was just assumed that we would when the siren went by. Our school was on a fairly busy boulevard, so it happened quite often.

We were also taught a special greeting to be used when another teacher, nun or priest entered the classroom. Especially the principal of the school. When the dignitary entered, we were to stand immediately beside our desks and say with confidence "Praise be Jesus Christ, good morning/afternoon Sister Theogenia (or Bernardia, or whomever the principal happened to be at the time.) I'll admit to being one of the kids that changed the entire meaning of the phrase with my voice inflection, though. Depending on which word you emphasized, it became very disrespectful to the principal and to the Lord. I think my brother, Ming, started that trend.

In our school, there were never snow days, but there WERE heat days. With no air conditioning, when the temps got over about 90*, we closed the doors and went home. It usually didn't get hot enough until a little later in the day, so we only got about one of those a year, sadly. And as I walked home in that heat, I really pondered the wisdom of closing the school. Wouldn't it have been better to succumb to heat stroke where we could be tended to instead of along some sidewalk where we would dehydrate and turn to jerky before anyone found us?

But other than someone losing their lunch, or some other kind of disciplinary indiscretion, the most exciting time in school came when the air raid sirens went off. At 10:00 on the last Friday of each month, they wound up. Some days I remembered, and eagerly anticipated them. Anything to break up the monotony. But on other days, they completely took me by surprise and scared the junk out of me. At the sound of the sirens, we were taught to climb under our desks with our head on our knees and hands covering our necks. It was called "duck and cover" and we did it more often during the Cuban missile crisis. I'm not too sure what good that would have done if radiation was involved, but it was the position to be assumed, and so we assumed it, and never questioned.

It always took some time for the teacher to regain control and continue teaching after one of the drills. Understandably, with such large classes. And when a dignitary graced us with their presence while she was trying to restore order, even loud name calling couldn't accomplish the task.

Fear not, for I am with thee;

Be not dismayed, for I am thy God:

I will strengthen thee;

Yea, I will help thee;

Yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of 

My righteousness.

Isaiah 41:10

Duck and Cover