I went to a very rigid elementary school. If you know my family, you can easily imagine that we would all chafe against it, but it was the only game in town. My father was a clinical psychologist with progressive ideas about education and child development. My mother had been a music teacher before I was born, and her ideas were equally child-centered. I am very much their daughter.
When I was in first grade, one of the morning routines involved copying writing from the blackboard. I remember the sentences as completely uninspiring, such as: “It is fall. The leaves are many colors.” I hated copying from the board. It was grueling work. It takes a long time for a six year old to copy that many words, forming the letters correctly, so that they touched, but didn’t cross, the solid and dotted lines, as appropriate. But it wasn’t primarily the drudgery I objected to; I wanted to do my own writing.
Brief aside: I loved my first grade teacher, Miss Brooks. I will probably write a post about her, and yes, I will title it, “My Miss Brooks.” But in this scenario, she represented the rigidity of the system.
After weeks of complaining to my parents, my mother met with Miss Brooks to discuss letting me do my own writing. Miss Brooks told my mother that the reason we had to copy from the board every day was to develop eye-hand coordination. The second grade teachers had complained that their students lacked the eye-hand coordination to copy from the board, so we first graders were getting in shape for second grade. It had nothing to do with developing writing skills or with fostering a love of writing.
My mom managed to negotiate a deal in which Miss Brooks would allow me to do my own writing once a week as a substitute for copying from the board. Two of my compositions hung on the kitchen bulletin board for years. They are now preserved in a photo album somewhere in my mother’s house. Until she finds them and sends me photos of them, I will transcribe them here from memory, complete with creative spelling.
My grandmo and grandpo didn’t come this year. I wish that they would come.
My sister Sephrah has cirly hair, she is qute and I love her.
Miss Brooks corrected my spelling errors. She included an explanation on the second piece that qu makes the /kw/ sound. That was an example of relevant instruction. Imagine how much more I could have learned about language and writing if I had been able to write something meaningful every day!
Incidentally, my mother, who is known for saving everything, never saved the writing I copied from the board.
Lily
Your story brought back my fondest childhood memories of similar experiences. My mom was a teacher too and she made me copy Chinese characters from books before I started kindergarten. I never really got creative with writing but I did almost copy a whole book in English when I was learning English. I definitely dreaded the drudgery too but, in some ways, it kinda helped me with my ability to focus and fortify memories of those words I copied — beyond rote memory. So glad to read this story that triggered such fond memories of mine. Keep on writing, Jesse!
Seph
Jessie,
Imagine if Spelling my name correctly were one of the assignments!
I am now going to attribute my negotiating skills to mom.
Kimiyo Schau
Absolutely, a beautiful piece of writing, Jessie! I am glad you selected a teaching career afterwards. The episode reminded me of our notorious English education back then in Japan. We all had to use Ministry of Education certified English language textbooks at school and the very first English sentence we, as 7th graders, had to memorize was, always “This is a pen.” You know, how many of us in the entire world would say this in real situations, unless you were seeing someone who skewered a piece of meat with a pen for broiling!!!?? This education produced many Japanese people who can not speak English beyond, “This is a pen.” After decades of “This is a pen” style English education, the ministry and some smart educators finally realized what they were doing was wrong. But at least for me, my English learning started that way. I copied, “This is a pen.” five times on my notebook, as my Japanese English teacher told us to do so at the very first English class. I think I have come a long way. I am glad I was able to read this. Thank you, Jessie!
Len Podis
Thanks, Jessie! My experiences with writing in early elementary school were similar to yours. However it seemed that my work was always “messy”–I guess I lacked that vaunted hand-eye coordination, and I always felt inadequate when it was time to write. Kimiyo’s focus on the pen reminds that we had to buy a special, oddly-shaped ball point pen made by the Zaner-Bloser Co. (I just googled them, and they are apparently still in business, offering schools their own system for teaching literacy.) My first grade teacher, Miss Holmes, was a rather dour, hard-boiled character who prided herself on running a tight ship. I do recall once raising my hand and telling her that I didn’t feel well and needed to go to the bathroom. She came over to my desk, regarded me suspiciously, and said that I seemed fine and should wait until the lunch break to be excused. Suddenly I threw up rather violently, all over her and my desk. I see that I have I have digressed from the topic of writing here, but my memories of first grade are apparently still strong after all these years. Thanks for sharing your experiences!
Dina Towbin
Jessie,
Thanks for sharing a wonderful story from your childhood. I don’t remember writing so much in first grade, but I remember a reading contest in second grade where we each had our name on a paper “pouch” on a paper kangaroo on the wall. We had to write the name of each book we read on a slip of paper and put it in the pouch. My pouch runneth over and I won the contest! I was so happy. I loved my teacher. As a reward, I got to spend an afternoon at my teacher’s house, Mrs. Hornbeck. I think we baked cookies or something. Can you imagine that happening nowadays (pre-pandemic)? She gave me a teacher’s roll book which I treasured for a long time. I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. Keep those stories comin’! They are great.