Second Grade

This morning I watched a video on YouTube that made me smile and it brought a tear to my eye at the end.  The video is at the end of this blog post - it will make you smile too - not sure about the teary-eyed part... guess it depends on your hormone levels, feelings about education, love for kids, compulsion toward social justice, etc.  Let's face it, tears are more complicated than smiles.

Any way, this video made me think back to my second grade year.  Second grade was the year that my family moved across the country, so I started out in one school and then transferred to another mid-year.  I have more memories from 2nd grade (good and bad) than any other year in elementary school.  In 2nd grade I...

• Threw up in class... and, sadly, down the hall on the way to the nurse's office.  Then I had to go back and sit at my desk in class until my mom came to pick me up.  I can still remember the disgusted stares of the other 2nd graders as I came back in the room to wait while the janitor cleaned up the mess I'd made.  ugh.
• Participated in my first school-wide track meet.  GLORY!!!  I didn't realize until 3rd grade that everyone got ribbons at the track meet, I sure thought I was big stuff coming home with all those ribbons.  The best part about the elementary school track meet was the snacks that the moms brought.  Jello jigglers were my fav.
• Went swimming in P.E.  The school I went to had an olympic -size swimming pool, so all of the P.E. classes in elementary and middle school had a swimming unit during the year.  It felt strange to change out of my school clothes and into a swimsuit in the locker room during the middle of the day.  I remember walking out of the locker room and into the pool area in my little size 7, ruffled swimsuit and thinking that the pool looked HUGE to me and the deep end was SO DEEP.  The first day of the swim unit, everyone had to try to swim the length of the pool.  Those who didn't make it across without flailing or holding on to the side would spend the duration of the swimming unit in the kiddy pool.  Let's just say for one day, I made a point to "forget" that I knew how to swim. That kiddy pool looked a whole lot safer...and more shallow.
• I learned that raising one's middle finger was inappropriate.  During second grade, we frequently split up into reading groups by ability level for different activities.  One day I remember reading aloud to my small group and putting up only my middle finger to follow along with the words on the page.  My small group buddies were appalled.  One of them quietly whispered to me, "That is a bad finger!"  BAFFLED, I put it down and tried using my index finger from then on.  
• I found that school could be both challenging AND fun.  Kindergarten had been fun... singing songs, playing with toys, baking brownies, making crafts, just plain fun.  First grade was torture.  I was shocked after a cushy year in kindergarten to find that in first grade you had to do hard things... a lot and repeatedly.  Second grade was my saving grace.  I was in a huge classroom that was actually two 2nd grade classrooms put together with a teacher work station in the middle.  The two classes had two different teachers (Mrs. Roberts and Mrs. Dewey), but would work cooperatively at times too.  I knew it was going to be fun when I saw that they had a huge picture of R2D2 from Star Wars on the door to the classroom.  (Roberts - 2nd, Dewey - 2nd was shortened as R2D2).  The teachers were loud and a bit irreverent and they were having fun, so we had fun too, and it was easier to do hard things as a result.
• I figured out that we were growing up and could do big things. My teachers would routinely challenge us to do more than the textbooks asked for.  If we could spell every word perfectly on the spelling list, they would keep giving us harder and harder words until it was a challenge.  One girl in my class, Melissa, kept spelling harder and harder words until they ran out of words to give her.  So they gave her a made up word from the movie Mary Poppins to spell. You can probably figure out which one.  :)  

Turns out, in other countries, just saying that word is hard, let alone spelling it.  Enjoy!

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