Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Seventy Degrees Today!

Hi everybody,

Spoke with Jeff this morning and he told me that my last post had crazy formatting and big fonts so it looked like I was yelling at you! That is so weird, because the post and text look normal on my laptop view of the blog. Sorry about that, I didn't intend to have crazy-looking fonts, some formatting code must have been embedded by mistake. So glad to hear from some of you that you still enjoy the blog. So send some news, photos, etc. about yourselves so you won't have to listen to just my point of view. Thanks to Don for the funny video featuring Bailey the snow-loving dog.

This morning one of my elementary school classmates from St.Mark's stopped in to buy bagels for her Dad. Barb and I got laughing about how times have changed. We had 52 kids in our class (yes I mean 52 in 1 classroom with 1 teacher), 208 kids in our grade with just four teachers, usually nuns. We didn't change classes until 5th grade. When it was time for art, we just took the crayons out of our desk and stayed put. When it was time for lunch, we got our lunches from the cloak room, bought milk for a nickel and ate....at our desks. For recess, we could run around the paved parking lots which resulted in frequent skinned knees. Music class consisted of singing as Sr. Benetia played the piano, singing such classics as "Oh, Dem Golden Slippers". Didn't even get a gyn teacher until 6th grade. For that, we got to go to the auditorium and do sit-ups and jumping jacks. Girls got to wear shorts to gym....under their plaid uniforms. (At least Mr. Misculinik was the first man we'd seen at school besides the priests, and he was cute) Best of all, when we were really, really good, the nuns would LET us go to the convent...and wash their window screens or woodwork! Yet somehow we all learned to read and add and spell without anyone even paying us to pass those Iowa Basic Standardized Tests!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Humm I went to Catholic school but not St Marks and that sounds a lot like my childhood. Although the best thing about 5th grade was that you got to wear a plaid skirt rather then a plaid jumper and you "looked all grown up".
Although we had about 30 kids in my classes. I think I am still afraid of Sr. Mary Vera.

Anonymous said...

We didn't get to trade the plaid jumper for the plaid skirt until 7th grade. And I am still afraid of Sr. Trinita, who was barely 5 feet tall and who earned the nickname of "Sr. Tornado".