Elementary, My Dear Broken Girl

I forget what I was taught. I only remember what I have learnt.
~Patrick White

Kids can be cruel. Kids in parochial school are downright vicious. There is a certain mentality that sets in when you attend private school. Now, parents send their kids to these schools so they gain a good Christian education. They want to keep them safe and separated from the ‘dangers’ of public school. Parents, let me tell you something: most wholesome girls and boys who attend these schools are worse than their public school counterparts. They have more to rebel against.

Ok, ok, I’ll back off a bit. Maybe it’s not most private schoolers, just the ones I went to elementary school with. I can’t really say that’s completely true either. I just have really bad memories from preschool through fifth grade. Actually, Preschool and Kindergarten weren’t so bad, but once nap time was taken out of the curriculum things went downhill.

Please keep in mind this was a small school. I had about ten or eleven classmates and very rarely were they different from one year to the next. Grades were grouped together in the same room: First with Second, Fourth with Fifth, and Seventh with Eighth. I don’t know why Third and Sixth were lucky enough for their own rooms. Although, Fifth graders did go to the Sixth grade classroom once or twice a week for Catechism.

I had the same first grade teacher that my mom and sister had. I think she was still teaching fifteen years after I had her.

Things weren’t smiles and cookies or rainbows and ponies for me First through Third grade. I had managed to become the target of one malicious little boy who teased me constantly. My parents went so far as to make the school change my role in the play from a cow to a sheep so I wouldn’t have to sit next to him.

I later found out just how hard and disturbing that boy’s life was. I can almost forgive him. What he did to me was nothing compared to what he was dealing with at home. He switched schools and I was free from him come Fourth grade.

Probably a good thing because I don’t know if I could have handled him and the Teacher From Hell.

I want to make it clear this was a Lutheran school not a Catholic school. Corporal punishment was supposedly not acceptable. Yes, I’m aware that’s stereotyping but when I explain the next two school years of my life I want the distinction made.

I had the same teacher for those two years. My academics went downhill thanks to her. Honestly, I was not a bad kit. I was trying to be the good girl that I was brainwashed to be. This woman did not like me. I was constantly sent into the hall for literally hours of the school day.

Those hallway stints are what started a lot of my issues. I found out it is not possible for a nine year old to break her own ankle with her bare hands. I was trying anything to be sent home. Broken bones seemed like as good an excuse as any. I never succeeded in that. As far as I know I’ve never broken anything. I also started cutting at this time. I think that’s best discussed on its own. There are too many intricacies to a person’s mind to group it with my school days.

The isolation of the hall was compounded by the teaching structure. Instead of teaching everyone at one pace, this teacher decided to do Math on an individual basis. I fell far behind any group. I was lost and there were days that she forgot to give me assignments. Well at the end of the day, we were to show her our list of homework assignments. I would be yelled at for not writing down and when I told her she hadn’t given me one, I was informed that it was my responsibility to get her to do her job. (I have a deep set problem that I still deal with. I tend to take responsibility for things that I did not do or could not help.)

My parents spoke with her, the Principal, and the Pastors. Everyone not related to me sided with her. The Pastors came out to my house and reviewed my past and present assignments and still could not think of a good solution.

After the teacher started throwing things at me my parents had had enough. I mean it: she threw erasers, tape, gloves and a wide variety of things at me. So I finished off the year and was shipped to the supposedly evil Public School for Sixth Grade.