Elementary School and HIgh School was boring and did not teach to think for ourselves, just memorize the facts. I remember we had to draw maps of the U.S. and other countries and my geography is lousy!
Elementary School and HIgh School was boring and did not teach to think for ourselves, just memorize the facts. I remember we had to draw maps of the U.S. and other countries and my geography is lousy!
Fortunately, Mr. Field had us play "the map game" in sixth grade - one kid on either side of the map and he would say a country or a place and the first one to get it was the winner, and got to keep going till someone beat them (I was never beaten). Kids spent all kinds of extra time learning the map. He was the only one I could remember from 12 years of public school, and fortunately we got to be friends the past ten years before he died last summer at 99.
I also played a version of this game in Mr. Delponte's 6th grade class. Can't say I was never beaten, but it did turn me into a sort of map freak, with a concomitant interest in world affairs.
Teachers like that made all the difference back then. I had a 7th grade teacher, Mr. MacAleney, who paid for each of us to have the newspaper every day in class and every day we would all do the crossword puzzle together. I ran into him many years later and thanked him and told him he was the best teacher I ever had. I thought he was going to cry. I wonder if teachers are "allowed" to do things like that anymore.
My Mom had the dubious "honor" of being assigned to teach the "Package Nine" English class her second year of teaching. That was also known as "last chance English" and was packed with seniors who needed to pass the class in order to graduate. Mom taught them to read Middle English, and read Chaucer in the original. They ate it up, and for the first time in the history of "Package Nine" ALL of the seniors passed and graduated.
Those kids came to visit her after she quit teaching for 20 years (before moving out of the Rogue Valley). Two of them came to her memorial service 30 years after she quit.
Elementary School was mostly a bust for me, though I did pick up the "3Rs". Much of the history I was taught was just plain wrong, or so further studies seemed to indicate.
Fortunately my two grandmothers, both teachers, taught me phonics at age 4. My first grade class was the last class in the Denver public schools to get phonics before everything turned to "word (non) recognition" and the long slow decline in literacy created by all the edumacashunil refirmers began. The Ed.D. is a degree that should go in the garbage heap with the MBA.
I was reading before kindergarten and public school used ITA (Pitman) alphabet and spelling. I was excused from class then and allowed to read books without Pitman/ITA. For me, ITA was like having to learn s different alphabet. In Catholic school, we learned phonics, which in my view works best. I will say however, that students with reading disabilities, such as dyslexia, might require extra help to leam, and they may need tutoring to enable them to learn to read well.
I grew up in a Omaha. Our neighborhood had about 5,000 people in it and about half were Catholic. There Catholic Church had a K-8 school but most of the parents sent their kids to the public school. I'm not sure why but I do know that corporal punishment occurred in the Catholic school.
When I was in 9th grade the Catholic high schools in Omaha had a math tournament for all of the Catholic schools and one public school. Our math team from the public school won every trophy. My partner was Jewish and he proudly took the trophy home which had a statuette of Mother Mary on it and put it on their mantle. It was years later before I understood the irony of the situation.
TC, I don't know what they system is called, but I learned to read from a book called "Nose is not Toes" where one word was read and the other green. I think I was in my 5th year when my Mom (a writer, a poet, and eventually and briefly a high school English teacher before settling in as an adjunct reader and sometimes instructor at our local college) taught me to read.
I was thrilled to go to school and read, and was sorely dismayed when the only "reading" on our first day involved me being able to read an illustration sign that said "Lemonade, 5 (abbreviation of cents with the c and a line drawn through it)".
Not me. My catholic grade school the Sisters of Mercy taught us to use our reasoning and logic as our guides in life and I eventually reasoned that there wasnтАЩt a God. They found a way to expel me before graduating. IтАЩm eternally grateful for them. Wish I could give them a big hug.
Elementary School and HIgh School was boring and did not teach to think for ourselves, just memorize the facts. I remember we had to draw maps of the U.S. and other countries and my geography is lousy!
Fortunately, Mr. Field had us play "the map game" in sixth grade - one kid on either side of the map and he would say a country or a place and the first one to get it was the winner, and got to keep going till someone beat them (I was never beaten). Kids spent all kinds of extra time learning the map. He was the only one I could remember from 12 years of public school, and fortunately we got to be friends the past ten years before he died last summer at 99.
I also played a version of this game in Mr. Delponte's 6th grade class. Can't say I was never beaten, but it did turn me into a sort of map freak, with a concomitant interest in world affairs.
A legacy that lives on, past his passing.
Teachers like that made all the difference back then. I had a 7th grade teacher, Mr. MacAleney, who paid for each of us to have the newspaper every day in class and every day we would all do the crossword puzzle together. I ran into him many years later and thanked him and told him he was the best teacher I ever had. I thought he was going to cry. I wonder if teachers are "allowed" to do things like that anymore.
My Mom had the dubious "honor" of being assigned to teach the "Package Nine" English class her second year of teaching. That was also known as "last chance English" and was packed with seniors who needed to pass the class in order to graduate. Mom taught them to read Middle English, and read Chaucer in the original. They ate it up, and for the first time in the history of "Package Nine" ALL of the seniors passed and graduated.
Those kids came to visit her after she quit teaching for 20 years (before moving out of the Rogue Valley). Two of them came to her memorial service 30 years after she quit.
TC, how did you do with African countries?
Elementary School was mostly a bust for me, though I did pick up the "3Rs". Much of the history I was taught was just plain wrong, or so further studies seemed to indicate.
Fortunately my two grandmothers, both teachers, taught me phonics at age 4. My first grade class was the last class in the Denver public schools to get phonics before everything turned to "word (non) recognition" and the long slow decline in literacy created by all the edumacashunil refirmers began. The Ed.D. is a degree that should go in the garbage heap with the MBA.
I was reading before kindergarten and public school used ITA (Pitman) alphabet and spelling. I was excused from class then and allowed to read books without Pitman/ITA. For me, ITA was like having to learn s different alphabet. In Catholic school, we learned phonics, which in my view works best. I will say however, that students with reading disabilities, such as dyslexia, might require extra help to leam, and they may need tutoring to enable them to learn to read well.
I grew up in a Omaha. Our neighborhood had about 5,000 people in it and about half were Catholic. There Catholic Church had a K-8 school but most of the parents sent their kids to the public school. I'm not sure why but I do know that corporal punishment occurred in the Catholic school.
When I was in 9th grade the Catholic high schools in Omaha had a math tournament for all of the Catholic schools and one public school. Our math team from the public school won every trophy. My partner was Jewish and he proudly took the trophy home which had a statuette of Mother Mary on it and put it on their mantle. It was years later before I understood the irony of the situation.
TC, I don't know what they system is called, but I learned to read from a book called "Nose is not Toes" where one word was read and the other green. I think I was in my 5th year when my Mom (a writer, a poet, and eventually and briefly a high school English teacher before settling in as an adjunct reader and sometimes instructor at our local college) taught me to read.
I was thrilled to go to school and read, and was sorely dismayed when the only "reading" on our first day involved me being able to read an illustration sign that said "Lemonade, 5 (abbreviation of cents with the c and a line drawn through it)".
My grandmother taught me with "A boy's History of U.S. Grant" published in 1871 - with all the words broken out in syllables.
Remembering that, I think I realize how it was I got into History early on.
Not me. My catholic grade school the Sisters of Mercy taught us to use our reasoning and logic as our guides in life and I eventually reasoned that there wasnтАЩt a God. They found a way to expel me before graduating. IтАЩm eternally grateful for them. Wish I could give them a big hug.