My initiation into the world of education began in an unorthodox way. My family had just moved to our new home near Verona in Augusta County, and my mother learned I would attend the school at Mt. Sidney, a few miles north of our home. My parents believed in training children to be independent, and since my father was busy settling our family after our recent move, and my mother had a three-year-old and a toddler to care for, I would ride the bus to school unescorted.
My mother pinned my birth certificate to the front of my new cotton dress, advised me to find a seat near the front of the classroom so I wouldn’t get into trouble, kissed me goodbye and helped me onto the bus. The only element that ancient contraption had in common with school buses of today was the color yellow. The flat roof sagged, the headlights resembled two enormous bug eyes and the rumble could be heard before the bus came into sight.
There were no individual seats. Instead, long benches ran down the middle of the bus and on each side. Rowdy boys chose to sit in the middle and push one another as the bus rounded a curve. A kind teenager seated me with her on the side, and I sat motionless, absorbing the strangeness and feeling as if this were a dream from which I would wake any moment.
The kind teenager took me to my classroom. I later learned that the first floor had two grades to each of three rooms – first and second, third and fourth, and fifth and sixth. The other room was the office and workroom for teachers. Seventh through tenth grades went up the stairs for classes. I thought that was why they were called “high school.”
Remembering my mother’s advice, I eased into a desk directly in front of the teacher’s desk. My first mistake! School had actually started a day or two earlier and the seat was already claimed. I learned of it when a boy pushed me out onto the freshly oiled floor. The lovely lady who was to be my teacher came to my rescue, scolded the boy and tried to remove the oily stain from my new dress. I think I know why the boy was seated directly in front of her desk.
One would think such a rough initiation would result in a strong dislike of school. Not so. I loved the experience from that first day forward. I can still smell the new crayons and the peppermint paste Miss Stuart made at home so that we could paste cut outs from the Sears catalog for our alphabet books. I watched her make copies of worksheets using a tray of gelatin to absorb the purple ink of the master. Then she pressed sheets of white paper, one by one against the gelatin, and peeled them off, revealing a perfect copy, as if by magic.
I loved eating in the basement cafeteria, where we bought vegetable soup or hot dogs for a dime. Some children brought potatoes or other vegetables to barter for their lunches. After lunch we were free to play – hopscotch, jump rope, or jacks. As we advanced to upper grades, we also had supervised physical education – exercises such as jumping jacks or climbing a rope suspended from a maple tree, and games – dodge ball and softball.
During my first year of school, I decided I wanted to be a teacher like my idol, Miss Stuart. She let me help other children in the class and at the close of the year, she said my best friend and I had learned everything she taught the second grade so we were promoted to third grade. One of the advantages of combining two grades is the ability to allow students to progress at their own rate. This was a key element of the Montessori Method I was to use many years later.
Looking back at my experience that first day of school, I realize how harsh it now seems. But I do believe it helped me to become independent and rely on myself in new situations. I took each of my three children to school on their first days, and I kept informed of their progress and needs, but I encouraged them to forge their own way through the educational maze. I believe we do our children an injustice if we allow them to depend on us too much. Independence and self reliance are keys to success. I learned that on my first day of school in 1939.
By Mary Jo Shannon [email protected]