RUNNEMEDE REMEMBERED

Growing up in a small town in Southern New Jersey


Thursday, August 30, 2007

Back to school


In earlier posts, I mentioned a few of my school experiences. This is a picture of the first school I attended, Downing school. It is the school that sits across the street from my childhood home. This, however, is the Third Avenue side of the school, and we were on the Second Avenue side.
The picture is rather old, because the windows in the school have all been replaced, and the trees are much, much larger. This picture was probably taken about the time I was going there.
See the steps on the right hand side of the picture. That's the teacher's entrance. I used to climb to the top of those steps and then jump off the side onto the ground. Quite a drop when you're only 3-1/2 feet tall!

I attended public school in Runnemede for kindergarten through eighth grade, and then high school at Triton Regional, which is located in Runnemede.

I started school in 1948 and at that time full-day kindergarten was the norm. The only difference in the kindergarten schedule and the "upper" grades schedule was that we were released at 11:30 a.m. for lunch, which gave us an hour-an-a-half to get home, get our lunch, and return to school for the afternoon session, which began at 1:00 pm. Then we were released at 3:00 p.m., which was a half-hour earlier than the rest of the classes.

School started the day after Labor Day, and ended the second Friday in June, which was followed by two weeks of Daily Vacation Bible School.

We had a 15-minute snack time around 10:15 in the morning, and we could buy milk and cookies, or bring our own snacks. Stick pretzels were a penny a piece, a 1/2 pint of milk was a nickle, and cookies were 2 cents each. I remember one of my classmates, whose name I won't mention, always threw up after he drank his milk. "He/his" is as personal as I will get on that subject. No need to embarrass him. He is still alive, and may read this. Who knows?

We did not have pre-school or nursery school in those days, and in kindergarten we started "blind" so to speak. While I knew my alphabet from the alphabet song, most children didn't. So we learned the alphabet. We learned how to hold a pencil and use it. We learned how to read phonetically, and we learned how to count to 100. We learned simple addition facts and subtraction facts. We learned to spell a few simple words.

I remember the day I had to recite the numbers from 1 to 100 and boy was I nervous! I did it though, no mistakes.

I loved reading, and made it into the "A" group -- I think it was a color, red, maybe? But I knew that it was the best group. We were the children who could read out loud without stumbling over the words. There were three reading groups in a class of 28 children. Anyway, who can forget Run, Dick, Run! See Dick run! Run, Jane, Run! See Jane run! Run, Spot, run! See Spot run! Of course, once I learned to read, I read a lot. Playing after school always included piano practice, reading some Golden book, and pushing a doll carriage, wearing my mom's high heels.

I remember one day I didn't go directly home after school because one of my classmates invited me to her house after school. I didn't tell my mom or dad I was going to her house -- she only lived two blocks away from our house -- but my mom was in a panic because I didn't come home. Since we lived across the street from the school, I should have been home at the latest at 3:05, but she found me playing in the street at my friends house around 4:00 p.m. Well, I got hugged, and kissed, and then....I got punished. In those days the only punishment that matters was getting swatted with a ruler, or wooden spoon. Yes, it hurt -- not that much, though, but it also instilled in me that there were rules and if the rules were not complied with, there would be punishment, or discomfort. Rule #1: Come directly home from school, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Mrs. Gardner was my teacher and she was such a nice lady. My sister and brother (the older one, not older than me, but the older of my two brothers) had her for their kindergarten teacher as well.

I don't remember what year they stopped the all-day kindergarten, but it was at least three years later because my sister went to full-day kindergarten.

We went to school in rain, snow, sleet, no heat in the school, no air conditioning in the school, and through measles epidemics. School was NOT closed. It wasn't until I was in 4th grade and we had a 3-foot snow fall, that the school was ever closed. Who knew there was such a thing as a snow day?

More remembrances on school another time.

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