Day 308: memories from first grade

[maeve66]

Really, not many at all. I remember my teacher, Mrs. Smith. She was old (ancient in my six to seven year old eyes) with white hair. I remember it being the first time I ever witnessed a human habit I greatly dislike, of belittling your own efforts in order to elicit praise. Ooh, that made me annoyed. I wanted to respond by agreeing with the belittling, because I thought it was so false. And I remember that we were using Reading Circles, where we took turns reading aloud from, literally, the Dick and Jane books. "See Spot run. See Spot run to Dick. Dick has a bike. It is red. See Dick's red bike. See Jane. See Velvet sit. See Velvet sit by Jane." Something like that. It was driving me batshit, because I learned to read when I was three. So Mrs. Smith sent me down the hall to one of the second grade classrooms and I worked on phonetics there, which were still easy and pointless.