Moving ahead

I want to write this next blog while the zeitgeist of the nation is freshly focused on race relations and marriage equality.  I won't be talking about the latter specifically, but the supreme court just made Gay marriage the law of the land, and I wanted to give my congratulations to all my gay friends who have gained a huge victory today.  I'm so happy about that!

 But this blog is focusing on race relations.  Here is the class picture of my fifth grade year.

I am  the girl with gasses on the bottom row.  I want you to note the difference between fourth and fifth grade.  My fourth grade class was incredibly homogeneous, as white as can be.  In fifth grade, the demographic was  beginning to change,  I mentioned the the kids from the Children's home attended my grade school, and indeed I recognize at least two girls who were residents of the Home, and they are both white.  The brown faces you see where simply a reflection of the changing community.  I mention this because fifth grade was my first real experience with blatant bigotry and discrimination,  And it was perpetrated by a friend.

Just to give you some background on my understanding of race in general, I want to tell a somewhat embarrassing story.  When I was little, we had a topsy-turvy doll.  It was one of those rag dolls with a big skirt, and if you turned her upside down, she had a different head where her legs should have been.  This particular doll was a "Nannie-Nellie doll- black Mammy (I know that's not PC, but that's what it was) on one side and a little white girl on the other.  Since it was all one doll, I figured it was all one person.  I concluded that, somewhere along the line we all just turned black.  I asked my startled mom when was Grandma going to turn black.  She let me know that black people were born that way and that was the end of that particular cognitive distortion! I think that times were so segregated that the only black person I had ever seen was an elderly black man.  Thus I created that very odd delusion from my doll!

Fast forward to fifth grade.The two black girls were Tracy and Clara.  Tracy was sweet and a little quite and Clara was bold and outspoken.  While they were not part of my inner circle of friends, I always felt somewhat proprietary and protective of them.  I wanted it to be my job to make them feel part of the class.  I think they were exotic and different to me,which isn't necessarily very sensitive or flattering, but it was better then hostility displayed by some of the other kids.

I was fairly popular and a leader at Harrison school.  Teachers liked me and kids liked me so I had no problems standing up for myself.  

My teacher that  year was Mrs, Movshin, who I adored.  We was firm but fair and gave us interesting assignments.  we were reading a story about a girl who attends a progressive dinner.  Progressive dinners are parties were you move from house to house for the different courses; so appetizers at one house, then go to the next for salad etc.  While we were discussing the story, one of my friends said "We should have one of those!"  We were talking about who could do which course, and Clara said "I could do dessert!"  My friend Lori say, "you can't be in it you're an N word" only she said the whole thing.  I guess I had heard that word before, but not in my house.  I didn't think about how insulting that was  I just looked at her, put my arm around Clara's shoulder and said "She can so be in the party!"  Because I was a leader, and Lori was my friend, she just glared at me and said no more about it.  

Skipping ahead several months, my Dad took the job as the pastor of the church in Jefferson City.  I have talked about this transition in other blogs but I haven't mentioned the send-off my teacher gave me from on my last day,  I was in the middle of reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little house book.  I think  I had read them all except one- "Farmer boy".  As a going away gift, the class gave me a hard cover copy of that book. All of the kids signed the inside of the dust jacket.  By far, the largest signature was from Clara who added "Your friend" before her name.  

I think I may still have that book around somewhere, but the dust jacket-and signatures-is long gone. 

I always wonder what it meant to Clara that I stood up for her.  I wonder if that iis why she thought of herself as my friend .  I hope she remembers me.  I certainly remember her and, although I didn't realize it at the time, I remember the lesson of how much she had to struggle for inclusion.

School days continued

My fourth grade teacher was Mrs. Stroessner.  Or I should say she was my teacher for most of the year.  Mrs. Stroessner had a baby and moved to Jefferson city.  This was probably when I began to realize that teacher were human beings with lives outside of the classroom.  I think, other than that, fourth grade was rather uneventful.

 My mind remembers the strangest things!  I have a clear memory of finding out about Mrs. Stressner's pregnancy at the class Christmas party.  Everyone participated in the gift exchange and everyone brought a present for the teacher.  My mom, having been a teacher, understood the importance of NOT giving teachers another "worlds greatest teacher" mug. We always gave the teacher stationary, which was useful for writing thank you notes for "World's greatest teacher" mugs.

One of the presents Mrs. Stroessner received that year was a toy bunny and some other baby related items.  I think she saw this as an opportunity to announce her pregnancy.  I am sure I have collapsed the two events (moving and having a baby) into a single announcement, but whatever the timeline, I knew she was moving on and I spent he rest of the day being sad.  After school I tearfully informed my sister of loosing my teacher to pregnancy and the move.  She told me I should be happy because having a baby was a miracle.  I thought, #1. No it's not and #2.  This was a stupid unhelpful thing to say.  I kept both of those thoughts to myself, of course.

The other thing I recall from that day is really odd. Everyone at school got a Christmas gift bag with candy, pencils, and other trinkets.  One of the items was a furry ornament with googly eyes, hung with a piece of elastic.  I immediately called a Bippy,  Remember on Rowen and Martin's Laugh-in how they used to say "You bet your sweet bippy"?  I'm sure they were not referring to a hairy ornament with googly eyes.  But the thing just seemed to be a bippy to me.  The odd thing about this is that I remember Beth (my sister) showing me her pink furry ornament (mine was yellow.  Why did she always get the good color?) and saying, "Look! I got a bippy!"   I distinctly remember thinking how weird it was that we both independently call these goofy things by the same name!  So while her advice regarding how to manage my feelings was trite and contrived, we still maintained our cosmic connection.!

The teacher who took over for Mrs. Stroessner was Mr. Hulsey.  A male teacher was a curiosity to me, but I remember that he was kind and funny.  The only thing that bugged me was how he pronounce the name Phoebe.  Mrs. Stressner had been reading a book aloud to the class as a sort of time filler I think.  She would read a chapter at the end of the day, and she was about half way through when she left.  The main character's name was Phoebe, but Mr. Hulsey pronounced it
 Ph-o-be with a long O sound.  We were too polite to correct him, of course, even though I am sure I am not the only one who noticed!

So now, not only was I aware that teachers were actually real people with real lives, I also realized that they were fallible, too.  So maybe fourth grade wasn't as uneventful as I thought!

Today is Father's day
Last week we had another mass shooting racist hate crime.
I also want to stay with my journey through my teacher memories.
I actually have a way to make all three things meld here.

I left off with my move to Harrison school in 2nd grade.  My dad had taken a position as the resident director of the Evangelical Children's Home in St. Louis.  The home had originally subsidized a  small tri-level home in a residential neighborhood for our family , with plans to convert it into a neighborhood group home.  Although this was something of which I could possibly have been aware at the time,  I am pretty sure the neighbors complained about the idea of a group home being there due to the possibility of black children being place there.  I can't be entirely sure that this was the complaint, but whatever it was, it meant that the plans were scratched and that's why we moved to the big house on campus and my education got moved to Harrison School in the Normandy school district.

I tried to look up Harrison school on -line.  It is still listed, but it doesn't appear on the Normandy district website as one of it's district elementary schools, so I am not sure if it is still there.  At the time, though, it was still a mostly white working class neighborhood school.  The children's home sent most of the residents there, and although the population of the home was mixed racially, it seemed to be a mostly Caucasian group of kids at the time.

By the third grade, I had settled in with friends and teachers and felt pretty positive about things.  Living on the campus of the children's home had its challenges, but generally, at my fairly young age, I was accepted as a friend and playmate.

The school had outgrown itself a little, so my third grade class was located in a small separate building along with the Kindergarten class.  I seem to recall the it was relatively new.  It had two classroom and two restroom, but we had to go to the main building for PE and lunch.  I l0ved my teacher that year.

Mrs. Donovan was the epitome of the old fashioned school Marm.  I'm sure she had been teaching for years and she really loved the kids.

Third grade is the year we were taught cursive and multiplication tables. When we were first learning multiplication, Mrs. Donovan explained the concept and then had us each take turn guessing what the answer was staring with 1x1. We started out  strong and then, as the numbers got higher, more and ore of us faltered.  As it turned out, Mrs. Donovan asked me to run to the main building for something.In the days before intercoms, it may have been something like letting the office know who was buying lunch or who was absent. I had calculated how many people were in line to guess the next equation, and then what my number would be when I got back.  I figured out it would be 8x8 so I spent the entire trip to the office adding 8's.  Sure enough, when I returned to my seat, and my turn came, I knew that 8x8 was 64, thus impression Mrs. Donovan with my prowess at math.  I have since realized that the math part of my brain is missing, but it was ice to be good at it for a few moments.  
Third grade was my first encounter with seeing a child display separation anxiety/school refusal. I can't remember anything else about that little girl except that she was new to the school and she wailed and sobbed as soon as her mom left her side.  I remember Mrs. Donovan trying to make her feel welcome, but the little girl suddenly darted for the open window and slithered though and was gone. The interesting part for me, was that I was keenly aware of understanding her feelings...being scared of the teacher and the kids; hating new surroundings; missing her mother.  The other kids laughed at her antics, but I just remember wishing I could help her understand that it would be okay.  I had been in her position and everything would be just fine.

I know that I said I would tie  this blog into Father's day and touch on the hideous shooting.

Although third grade was uneventful,I think it was the calm before the storm that was to come to the Normandy district as more African Americans move in and race relations reached a fever pitch.

I have a lot more memories of third grade, but I think you've probably hear enough for today.  I will end by saying Happy Father's day to the man who taught me tolerance and led me into a life of service.

Here is of my Kindergarten class.  I'll dig up some more for next time