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Fried Chicken in the Classroom
On Tuesday, Flipper will walk across a small wooden bridge, holding the hand of a rising senior to represent the start of her educational journey.
The senior will give her a rose, she will shake hands with her new first grade teacher, and then the class will walk to the first grade classroom together. On the last day of school, she will give back a rose to a graduating senior. It is, as I am sure you can imagine, very very precious.
While I can't believe that Flipper is actually 6 years old, I won't devolve this post into what has become a common thread for me: how sad and happy I am at her growing up, how shockingly fast I find the passage of time with a child...blah blah blah.
But it is interesting to relive some parts of childhood, and I find myself reflecting on my own first grade teacher, and how utterly in love with her I was. Her name was Mrs. Best, and she taught at my neighborhood school, Parkwood Elementary. She was well-upholstered, and wore polyester pantsuits. My favorite was bright green with smallish white polka-dots. I couldn't understand why my mom didn't wear bright pantsuits either!! (but now I do).
On random Fridays, she would "teach" us how to cook-but that really meant us watching her and her sweet elderly assistant make fried chicken on a hot plate, hot oil spattering about. Can you imagine this happening today? A teacher making fried chicken in her classroom??
Well, it WAS 1974...
Anyway, she loved me for my reading ability (at that time kindergarten was optional and so many kids came to first grade never having set foot in a classroom before) and my willingness to do just about
anything she wanted. Like I said, I LOVED HER!!
One afternoon I even (get this) WENT HOME WITH HER and spent the night. What I remember from this? Going to the Coca-Cola plant (where her husband worked) and being able to get free Cokes from the machine in the lobby that
required no coins.
As a six-year-old, I thought this was the most incredibly magical and wonderful thing EVER. Frankly, I still do. I hope that Flipper loves her teacher as much as I loved Mrs. Best-and I hope her new teacher loves her too.
But the fried chicken in the classroom? Well, maybe not.
Leigh appears Fridays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Leigh on her blog Flipper and Me.
Leigh Sparacino
Leigh is a TriangleMom2Mom featured blogger, appearing every Monday.
Leigh grew up in Durham, attended college in North Carolina, left the area for an island off the coast of Georgia, the high mountains of Colorado, and her favorite mountains in western North Carolina, before returning to the Triangle eight years ago. She lives near Carrboro with her 4.5-year-old daughter Flipper and two dogs. She is single in marital status only, surrounded by friends, family, and her daughter's very involved and loving father. She works part-time and tries to be as involved as possible in her daughter's school, The Emerson Waldorf School, where Flipper is a kindergartner. She likes wood, glass and other natural materials for toys, loves the principles of Waldorf education and hates plastic. She might be the only person in the world with no TV and who hasn't been to a movie in 15 years, but races to the mailbox every Saturday for the most recent issue of People magazine. In other words, a contradiction. Or just human.
Leigh appears Fridays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Leigh on her blog Flipper and Me.
Comments
My first grade teacher invited our entire class to her wedding. I'll never forget it. We arrived in a big school bus. And she was a great teacher too. Great memories!
The rose ceremony sounds beautiful. What a great thing!
LOL abou the fried chicken. Now you've made me hungry!
Her school sounds awesome! I LOVED my first grade teacher-we must be the same age..it was 1974 for me too. Her name was Miss Black, and she was.... (African-American). She wore her hair piled high on her head in some elaborate do, and I thought she was the most beautiful, exotic woman I'd seen in my life. I worshipped the ground she walked on! And I remember those pantsuits! I thought all the teachers shopped at the same place-the Teacher Clothes Store.
LOL! I totally remember the teacher pantsuits! How funny, the Teacher Clothes Store
Let's see, I was in college in 1974, but don't remember any professors making me chicken. Seriously, though, I hope our kids can have some touching, personal memories nowadays. The schools seem like such industrial factories, mass-producing students, that I hope the personal connections still happen. I suspect they didn't for my kids, at least VERY rarely did they happen.
I still see some of my former sixth grade students occasionally who are now adults with their own kids. They CLAIM to have fond vivid memories of my classroom, so hopefully that's still happening in school.
I had a magical first grade teacher and so did my son. My son's teacher has a niece who is in his grade, so I get to see her occasionally at school functions. And she makes me think back to MY teacher who I was lucky enough to get AGAIN in 3rd grade. We actually reconnected by e-mail when I was in my 30s and she was probably in her 70s and kept in touch until her death. I still think of her fondly and think about what an impression she made on my life.