1st Grade

Candelyn:  Tell me the stories of first grade.  How old were you?  What did they teach you?  Did you have friends?  What did you wear to school?  Did you have recess?

Our family moved to Snowflake just before school started in 1939.  Since I could already read a little bit, my parents decided to enroll me in school even though I wouldn't be six until the next April.  

An old photo of the actual elementary school in Snowflake, AZ
My first grade classroom is the lower right hand set of windows.

My teacher was Miss Laverne.  At this time in Snowflake all the teachers were called Miss followed by their first name whether they were married or not.   My teacher's complete name was Laverne Crandall  the wife of Rufus Crandall who taught music at the high school as well as private music lessons.  She had been my father's teacher in an upper grade one year when his family lived in Snowflake.   Miss Laverne was mainly remembered as the first grade teacher, since that was the grade she taught for so many years.

We went to school from 9 to 12 and then went home for lunch since there was no cafeteria and no one brought lunch to school.   It seems that some students who lived far out of town went to the high school for lunch since they did have a cafeteria.  I guess the teachers must have gone home, too. Then class resumed at 1p.m. and went until 4 p.m. for most grades, but it seems that first grade got to go home earlier.   We had a morning recess and an afternoon recess and also played on the playground when we returned early from lunch.   There was no special physical education class, music class, or any specialty teachers.  We sometimes had a program or a play in the auditorium usually put on by one of the classes.  

We had reading, penmanship, phonics, and arithmetic.  I don't remember any science or health or social studies in first grade, but  Miss Laverne had a first grade rhythm band.

 The above book  is the first book we learned to read in first grade and is the same one I used to teach my brother, Wendell, to read several years later.

This was the first page in the pre-primer.

By page 16 we were reading about Dick and Jane's cat, Mew, as well as Spot, the dog.

I remember the above book very well and have been able to recite the entire first chapter throughout my life.  I have used just this first chapter to teach many preschoolers to read substituting their own name for Dick and the name of  siblings  for Jane and Baby.  In my book Baby was not called Sally.  This only happened in the next edition.  I found this comment on line:  "The famous Dick and Jane books that taught millions of children to read were first published in 1931. These primers introduced the students to reading with only one new word per page and a limited vocabulary per book. All who learned to read with these books still recall the 'Look. See Dick. See Dick run.'"
So I am not the only one who still remembers the words. 

 The summer before my brother, Wendell, was to start school,  my mother assigned me to teach him to read.  We had a copy of this same pre-primer which was, by now, out of date.  Every morning for an hour I worked with him and he learned to read the entire book before he went to first grade at Kenilworth.  I have no idea what methods I used, but I suppose I could remember back to Miss Lavern's techniques and used them.

Learning to Write

We did not learn manuscript writing or printing in the first grade, but went immediately into Palmer penmanship.  These are the letters I learned to make in first grade.  I remember this as being very difficult and I never had very good handwriting my entire life, even with almost daily practice for the six years of elementary school.

Rulers and Yardsticks

I will relate a few stories about first grade that stand out in my mind.  The first is that once, during a phonics lesson, I turned around to talk to the person sitting behind me.  WHACK!  Without even a warning the teacher hit me on my head with a ruler.  This was a common punishment.  Some of the teachers of the upper grades even kept wooden paddles in their desks to hit misbehaving students.  Miss Laverne's niece, Gail Crandall, was in my class and, for  some misdeed, Miss Lavern hit her over the head with a ruler and the ruler broke.  Then, Miss Laverne got the yard stick and hit her again.  This was very scary to the entire class.

Barbed Wire Fences 

My brother, Milton, and I usually walked to school together.  One morning we were taking a shortcut and climbed through the barbed wire fence that surrounded the school playground,instead of walking to the front of the school.  My brother held open the wires so I could climb through, but I slipped and landed on the barbed wire and cut my knee quite badly.  I had a handkerchief with me and so I tried to stop the bleeding with it.  Later in class, Miss Laverne called on me to come up to the front of the room to read or perform some task before the class.  I was still holding the handkerchief on my knee and so I had to walk all bent over.  She yelled at me to straighten up and walk normally.  When I straightened up she could see that I was still bleeding.  She softened immediately and asked me about what happened and treated me with kindness.  We had no school nurse or any office staff to send me to.  The principal was really the eighth grade teacher and had no secretarial help.  I don't know if she had me clean my knee or what else happened.  I just remember the big wave of relief that I wasn't in trouble with her. 

 A Three Year Old Goes to School

This next story is very strange to me, especially since my mother had been a teacher, herself.   My parents had to go to Winslow, one day, maybe to see a doctor or a dentist and they asked Miss Laverne  if my three year old sister could stay in the back of the room coloring in her coloring book while they were gone.   I have no idea why Miss Laverne would say, "yes" to such an arrangement, but she did.  Everything went okay for the first part of the day.  Then, Miss Lavern was standing up walking around the room as she gave the class a test of some kind.  It was probably a spelling test.  Alleen started walking towards the front of the classroom.  Miss Laverne told her to sit down, but she just kept on walking.  Miss Lavern then walked over and gave her a push.   Alleen toppled over and hit the floor with a loud thud.  I was mortified and scared for both Alleen and myself.  Although, Miss Laverne did not get out her ruler or the yardstick,  I would bet that she never agreed  to babysit again.

A Rhythm Band

This  picture is of my sister's rhythm band.  She is in back row, far right.

The first grade rhythm band was a tradition for Miss Laverne.  There were little red capes and caps and it looks like white pants, although I don't remember them when I was there.  There were rhythm sticks, tambourines, drums, triangles and other noise(or music) makers, and a bird whistle.  

I had almost no ability to keep rhythm and was eventually assigned to blow the bird whistle.  You had to put water in it so that it "warbled" like a bird, when you  blew on it.   We practiced and practiced for the program in the auditorium.  My job was to tweet the whistle right on cue.  I must have done it correctly because I have no traumatic memories attached to the rhythm band.  Many years later, I told this story to another American teacher in China as an example of my lack of musical ability and rhythm.  She said, "No it was probably because you were smart enough to count up the many measures of music before that one little tweet was called for and obedient enough not to tweet it out of turn or spill the water out of it."  She knew because she, too, had been assigned the bird whistle in first grade in another small town in another state.

End of Year Prize

My final story from first grade is that I won the award for reading the most books.  The prize was a book signed by the teacher recognizing my achievement.  I kept it for most of my life, but it seems to be lost now.  I read 50 books that year.   There was no town library.  The school library had only a few books, mostly about the Hardy boys, and no books on a first grade level.  I was a good reader but the reason I won was because my mother had a few books at home and her sisters, who were teachers in nearby towns, helped us borrow books to read.  I read every book available.  Three years later my sister won the same award by reading 137 books.  Times had changed that much in those few years and many more books were being printed for children.  Even Disney got into the act with books written on a beginning level about Donald Duck and his nephews, Huey, Duey, and Luey.  Dr. Seuss' easy-to-read books would come much later.

First Grade Alumni

The town of Snowflake was small and the population was fairly stable.   I went to school with mostly the same children from first grade through sixth grade.  The 1940 census just came out a month ago(April,2012) and I was able to identify almost all of my classmates by reading through the census list.  I am surprised at the achievement of so many of my classmates.  Out of these twenty-five, or so, children, this class has produced a town sheriff, a general in the US Air Force, a lawyer, at least two PhD college  professors in Chemistry and English, a prolific author, several teachers and a psychologist.  These are the only ones I happen to know about, so there are probably many others.  Too bad that  Miss Lavern's 1939-1940 first grade class doesn't have an alumni association to keep track of everyone.  "Thank you, Miss Lavern!  You did good!"