caerula's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- some school memories Check out the nifty template I made for my friend Ellie. I still need to tweak it a bit, but yay! it works. Freezing rain this morning. Blahsuck. And I had to do the dentist dance � take YMB into town for his dentist appointment, take him back out to school, then back in to work, which turns a 15-minute appointment into an hour-and-a-half in the car. This was his last dental appointment for a while though, thank goodness. The poor kid's had so many problems with his teeth. Today they put in the spacer where they pulled out his baby molar � a funky appliance that looks sort of like a retainer, but stays in all the time. No gum or hard candy for this kid. And of course when we got back to the school he had to show it off to the secretary, who I'm sure appreciate the view down his throat first thing in the morning. At the school we ran into Mrs L, coming in at the same time we were. Mrs L used to run the "gifted & talented" program there, which I was in from 2nd grade on. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say she was just about the only thing that kept my elementary years from being a nightmare. G&T was actually a great program thanks to her. I remember she had this giant inflatable bubble thing that we could sit in while we had discussions. And even in 2nd and 3rd grade, when we me with her we would sit around and have conversations when we weren't working on projects. She's the one who introduced me to Narnia, and Paddington, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, when my parents had no idea what to give a 2nd grader with a high school reading level. They weren't introduced to fiction when they were growing up, so how would they have known? We did play-doh dioramas and tv commercials for books and science experiments with her, all the stuff that our regular teachers either didn't have the budget or the energy for. We went on field trips to the cemetery to learn about family history and did gravestone rubbings in 5th grade. We buried a time capsule � wonder whatever happened to that? Mrs L is the only person I've ever let call me Jenny. For some reason that's just who I am to her, and no matter how much I told her that wasn't my name, she never managed to remember. From anyone else that would irk me, but from her I didn't mind so much. And she's still there at the school, although now she works as a consultant, mentoring first-year teachers. I can't think of a better person to be doing that, although it's sad to think of the kids who will never get to know her that way. She recognized me and YMB immediately, and after I got YMB signed in and shooed down to his room we stood in the office and chatted for a good ten minutes. She'd seen my mom and dad around the school occasionally and knew my stepson went there, and knew who YMB was, but hadn't connected which one belonged to me. I can see how that would be difficult with three different last names in the mix! She asked after Kitty and Minnie, who were both in G & T as well. She remembers Kitty well, as Kitty was, to say the least, a difficult student � never quite mastered how to deal with authority, and had to be right all the time. "But you were a hard act to follow, Jenny," Mrs L told me this morning, which made me feel good and sad at the same time; Kitty has loads of brains and talent, she just put them to different uses than I did, and it was so hard for her, I think, two years behind a brainy teacher's pet who would just as soon slit her wrists as turn in a late paper. Anyway, it was lovely to run into Mrs L, and so nice to know that she still remembers my family so fondly. If nothing else, the three of us girls definitely made an impression moving through that school system. It's funny to think of YMB moving through the same system, with so many of my old teachers still there, but good to know that I may have a bit of influence there still, to make his way a little easier. School is hard enough as it is. 10:17 a.m. - March 21, 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||