Memory Monday #45

 

      Now I am in the seventh grade...no longer in the East School Building but back where I started in the first grade!  A new elementary school in the South part of town has been built and the Junior High...seventh and eighth grades...are now in the same building as the High School.  The Junior High has taken over one whole floor...the first floor of the building and there are eight classrooms....four per grade..one for English; one for Math; one for History and one for Science.
     It seemed so strange to be having seventh grade English in the same class room where I had attended first grade...just with larger desks! And if I hadn't mentioned...it is the same building where my mom and dad attended high school!  Seventh grade was a whole new world...many of my friends were becoming interested in BOYS.  I was not..I was pretty immature socially and physically.  But it was the beginning of "growing up".  Basketball games, hayrides, an occasional school dance..our moms had started a "dance class" for all of us...boys and girls.  I remember we learned all the latest dance fads!!  How awkward!  Standing in two lines facing each other and pairing off!  Our moms thought they were helping us through the Puberty years with these little plans...but for me it was sheer misery.  I had not developed any social skills and having to participate in these ordeals did not really help ME!  Fortunately as I have previously mentioned, I had a pretty terrific mom and she realized my discomfort so she wasn't as insistent as some of the moms about my always having to be a part of these "wonderful" occasions!
     As my life turned out, I became a Junior High/Middle School teacher...and from my own experiences, I had great sympathy for my students!!  I really believe there does not exist a more difficult age for boys or girls than the preteen years...so many differences physically, socially, even mentally..and yet the sensitivity that one feels they are "the only one to feel" this way!!!