Memory Monday-Student Teaching

“Humans, not places, make memories.” 
― Ama Ata Aidoo

University of Missouri-Columbia, Missouri

           So, here I am! Summer of 1962...ready to graduate and to begin conquering the world!!  The only class I have left to take is my Student Teaching. I had probably the worst possible teacher training in the world!  Kids in college back then were not nearly as well coached and advised as they are today!  I just knew what I had to have to graduate and somehow had left this very essential part of my education to the last.

Townsend Hall- The university's school for education attended by many of the professors' children. 

      This is where I spent my mornings that summer...I had one class of 9th graders who were taking a summer class for accelerated kids in order to earn a credit ahead. And my other class was a remedial class of about the same age of kids who had flunked the previous year and needed to retake English in order to be promoted. We met for two hours four days a week, so after my two classes from 8:00-10:00 and 10:15 to 12:00 I was free for the day!!! If I remember, one class had about six kids in it and the other maybe 10....so NOT typical of a normal classroom situation.

        I loved summer school!!  I had talked my parents into letting me live in a small basement apartment (no hours) with my girlfriend who was working on her master's that summer.  Another friend of ours who had graduated that previous spring came the first weekend of summer school and STAYED!  We were all pretty good party gals, but Beth and I had to get up and go to classes.  Joanie slept all day and was ready to go again each night so we had to curtail our partying to Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. (Joanie, by the way was the same girl who had the crush on Dick the summer before! And the friend who had the aunt and uncle in Coral Gables,Fla. where we stayed when we went to the Orange Bowl in 1960.)

      That summer our favorite hangout was The Black Knight...a pub considered to be so wild that the Stephens Girls were not allowed to go there!  It wasn't that bad, and we Mizzou coeds were ok with the "susies", as they were called, not being there!  And coincidentally, that guy (future husband) happened to be living with two of the guys who worked there!  Dick had a job at the only upscale restaurant in Columbia but as soon as he was off work, and when not working, he headed for the Knight...so we kind of hooked up that summer...we kept pretty close company for about eight weeks!

     Of course, we didn't just hang out at the Knight...there was  the Stables, Andy's, the Shack, the Coronado Club and a private party lake where we spent most days.  I didn't have a car in college...so my friends and I had to always hook a ride with who ever was heading to the lake.  Times have change so much...we had dorms for girls with hours to be in, and now there are coed dorms.  I never felt afraid to go out with guys I didn't know!  It just never occurred to any of us that it might be unsafe to jump in the car with a guy you didn't know. Date rape was really unheard of...at least in my world.  And our drug of choice was beer.  If there were other drugs around I was not aware of them...a kinder, gentler, more naive time!
      By this age, 21, I was a quite a bit more mature than when I started school four years previously. And, even though I was still having a great time, I was much more responsible and did see to getting to my classes and doing a good job as student teaching.  I realized that my parents had sunk quite a bit into my education and that the party could not go on forever!  And, unrealistic as my student classes were, I really enjoyed my kids.