#11 – Grades 7 & 8

Grade 7 – Junior High!  Oh, wait.  Levy failures.  Double-shift with the High School.  Closed several of the elementary schools.  The high school had 9-12 in the morning and 7-8 in the afternoons.  4-6 grades were at the Junior High.  No change for kindergartners or 1-3.

We were known as the Yellow Jackets.  Met lots of new people that came from the other schools.

I loved the library – was able to read a lot of books.  I can remember a class having walked down to the junior high for something and having a conversation with a teacher on our way back to the high school about the books I was reading.  She was amazed I was reading adult books.  I don’t think she realized that I was reading on my own since I was about 4 years old.  What was sad, was that by the time I got back to the high school, there weren’t any books left in the library that I was interested in reading.

One of my memories is walking with Scott Keating from our science class to our next class, Math.  There were several others that also were in both classes.   One day, Scott was talking with me and when we got to the Math class our teacher (Mrs. Allen) wasn’t present.  Several people decided to tease Scott & I by writing on the blackboards several things like “Marcy + Scott = Love”.  Scott was so upset, he kept erasing them (there were 3 blackboards in the classroom).  They had him jumping all over the room and I was just sitting in my seat laughing.  (I had learned that lesson from the previous year).  To make matters worse, I received a birthstone ring for Christmas from my parents.  Classmates thought it came from Scott. 

Grade 8 – We finally had a levy pass!  Schools opened back up and we were back at the Junior High (and yes, it was called Junior High and not Middle School).  I worked in the Office for one period.  Got to work the mimeograph machine!  Wow, do they even use that now?  Block class was fun – the teacher was Mr. McDermott (I had his mother (in law??) as my 5^th grade teacher.  Block class consisted of English & History.  We did a lot of fun things (and the teasing that went on – even Mr. McDermott was involved! And that’s unheard of now a days).  One of the things we did was giving speeches.  I hate public speaking.  We had to write a topic on 3x5 cards.  They were collected, shuffled, and we had to take one and give a 3-5 minute speech with only about a minute prep to get your thoughts in order.  I was one of the last students (only 4-5 cards left).  Went and pulled my card and just about died when I read the topic.  (Remember me saying the teacher loved to tease . . .), the topic was “Why I liked Craig Mason”.  (He was a boy in the class that I had a crush on).  I gave the speech.  Then they said it was a joke and here are the real cards.  The real topic was about drugs.  I did worse on that then the joke.

This was also the year that I got to learn a little bit of Spanish (only the students in band or choir got to take a foreign language) during our Reading classes.  That gave me the taste that I ended up taking 4 years of Spanish in High School.

I attended several dances for the first time – sock hop and our 8^th grade graduation.  Classmates did it again . . . they cornered Craig & I for a school photo.  Hmm . .  . wonder what happened to that photo?