School Days

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When I was a child in the 1950’s I attended Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School aka #43. Like most neighborhood schools at that time it was within walking distance of my house and many of my schoolmates were friends and neighbors. Very few children rode a bus to school. Most of the children, like me, walked to school in all kinds of weather and went home for lunch. The school had a lunchroom in the basement for those who rode buses to school.

#43 played a major role in my life for eight years and I have a clear picture in my mind of the layout of the building, the teachers whose names I still remember, and my classmates. The school had two floors. Kindergarten through grade 3 were located on the first floor and 4th through 7th grades were on the second floor. The administrative and nurse’s offices were on the first floor on the north side of the building and the kindergarten classes had their own small wing on the south side. A gymnasium with a balcony and stage was in the center of the building and seats were set up by the janitor for assemblies, recitals, and plays. The school had a fenced-in playground and parking lot in the back.

The school had a music teacher with his/her own room, an art teacher, and a workshop where students learned woodworking and other skills. Music lessons and other activities , such as gymnastics classes, were offered by private individuals after school hours for a fee. Students were released early one afternoon a week to attend religious instruction classes off the school property. The school did not have a library, but once a week a bookmobile would come to the school and we would be allowed to check-out books.

Teachers were respected and students were expected to be polite and well-behaved. Students were sent to stand in the hallway or to the principal’s office for the slightest infractions and in those days paddling was acceptable. It was a privilege to be assigned chores, like cleaning the erasers, picking up the milk for snack time, and running off copies in the school office. If you arrived at school too early, you had to stand in line outside the entrances leading to your classrooms until the bell rang. If the weather was inclement, students were allowed to line up inside, but members of the safety patrol ensured everyone remained in line and kept their voices low.

We played kickball, baseball, and dodge ball during gym classes and auditioned for plays and the school choir. We recited the Pledge of Allegiance every morning before school began and we collected money for the red cross in little white boxes. Student hygienists visited the school once a year to clean our teeth and we received the polio vaccine in sugar cubes that were lined up on trays. I remember singing a song at a school recital, having one line in a school play about Theodore Roosevelt (I still remember the line!), and being a Dutch girl with my blond hair braided for a kindergarten performance. I remember making Valentine boxes for St. Valentine’s day, sitting on the hallway floor with my head down during air raid drills, and the smell of clay kept in a big jar in the closet in my Kindergarten classroom.

Those were the days before children were over-scheduled with after-school activities and lessons, and they went home to stay-at-home mothers instead of empty houses. Children played outside with friends instead of sitting in front of televisions and computer screens, and people read books to learn what they didn’t know. I don’t know if those days were better, but parents didn’t make excuses for bad behavior, children were taught to respect themselves and others, and values were more important than money and self-gratification.

Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
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