So I had to start fifth grade at a new school. It was probably the most difficult school year I ever experienced. Yes, even more difficult than anything I encountered in high school or college.
The one good thing about it is that one of my classmates was Dez, the daughter of the woman who babysitted Loyd and me when we were younger. (I should note that I was not really romantically interested in Dez, but ending her name with a "d" would make her "Ded.")
Dez told me that we had two teachers, one for the morning and one for the afternoon. The morning teacher was also the school principal and he was pretty nice. However, the other teacher, a woman, was pretty mean.
It turned out that this was the first year of actual teaching for the afternoon teacher. Dez was not kidding. It was very hard to do anything that would make her happy.
The other fifth grade class was taught by a man who was about 70 years old, had one leg shorter than the other and wore hearing aids. This man should not have been teaching elementary school.
Everything was okay the first few weeks of school. However, a few weeks in, the two fifth grade morning teachers decided to swap out classes for one hour a day. My teacher would teach Reading to both classes and the deaf teacher would teach science.
This meant that all the students in both classes had to switch rooms at the same time. The biggest problem with this was that, every day, there was always a few of us who kept leaving material needed for the classes in our desks and we would have to go back to retrieve it.
It was not always the same students every single day, but it was enough to irritate the teachers to have their classes disrupted by students coming back in to dig through their desks. So, one day, an edict was passed: Students would no longer be allowed to go back and get their assignments.
I rarely left my assignments in my desk, but this one day after the edict was passed, I did. The deaf teacher would not let me go back to get it. Then, he would not let me bring it back when the classes switched back because he had already graded the assignments. This meant I was going to get a "0" for not handing in the report.
Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but that particular night, the school was holding an open house for parents and mine were going to be coming. Since this was still early in the school year, that "0" would have a drastic result on my grades. I know, because he happened to announce everybody's scores to the entire class. Mine was about 200 points below everyone else. There was only one other student with a grade lower than mine.
So, open house took place and my parents met my teachers (and Loyd's, too). Mom and Dad came home. Mom SCREAMED at us because we embarassed her. She was shocked at my low grade in science, which could be seen by all the other parents (whom I doubt were actually paying attention to how any of the other students were doing, particularly me). She was also embarassed by Loyd, who apparently had the messiest desk in the class.
The first thing Mom told me to do was go to the deaf teacher with my assignment, apologize and kindly ask that he accept it for my grade. Then, Mom decided Loyd and I were going to have to spend more time every night doing schoolwork, regardless of whether there was any homework assigned by our teachers. This would mean less time watching TV (but interestingly, not less time working at the apartments).
So I went to the deaf teacher the next day and told him everything Mom told me to say and tried to give him the assignment. He said no, he wouldn't accept it and my grade stayed the same. Like I said, this man had no business teaching elementary school.
Now, this is the thing that gets me about this, and still makes me angry to this very day: Both my parents are teachers. Both my parents had a few years of teaching under their belts. Both of them had undoubtedly come across students who had moved from other towns and wound up in their classes. Very likely, some of these students excelled at their former schools, but had trouble making the adjustment and their grades suffered for a little while. Like I say, they have probably seen this happen several times before and knew how to be more accommodating with these students and try not to push them too hard.
So, why were they not willing to accept that Loyd and I would have this same problem? I can only think that they were so used to bragging on us, that when their peers brought up concerns about the possibility of us falling victim to the adjustment, they probably said that we were way too smart to have that happen to us. This would have proved them wrong and they would have to deal with the shame of having kids who were like everyone else.
Yes, this was not going to be a good year.
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