What year (grade-level) of school was the worst in your opinion? Was it because of the teachers, the curriculum, the social climate, extra-curricular activities, your perception of yourself, family events, or something else? "All of the above" is an acceptable answer!
Honestly, socially it all stank 1-12. I was one of the few with a working mother and couldn't accept invites as I wasn't allowed to return the invitation. I was also smart, gawky, tall and highly self conscious. When it came to "dating", boys were rarely taller than me, and the few that were dated the 5 foot tall cuties.
I spent a lot of time marking time as most teachers figured I was doing just fine. That does ignore the few awful ones - like the one that sent me to the principal because I said the the story was boring, I'd finished 15 minutes ago (complete with plot summary) and was reading the third one after it. (Principal stuck up for me and arranged a tutor for "English" that year.)
High school was easier, mostly because I had a several teachers take me under their wing and let me forge ahead academically which let me mix with kids a year or two older. A few of them were also into science fiction and were looking beyond Podunk MA - at least I had someone to talk to about what I was reading that wasn't a teacher.
Cheryl
That was it for me, too. Though, he wasn't new to teaching, he was horrible. I probably missed at least 1 day every two weeks sick to my stomach. Our family GP could find nothing wrong, but he did suggest it could be psychosomatic and based on stress. Worried my parents something fierce until a few months in the year he went on leave for something and it all cleared up. A month later, when he returned, it came back full force.
Tara
Third grade was the worst for me. I was always whast they used to call "teacher's pet" during elementary school -- except for my third grade year, when I had a teacher who just hated me. I could do nothing right. She was always sending notes home to my mother, criticizing me. I never knew what I did that so annoyed her, except that I did get called down a lot for talking in class.
First was pretty hard on me. I went from a fairly progressive kindergarten, where, if we were finished with our work we could get a book or quietly do another activity, to a 2-room schoolhouse where we were supposed to sit straight up with our hands folded on our desks when we finished work. The school changed and we actually moved to one that had enough classrooms for each grade, BUT, the teacher was the same. I can remember her cracking me across the knuckles with the metal edge of those old wooden rulers - right hand since I was right handed. Second wasn't much better because that teacher student taught under the first grade teacher!!
Better in 3rd grade when I got transferred to a school in town - how about that, they discovered I was ahead of my age group, so I got put into gifted and talented!!
1/2 way through 3rd grade, we moved and it was crappy again. Because of where I started school (farm country where they don't expect most kids to go beyond 8th grade), I was behind in math and the teacher at the new school made it VERY clear that she thought I was an idiot for not being able to do what the rest of the class was doing. Granted, the school was over-crowded (had to go past 9 other elementary schools to get to one that had space for me!!), but still....it was scarring. Stayed at the school through 4th grade. 5th grade started sucky because parents decided, for no good reason, to stick me in a Catholic school - we aren't Catholic!! Got into big mess when religion teacher said I was nothing because I wasn't Catholic, to which I responded, yes I AM something, a child of God....yep, sent to principal's office, and withdrawn the very next day. Got back into a public school and didn't have too many issues there. 6th grade was fun, as was 7th, but 8th was another hard year because we again moved and it was to the rival school district. Whoops! guess I shouldn't have worn the sweatshirt from my previous school to the middle school that fed it's largest HS football rival (how was I supposed to know that my history teacher was the football coach??!!??).HS was HS...not great, not horrible, just something that I had to get through....made it through junior year, then moved into concurrent enrollment at local CC. Finished HS requirements in one semester and had a semester's worth of college credits as well.
all ups and downs, but...I love going to school and learning new things, and would be doing so now if I had the time and money!
Larisa
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