Childhood Memories - Week 05

School Daze

This week we are concentrating on the things we remember about primary/grade school. To some of us school might have been a wonderful experience, a place of refuge and learning. We might have embraced all there was on offer - played with friends, enjoyed the sporting activities, joined in with choir or music and in general, can look back fondly at these years. Others might not have such warm thoughts of the years spent learning. How did you feel about school? Was it a positive or negative experience for you?



Do you recall a special teacher who made the learning experience all that much better. Tell us about them. Perhaps you recall the teacher for more ominous reasons – I will ever forget a teacher I had in Year 5 who absolutely terrorised the boys in my class, not a day went by when one of their unfortunate number wasn’t dragged from class to be sent to the headmaster or to be given “6 of the best”.

Maybe you remember specific events like a particular school excursion or representing your school in a community celebration or at a sporting carnival. You may vividly recall a particular speech night or open day when parents and /or grandparents visited the school. What was that like? How did it make you feel?

You possibly remember assembles, like I do - standing in the open school playground in the heat of summer listening to our school principal go on and on and on about nothing whatsoever when all you wanted to do was get inside out of the sun.

Memories of school to you might be less about the activities and more about the friendships you made. We all had “best” best friends at school – girls stuck with girls in groups of three or four. We played games at lunchtime – can you remember what they were? Elastics, hopscotch, skipping rope, jacks, marbles? Tell us about these wonderful inexpensive games we all loved so much.



Do you recall how you got to school each day? Did you walk or ride a bike or on a bus or did someone drop you off at school? Think back to the details of this. If you walked, write about what you did along the way and what you saw. Did you walk with friends or with siblings? Can you recall how you felt on cold winter or rainy days? I remember how tired my ams became carrying my school case. I would switch from one hand to the next trying to even out the weight (this was in the years long before backpacks became the norm).

What do you remember about these early years of education?