Both Tim and I have many memories of the
1st grade. The most notable thing being that was the ONLY time they
put us in the same classroom! After the 1st grade, they quickly
learned this wasn’t a good idea and from the 2nd grade on, they had
us in 2 separate classrooms. If Tim or I would ask any of our home room classmates
what’s the one thing they remember about Mrs. Hahn’s 1st grade room,
one thing I’m sure would come to mind, “The day the blackboard totally
shattered”! That really put an impression on us young 5 and 6-year-old kids! Here’s
the story… In 1954, during the construction of the Ohio Turnpike, the
construction area had reached our Village of Berlin Heights. In constructing
the Turnpike, a lot of dynamite was used. I remember sitting at my desk listening
to the distant periodic reverberations of dynamite blasts and thinking how neat
that was! (In a future story, I will relate our OWN experience with dynamite we
had a few years later). Day by day, the blasting moved closer and closer to our
area. One day the blasting must have been too close! As we entered our room that
morning, we saw that the blackboard was TOTALLY shattered in small pieces
scattered all over the floor in front of it! The pieces were about the size of
dice and they were green on the outside, but looked like glass underneath! This
is one of the early instances where I started to realize that many things in
life aren’t what they appear to be! Even at the age of 6, I had always assumed
that all blackboards were made out of slate. However, I DID wonder why our 1st
grade blackboard was green! Maybe I figured they “harvested” the slate before
it was ripe or something. It really surprised me that our “Blackboard” was not
only green, but made out of glass! Oh well, I eventually “got over it” and
moved on with my life. Another thing some of us still vividly remember about
the first grade were the “Reading Groups.” This was a group, indicated by birds,
that consisted of all us kids based on our reading levels. The best readers
were “Bluebirds” (I, was in this group!), then the “Robins” consisting of the
average readers, the “bottom rung” was called the “Sparrows” which included all
the kids whose future in 8 to 11 years would consist of repeatedly reciting, “You
want French Fries with that?” I’ve since always wondered what the rationale and
significance was for the particular bird names used for each reading level. I
wonder if it was based on some esoteric, sadistic tendencies of Mrs. Hahn. For
instance, Sparrows were imported to this country from Great Britain back around
the late 18th Century SPECIFICALLY to eat the undigested grain from “horse
manure”! It does make me wonder…
