Growing Up -- Weston Public Schools
Informative and whimsical recollection of my grade school years, especially obscure facts and observations.Last updated: June 2008
Opening Comments
My annual property tax bill is roughly what it costs to educate one public school student for one year in my town. I have been a homeowner paying property taxes for over 25 years. (Just prior to that I lived in college dorms and YMCA-like accommodations.) I attended public schools (Weston) for eight years, fourth through eleventh grade. I am still single, but getting my money's worth of my property taxes may be a great incentive to get married and have a family.
As you read this essay you will find descriptions of new teaching innovations of the 1960's. If you are not a member of the Weston High School class of 1968, this article should still bring back memories of your school days.
* Should Every Public School Student Have a PC?
The classroom of the future may have computers at every desk. Students will bring CD-ROM's from class to class and also bring them home to do their homework with.
To make this program work, the town must supply each student (not each family) with his/her own PC for use at home.
I specifically do not recommend laptop computers. Grade school students cannot be expected to carry them back and forth on the school bus and keep them safe and in good condition.
* May 1998 New Item -- Standardized Testing In Boston Schools. Students are apprehensive about failing and having to repeat a grade. Administrators say the first year's results will be used to establish the passing and failing grades, not be the passing and failing grades.
We had standardized tests too. Read on!
Names mentioned in this essay are of actual people.
Fourth Grade 1959-1960
My first day in the Weston Public Schools. I was assigned to "the Elementary School, Bldg B" (The complex was later named the Brook School.) The group of buildings looked like what could have been original schools, Bldg A for elementary students, Bldg. B for the junior high, and Bldg. C as the high school and then as the junior high. But I am told that the three buildings never served those three roles respectively at the same time. When I arrived, Bldg's. A and B were elementary and Bldg. C was the junior high. There were two newer schools, the Country School for elementary grades, and what is now the Field School as the high school.
If you were standing at the flagpole outside you would look up and to the right to see where my classroom was I forget what classes occupied the other rooms in the building.
My mother drove me to school the on the first day and introduced me to Ms. Marilyn Smith.
The class was a traditional class with a group of students taught by one teacher all day, all year. Weston's school report sent to parents described this as the standard teaching method for elementary school .I knew all along that the per teacher class size was larger in the public schools compared with private schools (15 or so per class). Somehow the number 25 stands out in my mind but even in cash poor New Hampshire in 2007 a class size of 25 is considered very large.
School started at 9 in the morning and let out around 3:15 (the junior and senior high sessions went from 8 to 2:15).
We had a short break in the morning for a snack, and a lunch break followed by an outdoor recess around noon. These breaks took about an hour total, leaving five hours for education. I thought that school days were long and like many kids I would watch the clock waiting for 3:15 to arrive.
Yes, going to school was a drag. But as fall wore on and frost set in, it was nice walking out of the gray and misty outdoors with leafless trees into the classroom with its warm white incandescent (the energy inefficient kind of) lights.
I don't recall any science being taught. The major subjects were the usualf English (grammar, spelling, paragraph construction), arithmetic, and social studies.
Social studies was mostly in the form of stories, from a "reader". I still remember the story of the Jenkins family who ran a wheat farm in the midwest. And the story of the Brent family who, a century earlier, packed up in a covered wagon and went westward ho.
For gym class we walked over to Bldg. C (the junior high school) and down the long basement corridor to the gym at the far end of the building. The floor appeared to be of purple tile rather than the more common varnished wood.
I would look forward to "diversions" such as films. Ms. Smith would take us all down to the auditorium in Bldg. A and set up the projector. Some of the films were only ten minutes long. There was no hurry. It would take perhaps five minutes to get us all down to the auditorium and another five minutes to get settled down in the classroom again.
We also viewed "filmstrips". These were like slide shows except that the pictures were all on a rolled up strip of 35mm film which was hand cranked through the projector one frame at a time. A record or tape provided music or narrative to accompany the pictures.
Usually I did not comprehend the films' material well enough to relate it to the curriculum so I treated it as entertainment.
The handwriting teacher (Ms. Tinker) and the art teacher (Mr. Lavin) came over once (or was it twice?) a week. We had to use pencils for all of our work until reaching a certain proficiency in handwriting and then we could use pens.
Over to the Building A auditorium again to learn a bit of French from a 15 minute TV program, Boston channel 2, National Educational Television. (TV hostess) "Bonjour mes enfants." (us in unison) "Bonjour madame" It was all oral, and I thought I missed a lot by not doing any writing. The emphasis was to learn some fundamentals "now" to be able to carry on simple conversations. Then relearn the correct pronunciation later. In addition TV set audio back then was notoriously bad, and "Repetez" (repeat) seemed to come through as "lay pay tail".
The buses could not all fit in the circular driveway so we had a "first dismissal" and a "second dismissal" with the other half of the buses at the other school (the Country School).
My group was among the first to use the new Woodland School. Exactly when we would move kept us in suspense, but it finally occurred over the Christmas holidays. I just remember two fourth grade classrooms at the Woodland School, mine on the right wing on the end facing the courtyard, and Ms. Ostrow's, across the hall. I don't recall whether Ms. Ostrow's class was also in Building B, probably in the other classroom on the second floor but apparently everyone in Building B was moved. If I recall, the Woodland School had twelve classrooms, six in each wing. (The name "Woodland School" was chosen a few months after the school year ended.)
We had a room mother, or teachers's aide. At recess she and a student would swing a jumprope for some of the girls and count the jumps in French: "Un, deux, trois, ... trente-neuf, quarante, quarante et un, ..." One rope, one girl at a time. (Nowadays they swing two ropes in opposite directions and two participants jump at the same time.) Most of the boys played a pickup game of soccer (with some rule changes) or tag. Sometimes I would go off on my own on "nature walks", chasing butterflies or observing ants.
How big was the student population? I don't recall exactly except we had sixteen buses with 45 to 50 kids each for grades 1-6. That would give a class size of 125 to 130. That would mean there were three fourth grade classrooms somewhere else.
On some of the buses it seemed as if the driver slammed the door a lot. One day as a bus was pulling into the Woodland School, the driver opened the door and someone jumped out before the bus stopped.
Fifth Grade 1960-1961
Back to the "Elementary School, Bldg. B". Top floor on the left. I don't recall anything in the building having been renovated since my previous year's class and supposedly all of the other classes in the building the previous year were moved to the Woodland School.
There were three fifth grade classes (only) in the building that year, Mr. Joseph Tremont (my teacher), Mr. George Lynch middle left, Ms. Rowley middle right as you stood outside at the flagpole. The room I had for fourth grade was left empty. There were at least 18 buses which suggested 800 to 900 students in grades 1-6 or a class size of 135 to 150. With 25 students to a classroom there would have to have been three more fifth grade classrooms somewhere else that year but I don't recall which building.
Weston had its Accordion Plan for the upper elementary grades, where we got up and went to different classrooms for some subjects "as they did in junior high". I had Mr. Lynch for math. It was said that one of our three groups was a "high" or honors group and one of the groups was a "low":or remedial group.
Again, I don't recall any science classes.
The building had a steam heating system with exposed pipes running the length of the classroom walls, instead of radiators. The pipes gave off the usual hissing and clanking noises that steam systems made.
We had our usual class photo shoot and we each got a card with a postage stamp picture of each of us on it. Mr. Tremont said that for each one of us who crossed out his picture with a Magic Marker he would hand out a larger portrait of himself. My parents didn't like the idea and I am not sure whether they succeeded in washing off the black ink or simply requested a replacement card at the next PTA meeting.
American history for social studies with one orange textbook. Most of the subject matter was from the mid 1400's when European explorers first came to North America, to the mid-1800's, time of the Civil War. I was trying to imagine what it would have been like if the French had won the French and Indian War (1759-1763).
We watched the TV French show again, this time down in the basement. The girls got to sit on the benches down there. We boys had to carry chairs down and back.
We did standardized lessons from Science Research Associates (SRA). These were cards each with different stories or passages or problems and multiple choice questions that were handed out to us. A type of question I usually had difficulty with went "How well can you reason...?" Getting the same card twice should be rare but it should be embarassing to get the same card at a later date and not answer all of the questions correctly.
First learned the songs "Island of Capri" and "Sidewalks of New York" from Mr. Tremont with his wonderful a capella voice. Also learned "Erie Canal" as we all gathered in Ms. Rowley's room downstairs where she played the piano.
Sixth Grade 1961-1962
Four classrooms of us sixth graders were at the Country School. I believe there was more of the Class of 1968 (probably two classrooms) in another building, which building I again do not recall.
Walk into and through the lobby, then up a few stairs to a mezzanine. Jog left a little and walk down the glass corridor to the other half of the building, and then all the way to the right. (As of 2004 the Country School has been extensively renovated and changed.)
I had Ms. Lena McGann (often misspelled McCann) for most subjects .Years later I worked for someone named Mr. McGinley (not McKinley),.I would always have to say to the security guard as I signed in, "McGinley, emcee, gee") The next classroom had Ms. LeFebvre, then further down, in the back corner was Mr. Lynch now teaching 6'th grade, and Mr. Bramhall who was my brother's sixth grade teacher two years previous. (Ms. Rowley was there too, but teaching fourth grade.)
I had Mr. Lynch for English composition and Mr. Bramhall for science. There were microscopes available which we used a lot. I forget who I had for math.
Social Studies -- "Southeast Asia, will the Communists take it over?" the headline from one of the magazines we read. United States geography, midwest, northeast, great plains.
The "Readers' Guide To Periodical Literature", an index of all(?) the magazine articles ever published. The assignment: Find some articles on the Civil War Battle of Harper's Ferry. Why did they (fellow students) suggest such a hard topic? I intuitively thought that there wasn't going to be much published on said battle in 1950's magazines and sure enough I couldn't find any. So I just wrote down the locations of articles on Harper's Ferry in 1961, a century after that war. In 1998, searching the Internet using Yahoo or Google, I did come up with on my first try in less than thirty seconds, over 100 entries at least containing the words "battle", "harpers", and "ferry". Some even had "Civil War" in their titles or abstracts.
For music we all gathered in the enlarged end of the hall outside Mr. Bramhall's room. Occasionally we would Sing Along With Mitch (Miller). At Christmas time the record player in the hall played music each morning before classes started.
Seventh Grade 1962-1963
How big was the Class of '68 this year? Looking back, there were 12 color coded main "sections" where the same group of us would have the same classes together. Seventh grade had six sections (color code red) R1, R2, R3, (orange) O4, O5 (mine), O6.. Sections (yellow) Y7, Y8, Y9, and (green) G10, G11, G12 were for the eighth grade. Assuming 25 students per section, our class size would have been 150. Or, we had eight buses for just 7'th and 8'th grades. Assuming 35 to 40 students per bus (two in a seat, not three) we have about 300 students in the school altogether or again a class size of 150. Close enough.
We were regrouped differently for English and for Social Studies.
Our schedule cards were made up manually using a ditto machine (similar to a mimeograph machine). A stencil master would be put into the machine. The cards had to be separated into piles of 25 (hand picked for each section), then run through the machine to print the schedule minus the English and Social Studies, then run through again (actually twice more) for the latter subjects.
Homerooms were assigned more or less alphabetically. We met there first thing in the morning, at lunch time, and last thing in the afternoon. Each morning in the homeroom it was someone else's turn to get up and read to the class from the Bible. It seemed as if the same passage was read day after day, chosen because of its shortness. Psalm 117 (Praise the lord all ye nations, praise...).
Each classroom had a public address system speaker and also a push button to call the principal's office. When a teacher made a call, the office secretary's first word over the speaker was usually "Yes?". The system then behaved like a speaker-phone system.
It was about this time I noticed that we often had brand new textbooks and very rarely had textbooks more than two years old. I thought, what becomes of the textbooks after two years? The answer came to mind while I was watching a TV show some 15 years later (White Shadow). The show depicted a "ghetto" school where books were missing pages. Also I don't recall what year we were required to put book covers on all of our books but at least as of seventh grade we had to. We could buy book covers from the five and ten store, the ones sold in town (at Bickfords) had "Weston" and the wildcat symbol printed on them. Or we could make book covers ourselves, usually from paper supermarket bags. I still remember patching up book covers with tape since they quickly became torn.
English every day with Ms. Susan Grady. English and Social Studies sections used the same R1, R2, O4, etc. section names but most of us were put in different sections than that for science and French, Ms. Grady had "Track" rather than "Section" at the top of her assignments. She told us to put in "Red" rather than a section code. Schedule cards had little cryptic codes as well as the main section name. Mine had "AR" for the English section, "2" meaning R2 for Social Studies, and O5 as the main section.
A sixth English period each week was for reading, with Ms. Callahan. This was with the main (O5) group rather than the AR group.
Social Studies section R2 with Mr. Philip Wicky. He pronounced "Himalayas" "him MALL yas", which incidentally is acceptable. Studied world geography; the Argentine pampas and Patagonia still stand out in my mind.
There were four English classrooms and three social studies classrooms. The Orange track students had English and Social studies periods reversed from the Red track students. Also there were three classrooms for each of math, science, and French. Everybody took French. Let's imagine that schools across the nation had a curriculum like Weston's and that Spanish was taught instead of French. Would the U.S.have gotten into this bilingual education mess?
We had more or less self paced independent study math classes using the SMSG (school mathematics study group) texts. All of the R sections had math at the same time and all of the O's had math at the same time. Two of us sat at each study carrel and could help each other but we were not permitted to mingle at random. There were some class rosters that listed all of us with the term "heterogeneous" which suggested no honors group. The "math lab" teachers were Mr.Charles Medford and Mr. O'Rourke. About a quarter to a third of the students were pulled aside in a regular classroom with Ms. Victoria Foley. I suppose this was the slow group. The subject that still stands out in my mind is "base seven arithmetic". (For those of you who know hexadecimal arithmetic the concept is the same.) I didn't succeed in mastering the goal of the exercise, thinking in base seven. Instead I was thinking in normal (base ten) and translating to base seven.
We had standardized tests with machine read answer sheets, although the published schedule for such tests as sent to parents omitted seventh grade. The tests were called "Sequential Tests for Educational Progress" (STEP) and "School and College Ability Tests" (SCAT).
The master clock system made by IBM seemed unusual at first. Every minute the room clock would tick once loudly, then the hand would jump a minute. There was no second hand. At the end of the period we would sit on the edges of our seats knowing exactly when the bell would ring (one second after the hand jumped). If there was a power failure, the resetting of the clocks one minute at a time usually took our attention away from the teacher.
Bells rang in the halls and buzzers sounded in most of the rooms at the ends and beginnings of periods. We had two minute intervals between classes. Once in awhile the bells worked but the buzzers didn't. Or vice versa. Every teacher has said to us at least once, "The bell does not dismiss you, I dismiss you!". Accounts from many years ago mentioned that the buzzers sounded one minute before the bells did, so teachers could read off the homework assignment before we had to leave. At least one teacher in a different school I attended said he had a buzzer disconnected because of the obnoxious sound, and this may have been why buzzers never worked in some rooms at Weston Junior High.
After four classes in the morning we had an hour for lunch in three shifts, periods designated X1, X2, and X3. Every month we rotated to a different lunch shift. A 20 minute recess followed lunch for the first two shifts or started the lunch hour for the third shift. Students straggled out of the lunch room for recess. Reportedly parents complained that their kids got indigestion from eating too fast. The principal promised that anyone needing more time to eat would be given a pass to report late to the next activity. I didn't see anyone taking advantage of that but most likely he would be told to eat lunch during X1 (skipping recess), getting a pass for a late return to the homeroom for X2, and just accompany the class to the assigned lunch period X3.
My homeroom had no teacher assigned. In the morning and during lunch break, usually the music teacher Ms. Wright or the art teacher Ms. Olliff would be there. A few of us would volunteer to be monitor from time to time so the teacher could do other things. Sometimes we had French class there.
Ten minutes before the periods ended, bells sounded in the gym and outside to summon us in to take showers after gym classes. The girls had separate shower stalls; the boys had just one shower room with a dozen spray heads.
Reputation had it that one was fortunate not to have science with Ms. Marble let alone for both seventh and eighth grades. She had the room (105) on the front corner that had a greenhouse area at one end behind a partition. I looked at one of the school reports sent to my parents and found out that she was then the senior member of the faculty, at Weston since 1930. Her class was a letdown for me compared with sixth grade since there was almost no lab work. A typical assignment was to write a half page report on something. For example, the larch, which is an "evergreen" tree that drops its needles every fall. Or the bobolink, which got its name was given because of the sound of its mating call. Ms Marble did seem kind of strict but in retrospect I thought she was a good teacher. Every time we made a mistake on a quiz, we had to find out the correct answer and see her during lunch hour or after school later to go over it. Also she insisted in not calling us by, and not permitting us to write, our nicknames.
Rainy day recess in the gym. A record player was usually on. First heard The Beach Boys' "Surfin' Safari "and Chubby Checker's "Limbo Rock". We (both boys and girls) did the limbo from time to time too, lining up to take turns.
In the back upstairs corner room was the language lab. Our time was Thursday fifth period There were not enough booths for all of us which was probably why we almost never used it. The format was supposed to have us spend half the period in the language lab and then change places with another section having a study hall in the next room. Actually we could have used the language lab since our section had both rooms to ourselves for the whole period. Half of us could be in the language lab at a time. At first Ms. Shapiro conducted an ordinary French class. Then one day a student conned her into playing a comedy record for us to listen to on the language lab headphones. After that she stopped teaching our section and told us to use the entire period as a study period while she did other stuff such as grading papers. Now that is one way an employee can do personal stuff on company time.
During the fall Cuban missile crisis we had "air raid drills". When the bells rang a certain way (probably by manually pushing a button in rhythm) we all got up, left the room, and stood against the lockers in the hall. Except those having lunch in the basement cafeteria stayed where they were and kept eating. Many years later I saw the phrase "duck and cover" but we did not mention that phrase in our time.
Classes
English
Grammar & Composition (every day)
Reading (once a week)
Math (every day)
Social Studies (every day)
French
Grammar & Conversation ( Don't recall, either three or four days)
Language Lab (once a week for half a period)
Science (every day)
Music (twice a week)
Art (once a week)
Industrial Arts or Home Economics (two periods a week)
Physical Education (three times a week)
Teachers and Rooms:
101-102 Math Lab -- Mr. Charles Medford, Mr. O'Rourke
102 Math -- Ms. Victoria Foley
104 Library
105 Science -- Ms. Mildred Marble
106 multi-purpose
107 Science -- Ms. Wareham
108 Science -- Ms. Dorothy Mulroy
201 (south rear corner) Language laboratory
202 French -- Ms. Shapiro
203 French -- Mr. Poole
203 (not sure of subject) Graduate school instructors Ms. Weigel (fall), Ms. Padis (spring)
204 (center rear) English -- Ms. Rosamond Howe
205 (south front corner) English (Reading) -- Ms. Callahan
206 Social Studies -- Mr. Philip Wicky
207 Social Studies -- Mr. Delaney
208 English -- Ms. Susan Grady
209 English -- Ms. Carol Ott
210 Home Economics -- (don't recall the teacher)
211 (north end) Art -- Ms. Alice Olliff
(Basement)
Industrial Arts -- Mr. Galen Green
Music -- Ms. Wright
Boys P.E. -- Mr. Robert Starmer
Girls P.E. -- (don't recall the teacher)
Bell Schedule "A", regular day
Homeroom: 8:00 - 8:16
First period: 8:18 - 8:58
Second period: 9:00 - 9:40
Third period: 9:42 - 10:22
Fourth period: 10:24 - 11:04
Lunch: 11:07 - 12:04 with bells rung between the three shifts also
Fifth period: 12:07 - 12:47
Sixth period: 12:49 - 1:29
Seventh period: 1:31 - 2:11
Homeroom: 2:13 - 2:16 (dismissal)
Buses leave: 2:20
There was also a bell schedule "B" with shortened periods.
Eighth Grade 1963-1964
Was the next class (of 1969) a lot larger? Or did they get the benefit of fewer students per teacher? Additional seventh grade sections (color code gray, or "neutral") N1 and N2 were added to renumbered sections Y1, Y2, Y3, G1, G2, G3. (Maybe there was an N3 as well.) We eighth graders kept the six sections R1, R2, R3, O4, O5, O6. (Two years later the Class of 1968 numbered just under 170 and the Class of 1969 numbered just under 200, according to the 1966 yearbook.)
English classes now had separate groupings for literature (one day a week), grammar (three days a week), and spelling (one day a week). The schedule cards remained a nightmare to produce, with different permutations of three English sections, one social studies section, and one main section for each of us. Schedule cards again had the cryptic codes at the bottom, "5 5 4 O5 R3" on mine. I forget which English class the 4 was for. Again, the Social Studies class had to be from the same color group as the English classes.
The assassination of President John Kennedy. I still remember sitting in art class looking out the windows at the flag flying half staff on a windy cloudy day.
My schedule card had "Alg" hand written over the printed "Math Lab" for the math class times. Algebra was first period each day making it easier for Ms. Ellsworth to come over from the high school to teach us. The rest of the R sections met in the math lab rooms. The first period was usually longer than the other periods because it was started and the bells rung as soon as the morning announcements and "opening exercises" were completed rather than have everyone wait until 8:18 AM.
Most if not all of the algebra group stayed together for other classes as the R3 section. Ms. Dorothy Mulroy's science class was mostly physical science emphasizing "observation" and measurements. "Two glasses of water each with an ice cube", the cube floats in one glass and sinks in the other. Hint: No, the floating cube is rock salt rather than ice, and it is alcohol around that sunken ice cube. We, but not all of her classes, had these kits with nondescript things like paper cups and lead shot in them that we assembled into a scale to weigh things with. Often I would take a kit home in the afternoon to experiment with.
At the fall dance, fake (clip on) neckties were looked down upon. Every now and then someone would yank someone else's's tie to prove whether the tie was or was not fake. I wore a clip on bow tie and surprisingly no one bothered me. Real bow ties are much more difficult to put on than regular ties. Today I volunteer as a motorman at a trolley car museum. We must wear vintage costumes (uniforms) with clip on ties, that come off safely if they get caught in and yanked by machinery. Keeps reminding me of junior high dances.
We did the Step Tests again this year. The answer sheets were in the form of IBM punched cards which we marked with a special pencil (The previous year's tests and also today's SAT's are taken using any #2 pencil.). This was the first time I learned of our being referred to as the "Class of 1968"; the punch cards had the number "68" on them. The seventh graders went about about the building for their classes while we stayed in our homerooms.
We had four gym periods per week instead of the usual three. This was the last year we played dodge ball, which was usually on Fridays in winter or if it rained. There were two versions, official (we called it "bombardment") with two teams on opposite sides of the gym, and "crackabout", every man for himself. If you caught the ball, the person who threw it was out.
On more than one occasion, coach Robert Starmer, right in the middle of gym class, tore the T-shirt off some unfortunate soul who wore it too many times without washing it. Maybe the coach also gave out a detention, that I don't recall.
French with Ms. (Mme.) Manoil. Although she was French, we did not make much of an effort to get our pronunciation correct, or rather relearned to be correct. I don't recall using the language lab this year.
Sidewalks and Spelling
One math teacher was Mr. O'Rourke, some pronounce his name "Oh rook". Maybe they are correct as I had seen his name misspelled as O'Rouk. Meanwhile some songbooks use the spellling "Me and Mamie O'Rorke" to rhyme with "Tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York." Ms. Manoil pronounced her name "Mahn Oh Eel". Almost everyone else pronounced it "Mahn-Wall". Years later I found out that one should put two dots over the "i" which in French indicates her pronunciation. She did not.
This was the only year I recall being dismissed early (once) because of a snowstorm. It was a bit disorganized. We were supposed to be dismissed at noon but at the last minute they decided to bus the elementary school students first. So we waited in homerooms when we might have been able to complete another class period.
Did businesses also close early because of snow back then? For the past 20 years I usually stayed at work late when it snowed. Everyone who left early sat in traffic for two or three extra hours. I usually made it home in not much more time than on a dry day. There might have been one exception; had I lived in Massachusetts rather than New Hampshire in 1978 I would have been stuck at work during that year's big February blizzard.
Room Assignments:
202 French -- Ms. Manoi:l
203 French -- (different teachers, I don't recall)
208 English -- Ms. Harrington
Bell Schedule -- same as above except bells rung manually for start of first period.
Freshman Year 1964-1965
"Squeak!" "Be careful with the microphone so you don't get all that feedback?" No, that is the tone that serves as the bell. Today I live a block from the junior high school and I can hear the bell tones from the outdoor speakers every morning although I can't make out the announcements.
The classrooms had public address speakers as in the junior high school, but instead of the push button there was a telephone handset below the speaker and the teacher could have a semi-private conversation with the office attendant. There were additional speakers in the hallways but the volume was too low to hear either announcements or bell tones.
Monday morning, September ... Please rise for the pledge to the flag. We recited the pledge along with the announcer on the P.A., whom I was later told, was a member of my older brother's class of 1966.
Unlike junior high, each course met at the same time each day.
I think it was this year we had a "moment of silent meditation" rather than reading from the Bible.
"A" period. Advanced English with Ms. Rich. I finally figured out that "AR" as my seventh grade English section stood for "advanced English". English was really not my strong subject but I wasn't assertive enough to make a change down to the next level called "College Prep. English." We all read Great Expectations. Only thing I remember about the book now is that one of the characters is named Pip, for Philip.
"B" period. This is one thing I disliked, early morning gym class. We met on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (notated B345 on the schedule), with freshmen, sophomores, and juniors mixed. (Seniors were kept separate because they had only two gym classes per week.) Children are born in all twelve months of the year but they begin school in just one month, September. My birthday relative to September made me one of the youngest, so I had to play with others three whole years older. Also I would have preferred gym in the afternoon. Sometimes we had to play indoors while afternoon classes got to play outside. Today as I drive to work, I pass by Nashua High School and see the kids out there in the cold playing touch football; that is what I had to go through.
We played an unusual version of softball. Someone from your own team pitched. One pitch per batter; an out if not a base hit. A better idea of mine: if the pitch was obviously bad, the same batter, after incurring the out, should have gotten to try again.
"C" period. Geometry.
"Thursday morning, October ... The order of periods will be C, D, F, G, and E". On the first Thursday of each month we got to go home early while the teachers had their monthly workshops in the afternoon. Did you find the problem? OK, here it is -- My Biology class had the Thursday D and E periods (ED4) together for a lab session and the schedule split it up. Later they changed the short schedule to F, G, C, D, E on those months when it was the A and B periods' turn to be deleted, to keep the D and E periods juxtaposed. Believe it or not, this change did not upset anyone else's lab periods. The E period was never deleted (except on Christmas eve) because the school still served lunch. We had these lab notebooks with carbon copies we handed in for grading. I was trying to see how long I could make a sheet of carbon paper last, so I never changed it. Ms. Susan Reich got upset when she could not read the faded copies, so after awhile she made everyone turn in the originals and leave the carbon copies in the notebooks.
The fifth (E) period was also the lunch hour, with subsections E1, E2, and E3. When you go to Walt Disney World,do you get upset at people cutting in line? Well they learned that at Weston High School during lunch time. The period immediately after was called Conference Period and had no scheduled classes.
"F" period. I took Latin. "The ... plural for filia [daughter] and dea [goddess] is irregular" read the textbook. Mrs Margaret Fernald said: "It's a man's world. The regular form of these nouns would have been the same as for the masculine nouns filius [son] and deus [god] so the ancient Romans changed the feminine forms to distinguish the two." Can't change history.
Did you know that "bus" (as in school bus, trolley bus, etc.) is simply short for "omnibus", the Latin word that means "for all" or "by all"? The best historical account mentions a store whose owner was named Omnes (Latin for "all" as the subject in a sentence) He put a sign on his store "Omnes Omnibus (all for all as in something for everyone). The owner of a public transit service, horse drawn at that time, had his headquarters near the store and put "Omnibus" rather than the street name or destination name on the sides of his coaches.
"G" period. French. The only other choice of modern language was Russian; in a later year Spanish was offered.
Sophomore Year 1965-1966
I decided to opt out of "G" period Advanced English (Mr. Davies) and go back to regular English in the "A" period with Ms. Barnett. My older brother had Mr. Davies and thought he was a tough grader. At the same time I took the opportunity and initiative to switch to the noon hour gym class that didn't have any juniors or seniors in it.
Speech class was required of all sophomores and we met on Mondays and Tuesdays (B12). Mr. John Zorn lived in town and had the last listing in the local phone book for many years. So often in class someone (I don't recall doing it myself) when called upon said s/he was "not prepared" whereupon Mr. Zorn announced that the student would get an F for that week. Once, to bypass writer's block, I took a topic suggested in the text book: "Why I Would Go To The Moon". I came up with a decent speech with decent delivery but it was a total lie; I would not go.
Algebra II with Ms. Martha Zelinka, Weston's advanced math teacher. She had Great Expectations of me to follow in the footsteps of my brother. I don't think I delivered on that. Like Ms. Marble back in Jr. High, Ms. Zelinka was strict. After she retired, she moved from Weston to Gloucester. Around 1991 I was working for someone up in Gloucester and regret not looking her up and visiting. I attended her funeral a few years later.
Took Latin II. Nowadays I ask myself, "why?" I could have taken a newly introduced electronics industrial arts course instead.
French was with Ms. Rasma Jurjans (you're yawns) from Latvia. (World famous danseur Mikhail Barishnikov was also from Latvia.) We all read Les Miserables. The subway (le metro) and the sewer (l'egout) somehow always catch my interest. There was a long passage about l'egout in Les Miserables. My pronunciation was not that good in French (or in English for that matter). Finally we started relearning our pronunciation in the language lab.
When I was in graduate school, one of the students (now a professor at that school) said ,"It is not sufficient to just get good grades on the tests and assignments. You must please the teacher." I wish I had known that followed that back in Ms. Zelinka's classes.
"The morning announcements! The order of periods will be A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and Conference. Conference period will be at the end of the day." I found those sports awards assemblies boring. So boring that I actually fell asleep. These days I keep thinking to myself, I should get a small oxygen bottle to sniff from and get pepped up from during business meetings. Or is this why everyone else feels it is so important to have his/her cup of coffee every morning?
I joined the "Math Club". Ms. Zelinka was disappointed the previous year when I had said I was "not interested". We had interscholastic contests where we solve math problems and the team who got the highest score by the end of the year won a trophy. Again I had my older brother to vie with, look up to, and (unsuccessfully) try to outdo.
Junior Year 1966-1967
A period-- Informal Latin
B period -- back to the disliked morning gym class.
C -- Chemistry, Mr. John Stayn
D -- Algebra II
E -- English
F -- French
G -- U.S. History, Mr. Donald Kennedy
Ms. Zelinka offered a short non-credit course in Probability and we met during Conference period. Sure enough, the subject of gambling was discussed. A few weeks later I and various other students were shooting dice outside the auditorium entrance under the flagpole. I took down the results in a notebook so I could say to a teacher, if asked, that I was doing a math project.
My first attempt at after school sports was spring track. Parts of it were grueling. Of course, had I joined as a freshman I would have been good at it by junior year. I still remember the wind sprints around the track, slow to a jog around the ends, go like the wind on the straightaways. We were divided into three groups spaced more or less equally apart, or 120 degrees, from each other. I kept falling behind (getting out of phase) and joining up with the next group coming up the rear for the next lap. I didn't win any sweater or letter awards so sports awards assemblies were still boring.
I did not take any social studies in high school until the state law required U.S. History taught to juniors here at Weston.
"The library is chronically overcrowded!" If I wanted to use the library during a study hall period I had to run through the halls to get there before Mr. Higgins came to the door and threw up his hands. Facets (the student publication) wrote "[students would rather] con a female librarian than grapple with a male study hall proctor." The regular study hall was the cafeteria except during E period when various random unused rooms were used. WRKO (talk radio back then) debuted rock and roll (first on FM) and I brought a radio to listen to during study hall.
I stayed with the Math Club while my brother had graduated. I did not win any of the personal awards that were given out. I lost numerous points due to careless mistakes.
We had a few bomb scares. Once the buses came and took us home early. The other time we sat on the gym bleachers until the normal dismissal time.
Senior year 1967-1968
I transferred to another school (Cambridge School of Weston). This is what I missed:
The new library.Biology II. For a moment after transferring to CSW I thought about commuting back to WHS to take this. Then I thought about doing it at Brandeis University. The logistics were too complicated so I did not follow through.
Wrestling. Junior year I had just started to get into after school sports. One afternoon while waiting for the math contest to start I was watching the wrestling team practice in the cafeteria and took an interest. CSW did not have a wrestling team.
I did come back to WHS on a few Saturdays to take the SAT's. WHS was one of the regional testing centers.
Two fellow '68 classmates did the same thing I did, transfer out of Weston High, spend a thirteenth year each at (different) private schools,.and go to Dartmouth College in the class of 1973. Unfortunately I did not spend much time with either of them while at Dartmouth.
All parts (c) copyright 1998-2008, Allan W. Jayne, Jr. unless otherwise noted or other origin stated.
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