I only had 3 teachers in elementary school.

I remember a lot of things from my child hood.  I could tell you about the time I flooded the bathroom and my dad had to go into the crawl-space of our house to fix the problem, or about the one guard director I had that refused to learn anyone's named and instead used pet names.  Sometimes, I can place those memories in a time and place, but a lot of my earlier memories I cannot give specific years in school that I remember them.

This is because, although I went to a 6-year elementary school, I only had a total of three teachers.  My family had the fortune of being able to put their two daughters into a new elementary school across the street because the township had grown.  My first-grade teacher was Mrs. H.  She was a stern, older woman with curly black hair and she kind of looked like my grandmother when she was younger.  I don't remember much of 1st grade except that my best friend had a bowl cut that year and that I was not nice to boys (big surprise).  Now, at my elementary school, it was traditional to have the same teacher for 2nd and 3rd grade, and I was rewarded with Mrs. E.  My sister also had her, so Mrs. E got my mom for years of pretty much helping every holiday party (my mom loves cooking and coming up with games for parties).  I have a few distinct memories from being in Mrs. E's class but I cannot place them in one grade or another.

When I moved into 4th grade, things got a bit strange.  I was placed in Mrs. M's class.  At first, I really wasn't fond of Mrs. M.  She made us write everything in cursive, even though other classes in 4th grade let their students switch back and forth.  As the end of the year rolled around and summer passed, I was hoping to receive a letter in the mail saying which new teacher I would have for 5th grade, only to find out that because of the size of my class in particular, Mrs. M had moved up to teaching 5th grade and was going to be my homeroom teacher (in 5th grade you had two teachers).  Luckily, besides homeroom, Mrs. M taught math and science for that year, mostly shutting out cursive.  Turns our cursive is useless in math (surprise).  I got along much better with her that year, but I was also a fan of my other teacher, Mr. B, who taught English and history.

So finally hitting 6th grade, which was exciting for every kid who went to that school because that year you practiced rotating classes, much like you would for middle and high school.  But we also got a homeroom teacher.  And by the end of 5th grade, I knew who I was going to get, because my class, again, was huge.  And Mrs. M was my homeroom teacher again (and she was my writing teacher that year D: ) but by this point, I was pretty used to her style of teaching, even if I had to write in cursive.  Luckily, because 6th grade was split between 5 teachers, it was hard to feel like you had any single one of them as a main teacher, I got along pretty well.  Most of my peers didn't have this happen, but I always found it odd.

I was musing about this because I've started writing down memories from when I was a kid, so that I could keep them near me as I get older (I've only started journaling in middle school) but it's been difficult to place what year they occurred because of this reason.  Maybe I will post some of those stories here...you never know.

~Ame