Sharing Memories Week 11 Elementary School Days

The majority of my elementary days were spent at Campus Elementary that was in the above building call Old North Building of Central State College (It is now Central State University and the elementary school is no longer there). The picture was before I came there. It was the original building of the college which was considered a 'normal' college, meaning it taught teachers to teach. (A normal school was a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers. Its purpose was to establish teaching standards or norms, hence its name.)

I was in the second grade when we moved to Edmond, OK. My teacher was Mrs Russell. I loved the room I was in. It was bright and sunny and there were great manipulative toys/learning tools to use if we could not go outside at recess. The lunch room was down stairs, the library was in the next building and the PE was across campus as was the music classes. We went to where the college's buildings for those disciplines were.


In the third year my teacher at  Campus was Mrs Stanton.  It was a fun time.  My mother was preparing for her student teaching, so she would come and get me to do demonstrations in her classes at college.  She had to do her student teaching the second half of the third year, so we moved to another town for 6 months.  I do remember that I stepped on a nail and could not walk at the end of the year.  My dad carried me to the park so I could picnic with the class on the last day of school.

We were back at Campus for the fourth grade.  Mrs Gayle was my teacher.  She was in her 50's, had gray hair and wore it in a pony tail.  I remember struggling with math, but I loved reading.  My favorite day was library day because we would go and spend several hours at the library.  I was beginning to dislike recess, because the boys delighted in calling me 'Frances the talking mule'. Of course I was bad and would chase them. My mother would get angry because frequently I would come home with a torn dress.

The fifth grade I am not sure who the teacher was.  I hated PE because I was skinny and they would have us swim with the boys, and I could not figure out how to swim.  I was in Jr. High before I knew how to float, and college before I learned to actually swim strokes. I remember once being on the balance bars with my friends... I said "look no hands".  The next thing I knew I was sitting on my bottom on the ground.  We all had a good laugh.

The sixth grade was marvelous.  I forgot to mention every year the Music department of the college would prepare the grades to have a "big production" program.  Usually it was at Christmas.  I loved music.  I took lessons from one of the professors.  I wish I had made better use of my opportunity.  The program below is of our Christmas program that year. If you click on it you can read it.  I was an 'angel'.   With that I will close.  I loved elementary.  I had a wonderful environment and marvelous teachers that encouraged and gave us the full scope of education.  Not everyone was so lucky, I am thankful I was.