by Barbara Frank
OK, I admit it, I loved fifth grade.
Please, before anyone tries to confiscate my homeschool mom credentials, let me explain. Some time after the initial thrill of “going to school” had worn off, and long before the tedium of high school (where my days were filled with a burning desire to get by and get out), I had a school year that was radically different from any I experienced during all my years of compulsory schooling. Ironically, that year distinctly affected how I would eventually homeschool my children.
Clearmont School was a typical 1960s American suburban school. There was a principal, a secretary, a librarian, a “Learning Center” supervisor, two janitors, and several hundred children from the subdivision surrounding the school. Back then, apparently, a school could be run without having as many administrators and staff in the building as children.
I moved to the neighborhood just in time to begin fourth grade at Clearmont, and there was nothing remarkable about that year. I spent it as I had the previous four, parroting back answers and staring out the window daydreaming.
But something changed in fifth grade. Evidently, over the summer a small group of us had been identified as “gifted.” I recall lots of discussion around the house about my achievement test scores, so perhaps that’s what caused the school to separate us from our classmates. Regardless, a small group of us were given a different schedule of classes than the other kids.
At first I was not happy to be separated from most of my friends and neighbors. But as the year unfolded, I found myself actually enjoying school.
In retrospect, I believe the teaching staff didn’t really know what to do with us at first, which would explain how we ended up in the Learning Center each morning. While the other fifth-graders had reading class, we were sent to a spacious room filled with tables and chairs, and lined with shelves full of educational games and resources. We were told to sit quietly and work on the exercises we would find in a box placed in the middle of our table.
The box contained sheets of paper grouped by color. On each sheet was a story followed by comprehension questions. The exercises became more difficult as we progressed through the colors. After finishing each exercise, we were allowed to check our work with an answer key and record our score. I felt proud knowing that they trusted me to do those things.
At first we sat quietly and worked. But at some point, we began to compete with each other to see who could finish soonest with the highest score. This was great fun, and before long all of us had completed the entire box of exercises. The Learning Center supervisor didn’t know what we should do next, but apparently she’d been told to keep us busy, so she let us choose from the resources in the room. This is how I learned to play Mancala, an ancient game of strategy; we spent many happy hours playing that game as well as others. To be free to have fun in the middle of the school day was exciting!
Lunchtime was also exciting, because the girls in our small group were given the opportunity to answer the telephone in the school office during lunch. At Clearmont, the staff took an hour off for lunch while the children walked home to have their own meal, so there was no one around to answer the phone. But this changed once we were allowed to do that job. Each girl was assigned to a week at a time of daily lunchtime phone duty. It was an honor to be trusted enough to take phone messages while sitting at the secretary’s desk, eating a bag lunch. Of course, becoming the envy of all one’s friends made this an extra-special privilege.
The afternoon was interesting, too, for that was when our little group attended algebra and Spanish classes. Our algebra teacher was a young man who had longish hair and a beard, wore a shirt and tie, and talked loudly. He didn’t expect us to raise our hands when we wanted to speak, but he did expect us to speak! It was a far less structured classroom environment than we were accustomed to (teachers in nearby classrooms sometimes asked us to pipe down), but it was a fun place to learn. Knowing that we were expected to understand algebra in fifth grade made it challenging and satisfying.
Our Spanish class was also very stimulating. We were not allowed to speak English in class, so we quickly picked up a fair amount of Spanish out of necessity. At the end of the school year, we presented the play “Blanca Nieve” (“Snow White”) in Spanish to the entire school. While our audience had no idea of what we were saying, they seemed to enjoy the play just the same.
As they say, time flies when you’re having fun. Before long, our fifth grade year ended, and we left Clearmont to attend the junior high down the road. There I would go back to the mind-numbing routines that had characterized my school days before fifth grade. But the experience remained in my mind, and I now realize that my time as a fifth grader actually taught me a few things that have served me well as I teach my children at home:
· I learned that children can be trusted to learn. While loosely supervised in the Learning Center, my classmates and I devoured the various activities that were there for our enrichment. No one walked us through the motions of each exercise and game; we were left to figure out things out for ourselves, and we did.
· I learned that children can be trusted to help out. As one of the girls allowed to answer the phone in the school office during lunch hour, I took great pride in my work, and I recall that the other girls did, too. Who wanted to risk losing one of the principal’s phone messages? We took our jobs seriously, even at age 11.
· I learned that children should be provided with resources. Whether that means a room full of educational games or a giant mud puddle in the back yard, the child who has open access to learning resources will want to explore them.
· I learned that children learn best when they have freedom. The freedom to speak, to move about, to choose what to work on next; these are all part of the process of learning. Traditional schooling rarely allows these things to happen, and that’s why true learning rarely happens there. The flip side of this is that children have freedom at home, and so they learn quickly and efficiently there.
As a fifth grader, I could not have imagined that my future children would never go to school. Back then, we thought school was inevitable, a certainty you just had to get through somehow. But that year planted ideas in my head that would burst into bloom when I became a homeschooling parent. Maybe that’s the real reason I love my memories of fifth grade.
Copyright 2011 Barbara Frank/ Cardamom Publishers
Barbara Frank has been homeschooling for 25 years. Her latest book is Thriving in the 21st Century: Preparing Our Children for the New Economic Reality (Cardamom Publishers, April 2011). You'll find her on the Web at www.thrivinginthe21stcentury.com and http://barbarafrankonline.com
OK, I admit it, I loved fifth grade.
Please, before anyone tries to confiscate my homeschool mom credentials, let me explain. Some time after the initial thrill of “going to school” had worn off, and long before the tedium of high school (where my days were filled with a burning desire to get by and get out), I had a school year that was radically different from any I experienced during all my years of compulsory schooling. Ironically, that year distinctly affected how I would eventually homeschool my children.
Clearmont School was a typical 1960s American suburban school. There was a principal, a secretary, a librarian, a “Learning Center” supervisor, two janitors, and several hundred children from the subdivision surrounding the school. Back then, apparently, a school could be run without having as many administrators and staff in the building as children.
I moved to the neighborhood just in time to begin fourth grade at Clearmont, and there was nothing remarkable about that year. I spent it as I had the previous four, parroting back answers and staring out the window daydreaming.
But something changed in fifth grade. Evidently, over the summer a small group of us had been identified as “gifted.” I recall lots of discussion around the house about my achievement test scores, so perhaps that’s what caused the school to separate us from our classmates. Regardless, a small group of us were given a different schedule of classes than the other kids.
At first I was not happy to be separated from most of my friends and neighbors. But as the year unfolded, I found myself actually enjoying school.
In retrospect, I believe the teaching staff didn’t really know what to do with us at first, which would explain how we ended up in the Learning Center each morning. While the other fifth-graders had reading class, we were sent to a spacious room filled with tables and chairs, and lined with shelves full of educational games and resources. We were told to sit quietly and work on the exercises we would find in a box placed in the middle of our table.
The box contained sheets of paper grouped by color. On each sheet was a story followed by comprehension questions. The exercises became more difficult as we progressed through the colors. After finishing each exercise, we were allowed to check our work with an answer key and record our score. I felt proud knowing that they trusted me to do those things.
At first we sat quietly and worked. But at some point, we began to compete with each other to see who could finish soonest with the highest score. This was great fun, and before long all of us had completed the entire box of exercises. The Learning Center supervisor didn’t know what we should do next, but apparently she’d been told to keep us busy, so she let us choose from the resources in the room. This is how I learned to play Mancala, an ancient game of strategy; we spent many happy hours playing that game as well as others. To be free to have fun in the middle of the school day was exciting!
Lunchtime was also exciting, because the girls in our small group were given the opportunity to answer the telephone in the school office during lunch. At Clearmont, the staff took an hour off for lunch while the children walked home to have their own meal, so there was no one around to answer the phone. But this changed once we were allowed to do that job. Each girl was assigned to a week at a time of daily lunchtime phone duty. It was an honor to be trusted enough to take phone messages while sitting at the secretary’s desk, eating a bag lunch. Of course, becoming the envy of all one’s friends made this an extra-special privilege.
The afternoon was interesting, too, for that was when our little group attended algebra and Spanish classes. Our algebra teacher was a young man who had longish hair and a beard, wore a shirt and tie, and talked loudly. He didn’t expect us to raise our hands when we wanted to speak, but he did expect us to speak! It was a far less structured classroom environment than we were accustomed to (teachers in nearby classrooms sometimes asked us to pipe down), but it was a fun place to learn. Knowing that we were expected to understand algebra in fifth grade made it challenging and satisfying.
Our Spanish class was also very stimulating. We were not allowed to speak English in class, so we quickly picked up a fair amount of Spanish out of necessity. At the end of the school year, we presented the play “Blanca Nieve” (“Snow White”) in Spanish to the entire school. While our audience had no idea of what we were saying, they seemed to enjoy the play just the same.
As they say, time flies when you’re having fun. Before long, our fifth grade year ended, and we left Clearmont to attend the junior high down the road. There I would go back to the mind-numbing routines that had characterized my school days before fifth grade. But the experience remained in my mind, and I now realize that my time as a fifth grader actually taught me a few things that have served me well as I teach my children at home:
· I learned that children can be trusted to learn. While loosely supervised in the Learning Center, my classmates and I devoured the various activities that were there for our enrichment. No one walked us through the motions of each exercise and game; we were left to figure out things out for ourselves, and we did.
· I learned that children can be trusted to help out. As one of the girls allowed to answer the phone in the school office during lunch hour, I took great pride in my work, and I recall that the other girls did, too. Who wanted to risk losing one of the principal’s phone messages? We took our jobs seriously, even at age 11.
· I learned that children should be provided with resources. Whether that means a room full of educational games or a giant mud puddle in the back yard, the child who has open access to learning resources will want to explore them.
· I learned that children learn best when they have freedom. The freedom to speak, to move about, to choose what to work on next; these are all part of the process of learning. Traditional schooling rarely allows these things to happen, and that’s why true learning rarely happens there. The flip side of this is that children have freedom at home, and so they learn quickly and efficiently there.
As a fifth grader, I could not have imagined that my future children would never go to school. Back then, we thought school was inevitable, a certainty you just had to get through somehow. But that year planted ideas in my head that would burst into bloom when I became a homeschooling parent. Maybe that’s the real reason I love my memories of fifth grade.
Copyright 2011 Barbara Frank/ Cardamom Publishers
Barbara Frank has been homeschooling for 25 years. Her latest book is Thriving in the 21st Century: Preparing Our Children for the New Economic Reality (Cardamom Publishers, April 2011). You'll find her on the Web at www.thrivinginthe21stcentury.com and http://barbarafrankonline.com
