let me hear your voice tonight (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexseanchai) wrote2019-07-15 01:34 pm
alexseanchai) wrote2019-07-15 01:34 pm
Prealgebra Saga (lightly redacted)
Picture if you will smol third grade me, who was bored enough with math homework to translate the lot of it into base five, do the problems, and translate it back for turning in.
Mrs. K pretty much took one look at this, marched over to the fourth-grade classroom, and made off with one of the math books.
Somewhat later in the year, she repeated this procedure with the fifth-grade classroom. Over Christmas break she sent me home with the sixth-grade math text, and then arranged with my parents and the junior high that for the remainder of the year, I could attend first period prealgebra with the seventh-graders and then do the rest of the day with the other third-graders. And at some point she and my parents arranged that I would enter fifth grade the next year, not fourth.
(Mrs. K is also the teacher who, if she found an unfamiliar name on a homework sheet, set it aside and went on. If she got to the end of the pile and hadn't found mine, she knew I was using some other name than was on her roll call that week, and also that was my paper.)
That summer, the USAF found out Dad finally got his bachelor's, and consequently the USAF told him to march his happy ass to Keesler AFB, go teach the airmen for a few years.
Biloxi MS public schools were not happy about having to put me in fifth grade. And Mr. M tried, he did, but he couldn't get any more advanced math textbook for me than prealgebra.
For that and other reasons, my siblings and I moved to Catholic elementary for my sixth grade year. Mrs. T also tried, but she still couldn't get any more advanced math textbook for me than prealgebra.
(She also banned me from getting Accelerated Reader prizes. Something about wanting to give other students a chance.)
Now, at that time all the Catholic elementary schools on the Mississippi Gulf Coast fed into Mercy Cross Junior-Senior High. Seventh through twelfth grades. As you might guess from the Biloxi district's reluctance to admit anyone had a point in advancing me past my agemates, I was the youngest person in the school.
(I turned eleven the winter I was in sixth grade. I note this because I have long reflected on how if I'd only gotten my Hogwarts letter…)
Furthermore, Mercy Cross had a weird-ass system. Instead of having six to eight periods a day, there were four, and any class that would be the full year in Biloxi public schools was one half of the year or the other. (Except religion. Every seventh-grader was in religion class all year.) First half of seventh grade: gym, science (Mr. B rocked, I must note), social studies, and religion, in that order. So, the middle half of each school day was interesting. Please take note of how my gym classmates spanned five grade levels and the class was not predominantly occupied by seventh-graders.
Over Christmas break, Mom and Dad went to the Mercy Cross principal to argue that I should be placed in eighth-grade algebra. I had, after all, done seventh-grade prealgebra three years running at that point. The principal calmly expressed his concern about my social development, given that I would then be spending a fourth of my school day with students older than me. The prealgebra teacher in whose class the schedule had placed me said airily, "Oh, there must be something she can learn" in prealgebra.
The other three classes I was taking that half of the year were study skills (yaaaaawn; also just because that's the name of the class doesn't mean that's what was taught), English (in which I think I did three times as many worksheets as anyone else in the class because that teacher had sense), and religion.
My bored ass learned just how close I could come to expulsion. I literally spent the last few days of the school year mopping the gym and stuff, because it was something to do with me that wasn't either having me in class or kicking me out before the school year was officially over.
I wish to note also that Mercy Cross was located on the Biloxi Back Bay. Like, on the Back Bay. Can't say it was beachfront, there wasn't beach on that stretch of shoreline, but you get the picture. Consider what happens to beachfront properties when storms like Hurricane Katrina roll through. 😺😺😺
(I got an ADHD diagnosis in my late twenties, and Catholic high school students in Biloxi go to St. Patrick's now.)
Mrs. K pretty much took one look at this, marched over to the fourth-grade classroom, and made off with one of the math books.
Somewhat later in the year, she repeated this procedure with the fifth-grade classroom. Over Christmas break she sent me home with the sixth-grade math text, and then arranged with my parents and the junior high that for the remainder of the year, I could attend first period prealgebra with the seventh-graders and then do the rest of the day with the other third-graders. And at some point she and my parents arranged that I would enter fifth grade the next year, not fourth.
(Mrs. K is also the teacher who, if she found an unfamiliar name on a homework sheet, set it aside and went on. If she got to the end of the pile and hadn't found mine, she knew I was using some other name than was on her roll call that week, and also that was my paper.)
That summer, the USAF found out Dad finally got his bachelor's, and consequently the USAF told him to march his happy ass to Keesler AFB, go teach the airmen for a few years.
Biloxi MS public schools were not happy about having to put me in fifth grade. And Mr. M tried, he did, but he couldn't get any more advanced math textbook for me than prealgebra.
For that and other reasons, my siblings and I moved to Catholic elementary for my sixth grade year. Mrs. T also tried, but she still couldn't get any more advanced math textbook for me than prealgebra.
(She also banned me from getting Accelerated Reader prizes. Something about wanting to give other students a chance.)
Now, at that time all the Catholic elementary schools on the Mississippi Gulf Coast fed into Mercy Cross Junior-Senior High. Seventh through twelfth grades. As you might guess from the Biloxi district's reluctance to admit anyone had a point in advancing me past my agemates, I was the youngest person in the school.
(I turned eleven the winter I was in sixth grade. I note this because I have long reflected on how if I'd only gotten my Hogwarts letter…)
Furthermore, Mercy Cross had a weird-ass system. Instead of having six to eight periods a day, there were four, and any class that would be the full year in Biloxi public schools was one half of the year or the other. (Except religion. Every seventh-grader was in religion class all year.) First half of seventh grade: gym, science (Mr. B rocked, I must note), social studies, and religion, in that order. So, the middle half of each school day was interesting. Please take note of how my gym classmates spanned five grade levels and the class was not predominantly occupied by seventh-graders.
Over Christmas break, Mom and Dad went to the Mercy Cross principal to argue that I should be placed in eighth-grade algebra. I had, after all, done seventh-grade prealgebra three years running at that point. The principal calmly expressed his concern about my social development, given that I would then be spending a fourth of my school day with students older than me. The prealgebra teacher in whose class the schedule had placed me said airily, "Oh, there must be something she can learn" in prealgebra.
The other three classes I was taking that half of the year were study skills (yaaaaawn; also just because that's the name of the class doesn't mean that's what was taught), English (in which I think I did three times as many worksheets as anyone else in the class because that teacher had sense), and religion.
My bored ass learned just how close I could come to expulsion. I literally spent the last few days of the school year mopping the gym and stuff, because it was something to do with me that wasn't either having me in class or kicking me out before the school year was officially over.
I wish to note also that Mercy Cross was located on the Biloxi Back Bay. Like, on the Back Bay. Can't say it was beachfront, there wasn't beach on that stretch of shoreline, but you get the picture. Consider what happens to beachfront properties when storms like Hurricane Katrina roll through. 😺😺😺
(I got an ADHD diagnosis in my late twenties, and Catholic high school students in Biloxi go to St. Patrick's now.)
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The rest of that saga makes me wince and feel sorry for younger you. (and I am glad the storms gave you some revenge!)
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The strict age grading of schools is so unnatural anyways.
Where outside of modern schools have people ever spent most of their time almost only with other people within a year of their age? (I expect there have been a few other contexts ... but not many.)
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Note: This comment kinda ran away from me. It's basically a monologue of all the reasons I was miserable when I was little, and how I was lucky enough to have access to a solution. In other words, the rest of this comment holds nothing of substance and is skippable. I also kinda gave up on capitalizing my I's midway through.
Third, fourth, and fifth grade were the most boring and miserable years of my life. I was repeating the same topics in pre-algebra over and over again and I struggled to retain friendships. I would self-sabotage my own friendships, because if i met a potential friend, i would immediately latch on and try to spend all my time with them, because i was starved for social interaction. Then, when they obviously had other friends with whom they would also spend time, i would begin to fear that they did not like me, they found me so annoying, they absolutely hated my company, and i would pull away. i would stop approaching them to spend time together, and the two of us would not be so close, at that point, that the potential friend would approach me themself, to spend time together. Thus, my self-doubt made me incapable of retaining friends. Also, I was very, very, very shy when i was little and I found change terrifying (I still do). My mom would try to convince me to transfer schools to a private school which could personalize my curriculum, but i refused to listen for the afore mentioned reasons. In sixth grade, my mom finally convinced me to transfer to the private school my little brother attended. It was the best decision of my short life. I finally got curriculum that was challenging, and the small class sizes and tight-knit i've-known-you-since-we-were-six friend groups, which i had feared, allowed me to gain some much needed close friends. This, in turn, through repeated interactions with the same people, people who actually liked me and would seek me out to talk to, allowed me to gain some much needed social confidence. It also gave me the ability to actually spark and retain friendships. But i digress. My original point was going to be that i was lucky enough to have access to a private school which could customize my curriculum, allowing me to complete Calculus BC by 10th grade.