Do you remember your first grade teacher’s name?

Facebook poses the oddest questions sometimes, not generally giving a flip whether I can answer them I usually scroll right past.  But the other day it asked a question that gave me pause – it wondered whether I could remember my first grade teacher’s name.  ‘Hell yeah!’  I thought – part of me has been trying to forget that name for sixty years. 

I went to first grade in Calgary in 1959.  My class landed smack in the middle of the biggest wave of children to hit the education system in the history of Canada – the baby boomers. As kids we had no idea that term would define our generation, no clue we were a strain on the system or that the school was already crammed to the gills and the patience of the teachers stretched to the limits. 

I remember assembling with the noisy ruckus of children in the school yard on the first day of school  – the clangs from bell in the principal’s hand being muffled in the mayhem, the call to attention ignored. It’s a blurry memory and I don’t care to try to bring it into focus – elementary school and I were not a good fit.  

I wonder at times if my experience in first grade flavored all the school years to follow.  I suppose it’s possible, I was a sensitive little girl – self conscious and stuck on my mother – fearful. My first grade teacher did nothing to ease those fears, she became them.

My class was relegated to a dark space behind the closed curtains of the stage in the gymnasium of an overcrowded high school (the gymnasium having already been sectioned into several other classrooms with moveable partitions).  Rows of desks butted front to back in the dim light of the musty enclosure.  For me going to school became something akin to walking into a bad dream. 

Our teacher had to raise her voice to be heard over the muted sounds sneaking through the heavy fabric curtains from the gymnasium crowd below.  She had an accent, one my mother said came from Scotland, and a short temper. She was quick to shout and had a variety of expressions I had never heard before. I was horrified the day she told the class she’d ring our necks like little chickens if we didn’t behave.  At the time I was unaware little chickens had their necks wrung but I also had little doubt this intense little Scots lady was more than capable of doing the ringing.  I was lumped among the misbehavers and knew I was done for whether or not I’d done anything wrong. 

Do I remember the name of my first grade teacher?  You bet.  Will I say her name out loud?  Not likely.  Facebook may have jogged my memory but it hasn’t inspired me to tempt fate.