In the state of Wisconsin it’s mandated that teachers in the social sciences and hard sciences have to start giving environmental education by the first grade, through high school.
I had a bad time in school in the first grade. Because I had been a rather lonely child on a farm, but I was free and wild and to be shut up in a classroom – there were 40 children on those days in the classroom, and it was quite a shock.
First grade was – I spoke only Spanish, and second grade – probably a bit more English. And by the time I hit third grade, I was learning, of course, much, much more English.
When we talk about novels, we don’t often talk about imagination. Why not? Does it seem too first grade? In reviews, you read about limpid prose, about the faithful reproduction of consciousness, about moral heft, but rarely about the power of pure, unadulterated imagination.
One thing that I’m super fortunate of – I grew up in a house where it was all about health and fitness. My dad was a wrestler; he was a boxer. He’s always been into working out, and so I was the only kid in the first grade that got carrot sticks at school instead of chips.
I grew up on Long Island, and from as early as I can remember, as far back as first grade, I had two real passions – one of them was putting on plays, and the other was journalism. I was directing plays and editing school papers from first grade on, all the way through college.
I began to despise Lenin, even when I was in the first grade, not so much because of his political philosophy or practice… but because of his omnipresent images.
I had a drummer in my band who started teaching me tricks to come up with interesting rhythms. Because I don’t come from a musical background, I’ve never studied music, and I don’t know music theory at all, so a lot of stuff I discover on my own are things students would learn in the first grade of music.
When I was in first grade, everyone made fun of my name, of course. I think it’s kind of a big name to hold up when you’re nine years old. It seemed goofy. I used to tell people I wanted to change the world and they used to think, ‘This kid’s really weird’.
I came of baseball age (isn’t it always around first grade?) in the last sputtering years of the A’s Philadelphia tenancy. I probably plighted my fated troth in 1949, when the A’s fluked into a winning season and introduced a pintsize southpaw named Bobby Shantz.
I cried every day of first grade. In class. Which meant I ended up getting comfortable emoting in a place where it wasn’t the norm.
I ended up going to public school in the first grade, and that’s when I knew I had to be very strategic about my survival in school. I tried my best to be friends with people who were going to protect me.
My dad had his own business and was extremely busy, but on a very rare occasion, he would play guitar and sing a bit. I was always fascinated by it. I wrote my first song in first grade because my dad was making songs up during those special moments, and it seemed like a fun thing to try myself.
It’s like first grade where you make all your mistakes and people see it and yet some people see that there’s something there that’s really valuable. That’s the way it went for more than 2 years almost 3 years of playing.
What I do remember about first grade and that year was that it was very lonely. I didn’t have any friends, and I wasn’t allowed to go to the cafeteria or play on the playground. What bothered me most was the loneliness in school every day.
During first grade, I spent nearly every afternoon for months in the school nurse’s office, sick with psychosomatic headaches, begging to go home; by third grade, stomachaches had replaced the headaches, but my daily trudge to the infirmary remained the same.
Growing up in Augusta in such a protected and loving community is something that I really enjoy talking about. I love talking about – even though I grew up, of course, in the time of segregated schools: Brown vs. Board of Education came along after I was already in first grade.
We tried our best to work with the school and with the other families in the school system, and we did a gradual transition. I started transitioning when I was in first grade, and every year we kind of tacked a new thing on to it.
In the book, I write about children in first grade who were taught to read by reading want ads. They learned to write by writing job applications. Imagine what would happen if anyone tried to do that to children in a predominantly white suburban school.
When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle, a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read, I refused to do so.
Growing up, even finding all those notes that you write in first grade to your future self of like what you want to be when you grow up – it was always music.
I couldn’t speak English. I’m in kindergarten, and the only reason I got through to first grade is because I cheated.
All my life I’ve been a show-off. Ever since first grade I was a clown, and even then I tried to entertain everyone.
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