life as a first grader....then and now

17 years ago, in september 1991 (god i'm old), i was starting the 1st grade at ps104 in brooklyn. i was the skinny, dorky asian girl who didn't know english very well, but still managed to kick my classmates' butts in all subjects at school. everyday, i remember going to school with a 20-pound backpack (i was probably like 30, 40 pounds at most), with all my notebooks (one for each subject), folders, pens, pencils, all that junk. i always had so much work to do, even in first grade! reading, writing journal entries, math problems, math workbooks (CIMS, anyone?). there was this prize thing, where students who did well in academics earned star stickers and whoever had a lot at the end of a certain amount of time got prizes. a good way to earn stickers would be to finish work as quick as you can (and accurate), and i pretty much monopolized that (dang, didn't realize i was so competitive even as a 5-year-old.). anyway, the point was, there was a lot of work to do.

now i'm a teaching assistant in a 1st grade ctt (cooperative team teaching) class, which consists of 60% general ed students and 40% "special ed" students. all students in all 1st grade classes learn things the same way, ctt classrooms are no different except that there are 2 teachers (a gen ed and a special ed teacher). anyway, i've been there for a week now, and i've come to realize that students are taught in SUCH different ways now. for one thing, they don't even have notebooks!!! each student has a clipboard and a mini dry erase writing tablet, but even that hardly gets used! they all have tables and chairs, but they're not sitting there much, only for 20 minutes of reading, 20 minutes of writing, and 15 minutes of snack each day. the rest of the time, they sit on this big rug in the middle of the room and talk and "learn." they never get homework, they barely do work all day, but they are learning. it's so interesting how teaching styles have done a complete 180 and is now so much different than it used to be.

it's so interesting...i wish my peers can sit in the class and see how learning is now, and how different it is from the way that we grew up.

on a slightly different note, i have 4 vivid memories of 1st grade:
1) talking about the elections, and really wanting to vote for bill clinton (lol) - it was such a big thing for 1st graders. funny though...i'm a democrat, but i feel like we were brainwashed to be...
2) knowing our addresses and phone numbers were real important, so our teacher gave us stickers for know what they were. i had known both since i was 4, but my 5-year-old self was kinda embarrassed by my street name. all my classmates' streets were a (#) street, or (#) avenue, but mine was parrott place. i didn't like to be different, so i pretended i didn't know what my address was. and then my teacher drew a big parrot on the board for me to refresh my memory. now that i think about it, it was so sweet of her to do that for me!
3) going to the mcdonald's in manhattan mall (which closed recently), and thinking that i was awesome cos it was definitely the coolest mcdonald's. if you've been there before, you know what i mean - retro-looking and stuff.
4) getting a big cut on my forehead and getting left with the scar that is still above my right eyebrow.

weird, i know.
but 5-year-olds are pretty weird.
and i guess you can say my 22-year-old self is just as weird, if not more.
:)