Teaching

I started teaching in the fall of 1971. My first year teaching salary was $7, 050.00. When I showed the contract to my father and he was upset. Oh, he was very happy for me, but that was more money per year than he had ever made.

My room was on the top floor near what was the principal’s office at that time. As you entered the room there was a cloke room on either side. One was the girls and the other the boys. Each had its own restroom and sink. There were hooks all along the wall to hang up coats. The small rooms weren’t much different than when I was in 4th grade there.

The classroom itself was smaller than I remember it as a kid but still was a nice size for a classroom. Windows lined the north side of the room and there were bookshelves along the wall under them. The room was equipped like a regular classroom. The floors were the original wooden boards. The marks where the desks had originally attached to the floor were clearly visible under several layers of varnish. The classroom really had not changed much in the last 20 years or so.

That first year I had 32 students registered for my class. Because of the high numbers two of them were placed at Harlan Elementary. That left me with 30 students for my first year as a teacher. That was a challenge but the students were a bright group and seemed to prosper in spite of my inexperience.

There wasn’t much support for new teachers in those days and the district had a mish mash curriculum. Teachers pulled together whatever material they could find to teach. When I looked at the reading materials there were pieces of three different programs but not enough of any one to use with the whole class. I checked with the third grade teacher, Nadine McCoy and she was using yet another program.

Unsure what to do I went over and visited a 4th grade teacher at Harlan. She had different materials as well. After talking with her I decided to use the materials I had and hope to make the best of it. A couple days later the principal stopped in and said the Harlan teacher was telling everyone I didn’t know what I was doing. I explained that I had simply asked her for advice since no one at Saunders seemed to be able to help me. In those days I guess it wasn’t a good idea to ask for help.

One day after recess a 4th grade girl came in and said the boys had called her a dirty name at recess. She was from a family that included three pretty wild boys so I couldn’t imagine there would be too many words she hadn’t heard many times. I asked her what the word was but she refused to tell me. After some time she pulled out the front of her dress and pointed at her tummy. I said, “Pregnant?” and she said that was it. I tried everything I could think off to convince her that wasn’t a dirty word. We even looked it up in the dictionary.

When her mother came in at parent teacher conference time I told her the story. The mother smiled and said, “Perry, when you have boys as ornery as mine, pregnant is a dirty word!”