WHY I FAILED THE FIFTH GRADE TWICE

Artwork: The Garden of Eden
By Skitch, second year of fifth grade

THEN:

A Secret to Myself or Why I failed the Fifth Grade Twice

 

     When I was in the fourth grade, I missed sixty-four days of school. Almost unbelievable, I've been told. But that year, I'd fought a tough war with meningitis, suffered one bladder infection after another, and several bouts of strep throat, ear infections, and tonsillitis. My mother worried over every little sneeze and kept me home as often as she could without the truant officer knocking on our door. My fourth grade teacher didn't like me very much, so I found myself encouraging my mother to order me to stay home. When you consider all that, maybe sixty-four days at home seems a little more believable. 

     Near the end of the school year, my parents told me I would be held back. At my blank stare, they explained that I would have to take fourth grade over again. This news saddened and frightened me. I didn't want my best friends Jutannia and Angie to go on to the fifth grade without me, but my parents told me that it was too late to change anything. The school year was nearly over and I'd missed far too many days to be sent on to the fifth grade.

     Still, on the last day of school, my report card read that I was promoted to the fifth grade. I carried that card home as proud as punch. My parents, instead of being pleased and proud, like I expected, were angry. I was too young to understand that they were probably embarrassed about making a firm prediction and seeing it fall flat, or to realize that maybe they were worried about me being passed on to another grade without the proper preparations. All I saw was that they were angry that I was going on to a higher grade. They were angry about something that had pleased me very much.

     My father took the report card and went to school to talk to the teachers. When he returned he looked defeated. It broke my heart to see him so. He told my mother that the teachers said I'd managed to keep my grades acceptable even though I missed so much school, and that I was simply too bright to hold back.

     I was an adult before I understood how my subconscious computed all this information. Now I can remember realizing that my parents seemed to react about the same way to a bad grade as they did a good one, and thinking about how their own school history ended early. My mother did not make it past the sixth grade and my father didn't make it out of the fifth. Maybe they wanted me to be like them? The back of my mind decided it did not like it when my dad looked defeated; The teachers would not win next time.

     All this, though, rested so far back in my brain, that if I had tried with all my might to explain to you why I stopped caring about good grades and pleasing my teachers, I would have failed miserably. I didn't understand the progression of my own thoughts well enough to spell them out to myself, let alone clue anyone else in. At that point in life, I was a secret - even to myself.

     My first year in the fifth grade I did not miss as many days, but I turned in almost no homework, and I did no studying. I let my mind wander during class and kept my head bent over a sketch, or a book of my own choosing most of the day. The kids in my class had been hard to get along with for years, ever since the teacher that had trained them to call me "poor" and "filthy". So, I practiced not caring what the teachers wanted, as I had worked on not caring what my fellow students said about me. It was actually a bit of a relief to divorce myself from the cares of the fifth grade.  My report card at the end of the year listed me for the fifth grade again. I showed it to my parents and I can remember a look on both their faces that I thought said, "I knew it." Now, the teachers could not argue with my dad and tell him I needed to be passed on to another grade. Now my dad would not have to bother talking to them or coming home with a defeated look. Still, it did not escape my notice that they did not seem particularly pleased either.

     My second year of fifth grade, I tried just as hard to be uncooperative, really I did. The back of my mind had decided that I would not go any further than the fifth grade because I was not one bit better than my daddy. I avoided as much responsibility as I could force myself to, but I nearly passed despite my efforts. I had a wonderful teacher, Mr. Dotson. I had a lot of great teachers in school, but he was head and shoulders above the rest, in my estimation. He went above and beyond when it came to teaching. He wanted us to learn and he knew that in order to really learn something you have to be interested in it, so he worked at making everything he taught just as engaging as he could make it. That is how Mr. Dotson went above. He also brought in subjects that were not on the school's curriculum or reflected on the report card. He taught us vocabulary, current events, photography, art, and more. We even researched some of the Believe it or Not!s that were in the paper, and we researched Robert Ripley, the man that had started the collection of odd facts. That is how Mr. Dotson went beyond. He introduced us to subjects I didn't even know you could study in school, fun things, things of great interest to an inquisitive young mind. He taught the required subjects and taught them well, but he still found the time to teach us so much more. We worked on crafts and made most of our own costume accessories for a Halloween school play. (I was a witch!) We kept an art folder, a written journal of our day to day lives, and a creative writing journal that we filled with stories and poems. He also taught us to research, take notes, and make story outlines; and those went in the creative writing journal as well. Every morning, Mr. D. passed the newspaper around for a bunch of ten year olds to read. (I was eleven.) He did not yell at me if I got sucked into an article and missed something that was being said, or if I chuckled aloud over Snoopy's latest exploits, which in those days were brand new and wholly unexpected. Every morning the class discussed an article or two from the newspaper. Almost every morning we discussed the "Believe it or Not!" entry. Some of us believed it; some of us did not. Mr. D. treated us like human beings with opinions and ideas that actually counted. He treated us like part of the world, like the future. He did not treat us like irrelevant snot-nosed brats that needed to sit down, shut up, and do as we were told. Oh, I loved and love him to this day! He taught me so many important things and the most important of all was how to treat a child like a human being.

     Mr. Dotson had two young ladies that the other kids considered his "pets", Jennifer and Rose. Jennifer was a feisty little short haired girl. She had lots of opinions and energy and probably more money than I could have imagined. Rose was a deep-woods hillbilly girl. She had a kind spirit, a speech impediment, hand me down clothes, and free lunch. I loved Mr. D for his diversity, for not singling out the boys as pets just because they were boys, and for not treating me as though I were less important than Jennifer and Rose. In my opinion we were all his pets. I loved Mr. Dotson and craved his attention and admiration, and yet I was never the least bit jealous of these girls. I was not convinced they were his favorites. I felt he was just as good to each of us as he was to the others. Some of us demanded more attention. Some of us needed more attention. But I did not feel for one moment that he liked those girls more than he liked me. When he looked at me, I knew he cared and wanted me not only to learn but to be safe and happy. When he looked at me, I knew he saw me, the real me, the human being under the scraggly blond hair, second hand clothes, and skinny frame. And yet, if Jennifer was particularly hyper that day, he might look at her a bit more than he looked at me. If Rose was struggling in English, he might look at her more than he did the rest of us. I figured when he looked at them it was the same. I believed that he cared about them, that he wanted them to learn and to be safe and happy. I did too, so I never minded his showing attention to the other kids in class.

     He praised my sketches often and handed my art folder over to a few people that came in the room asking to see the work from some of his best artists. They chose a half finished sketch of "The Garden of Eden" from my folder and put it on the cover of a book the school was printing. It pleased me to be chosen and annoyed me that they did not have the time for me to finish the picture. Half my fruit was colored in and half was not. I thought it looked ridiculous, but they loved it, so on the book it went.      I remember once, sitting at a table working on crafts, and someone asked, "How do you spell spaghetti?" 

     A moment of silence followed while I waited for someone else to tell him. When the silence dragged on I said, "S-P-A-G-H-E-T-T-I." 

     "Wait a minute!" He raised his voice, "You went too fast!"

     So, I spelled it again, slower this time. And when the silence seemed to continue to drag out, I looked up to find Mr. Dotson staring at me. "How do you know how to spell that?" He asked me, "I can barely spell that one myself."

     "I don't know." I shrugged. "It's on the jars and packages." And I looked back at the craft I had in my hand, but I never forgot the surprised look on his face. Who know spelling spaghetti could be such a big deal?

     Mr. D. spent much of that year encouraging me, telling me to, "Always do your best" in everything I undertook. It pained me to disappoint him by not bringing in homework, but I loved my parents very much. My grades were never good, due mostly to the lack of homework. He signed my yearbook, "You are as bright a student that was in my classroom this year. You have all kinds of ability, believe me. I hope that in the future you will discover that learning can be fun and you can enjoy school." I watched his long fingers as he wrote the words. I wanted to tell him that I loved to learn, but that school was very hard to enjoy when some teachers were as different from him as salt was from sugar. I wanted to tell him that I didn't want to disappoint my parents again, and that I was sure I was not one bit better than my mother or my dad. But I only said, "Thank you," and I sat back down with my yearbook.

     I survived disappointing him at school and then had to deal with my sister's disappointment at home. This was even worse! Sandi shook her head, and her eyes looked moist. She said she knew I could do better. For weeks, she looked very sad whenever she talked to me. My family would be moving from our wonderful sprawling farm to a small town house soon. Sandi tried to put a nice spin on it. She told me that maybe what I needed was a new start in a new school. She gave me pep talk after pep talk about fresh starts and giving school my best efforts. Like Mr. D. she often told me, "Always do your best!"

     My parents did not have anything to say, good or bad, about my being held back yet again, and I remember thinking if it meant so much to my sister, and my folks were going to be just as happy with As as Fs or vice versa, then why not pass in school? I decided I would stop avoiding my homework and pay more attention, that I would stop causing that sadness in my sister's eyes.

     We moved and the kids in the new school had never been trained to call me "filthy"or "poor". They liked me! They had a wonderful accepting attitude that I'd never experienced before. The "rich kids" were often more kind to the "poor kids" than I had ever imagined they could be. Sandi was delighted when the good grades started trickling home again, and my mom signed the report cards as agreeably as she had the ones with a line of Fs going down the side. I made second honor roll several times that year and passed on to the sixth grade with ease. Passing from the sixth to the seventh was nearly as easy, though I hadn't studied the same books three years in a row that time. I remember that it was a relief to have a new Literature book once I entered sixth grade! I was beyond tired of that fifth grade Lit book.

     Looking back, I realize my parents probably did not want for me what I thought they did. More importantly, looking back, I realize it was my own life that I was tripping up, not Mom's, or Dad's, or Sandi's, not Mr. D.s. My life! And if I had my life to live over, I would do a few things differently. I would certainly learn with a capital L, and I would not be reluctant to show it! I would put even more effort into my classes than I had when I decided to stop failing, because even then I had dragged my intellectual feet, content with "good grades" when I could have made great ones. I would show Sandi and Mr. D. that I knew exactly what they were talking about when they said, "Always do your best!"