Thursday, June 13, 2013

Sixth Grade

My favorite grade, was sixth grade and I'll tell you why.

It's because I got to skip it. I went from being a fifth grader at the end of the school year and then started seventh grade. It was absolutely awesome.

It happened for a couple of reasons.

First, I was doing very well in school. I loved school. I loved to learn. I loved to know the how and why of things and anyone that knows something about anything will tell you, there's always more to learn.

Second, I had been held back in first grade. Not because I was dumb, or failing. It was because when we first moved to the United States I was in kindergarten and the elementary school that I went to was bilingual. I was doing great, but then halfway through first grade we moved to a smaller, less ethnic city. My new school was not bilingual.

I was actually skating along with Satisfactory marks on my report card, remember those? Before letter grades? The thing was, I was barely reading at grade level, and I would switch between writing in English and Spanish in a sentence (example: I wanted a perro, pero my mom said no.) The teacher told my parents that it was up to them, but that repeating the year would allow my language skills to "catch up". My parents decided that was best and by the following school year I had caught up, and was in the advanced reading groups and such. I continued to excel in school and so when I reached fifth grade the school gave my parents the option of me rejoining my peers in the seventh grade.

So I did.

Sixth grade was also the worst year, and I'll tell you why.

First I got all the textbooks for every subject and a fat reading assignment along with suggested work to do. I love to learn, but I don't know how many 12 year olds you know that would spend their summer vacation reading/working through a whole school years worth of curriculum. I wasn't that kid. Sure I read, lots. Lots of Stephen King. So I missed a lot.

So, as you can imagine, there are things I just never learned. Like, how to stop writing run on sentences. I have a real hard time with fractions, and never really caught up in math. I'm still a mediocre math student. I missed science camp. Worst of all I ditched all my friends. For new friends. It didn't seem so bad then, but I really regret being such a dick. I just slowly cut these people out of my life. My old friends were kids that cared about grades, and were nice people. My new friends were nice too, they just didn't care about grades as much. I didn't start failing or anything I kept a B average. I just wonder if it was the right choice.

So there you have it. The best and the worst. In one neatly wrapped, never happened package.


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17 comments:

  1. Wait, "never happened" package? Did you just make all of that up? If so, then damn, you are very creative!! And if not--I think run-on sentences are becoming totally acceptable now. So you should be all good there!! Great post.

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    1. Hahaha, I meant the school year (sixth grade) never happened. It seems bad grammar and run on sentences are acceptable, in some crowds. Bloggers, are not that crowd ;)

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  2. The fractions thing must suck when you're cooking.

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    1. Well I can use measuring cups, and simple fractions don't stump me. What sucked about fractions was adding, multiplying, subtracting and dividing. My dad taught me this super simple way to do it, how they teach it in Mexico. It was so simple that there was basically no work. I would get the problem wrong with a note to show my work, but I couldn't because there was no work. I never learned how to do it in a way that made work to show. When I took Algebra in college, they did how my dad taught me. Anyway no matter, I'm a shitty math student. If Animal has problems in math, he's going to tutoring. I wouldn't want to fuck him up more.

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    2. I never showed my work, either. They HATE that! What's the problem with doing it in my head if I get it right??

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  3. "Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver but the other's gold" was part of a song we used to sing in Girl Scouts. And it never really made sense until now.

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    1. We moved a lot, I was always making new friends. I didn't value friendship yet. Too bad I wasn't a Girl Scout, it's a lesson I needed

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  4. I started reading Stephen King around that age, too!

    Oh and? Totally acceptable to suck at math and science if you're a writer. It's a law of the Universe.

    -The Insomniacs Dream

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    1. I like how you think.. I got through, It, Thinner, and Pet Cemetery plus all The Fear Street books. It was a productive summer.

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  5. When I switched schools I missed out on a lot of stuff. To this day when my kids ask me anything about the planets I just send them my hubs way. I am useless on most thing science. Hindsight sucks for the record.

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    1. Hindsights 20/20, and all that...

      At least we know our weaknesses, so our kids won't suffer too much...

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  6. You missed the year with the Egyptians and the Greeks! This calls for a trip to the Egyptian Museum!

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    1. I only missed Greeks, maybe that's why mythology doesn't really interest me. And I hate Ulysses. We did Egyptians in fifth grade

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  7. Skipping a year of middle school seems like a good thing to me. I think you should write a blog post mixing English and Spanish - I would love to read that! With plenty of run on sentences of course.

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    1. That sounds like a fun idea, I'll put it in my "can't think of anything to write" file ;)

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  8. Interesting that they waited to put you back with your peers at such a late age. Two of my kids skipped grades, but they were much younger (1st and 2nd). Getting the older one to do 2nd grade work over the summer wasn't too difficult. I can't imagine trying to do 6th grade on your own over the summer. There have been a few things they missed, but it wasn't too hard to get it. 6th grade would be more difficult.
    I'm sure the friends aspect was difficult, too. It took a while for my boys to find their place. Doing it in middle school? Ugh.

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    1. I used to wonder about that too, why the delay when I was doing so well? Well the answer was I went to 3 more elementary schools before middle school. Just an oversight. It wasn't until a teacher inquired that the school took action. It wasn't the smoothest transition...glad that it went better for your boys!

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