My first grade teacher was Mrs. Gibboney. She seemed old, even when I was in first grade. I don’t remember much about first grade except that I was kept after school now and then because I could not finish my work which, if I recall correctly, often involved copying text from the chalkboard. It is possible that I needed glasses — or my hand-eye coordination was poor. Also, as I didn’t realize until I was an adult, I likely had ADHD and possible learning disabilities.

I remember once during a reading lesson when she scolded me for something I didn’t do, and would not accept my explanation. It was a sight word quiz. The teacher would read out a word and we were to circle it in our workbooks. I’d just gone ahead and circled a bunch of words — one in each section. I got them all correct, and I was sitting next to her. She accused me of looking in her book, but in reality I had a bunch of lucky guesses. Her suspicion was understandable. (One other time something similar happened — I was giving one of these tests when I was student teaching elsewhere and I didn’t know that there was a teacher manual that I was supposed to be following. I just looked at the student’s page and called off one word in each section. Later, when I had the manual in hand, I’d read off the exact same words as the manual dictated.)

My handwriting has never been ideal, so I would probably still get a checkmark (checkmark=needs improvement) in that area. I excelled at reading though — at least later in the year.

When I was in college I did a short teaching practice with Mrs. Gibboney. I got to know her a little bit — certainly much more than I knew her when I was in her class.

My height at 43 inches at the beginning of the year and 44 at the end put me around the 10th percentile for my age. My weight of 34 at the beginning of the year and 37.5 at the end of the year put me below the 5th percentile.