Finding 1979 once again, along the road to home

It's been a long, long time since my first day as a teacher in August of 1979.  Over the passage of the last 45 years now things, as you can only imagine, have changed exponentially.  Change snuck in each year as new and more efficient/effective ways of doing things were found.  Looking back, I know that some of it I embraced with open arms while other things found me dragging my feet all the way to the door of acceptance.

Change is inevitable.

As I began to set up my new first grade classroom this week here in the northern part of the state of Oklahoma, I was reminded of how different it is today in the year 2024.  I needed a new pencil sharpener to take care of the gazillions of pencils we will go through this year in the first grade. Going online, I found at least a dozen different kinds, all electrical of course with special features that set them apart from the rest of the pencil sharpener crowd.  Back in 1979 our manual pencil sharpeners were mounted on the wall and had a handle that the user could turn around and around.  The wastebasket was always close at hand to catch the shavings that were left behind.  I can still hear the sound it made as it did the work of sharpening the most important of classroom tools.

Sooner or later, I will need to run enough copies of worksheets to get us through at least the first week of school.  With luck, there will be no one else needing to use the copier before me and "fingers crossed" the paper will not jam up in the machine or the toner light be on.  In the "old days" we learned to use the wonderful mimeograph machine.  I got to the teaching field just in time to enjoy the last two years of that practice.  Teachers developed their own worksheets upon mimeograph paper and by the time you were done with that and running them through the machines your hands would always look like you had picked grapes all morning.  We thought long and hard about whether or not it was urgent enough to make any particular worksheet.  There was never a time that you made a worksheet just for fun.  I suspect that we used a fourth of the paper each year that we do today in 2024.  For what it's worth.

Yesterday while I was working at school, I turned my thermostat to COLD because it was so hot and muggy outside.  Soon my classroom became nearly too cold, so I had to adjust it quickly.  It will be nice when the kids are there during the first few weeks to have that wonderful air conditioning keeping us cool and happy.  Back in the day, we opened up our windows and turned big fans on at the back of the room to blow the hot air around us.  Kids and teachers could get cranky quickly, especially by the 2 o'clock hour of the afternoon.  I was in my third year of teaching when we finally got window units put into the classrooms and another 6 years before I taught in a building with central air conditioning.  It could have been worse I suppose.

So many things are different now including the way that teachers dress at school.  When I first began, I wore dresses or skirts to school.  For my first 3 years few of us even wore slacks to school and heaven forbid a pair of jeans.  If we would have shown up to school in jeans, we would have paid a visit to the principal's office and then sent home to change into something more appropriate for work.  I was about 5 years into education when I began to wear slacks to school as little by little my closet at home contained fewer dresses and skirts.  The wearing of jeans and school t-shirts followed closely thereafter. To look in my closet today, you would only find two dresses that I seldom wear.  Oh, the times have changed! 

In all of the changes, one thing shall forever remain the same and that is the children.  The kids of 1979 are really no different than the children of today.  Oh yes, they dress different or have different hairstyles.  The kids of 2024 have the upper hand on technology usage compared to the kids of 45 years ago.  The times they lived in are polar opposite from one another.  But when they enter the classroom each morning and find their seats to start work for the day, they are still always children.  Their needs of making friends, finding acceptance, learning what lies ahead of them for that day, and figuring out their place in the world steadfastly remains the same.  

Not too many teachers these days get to stay in education long enough to see the changes and talk about them.  I have been blessed to be one of the few.

 

The olden days of the spring of 1984 when I was teaching a combination room of first and second graders back home in Kansas.  I taught at Yoder Grade School from 1982-1998.  Today teachers take pictures all the time together but back in my early days photographs were taken sparingly.  You might take one on the first and last days, but not much more.  This picture is not the best quality, but it means the world to me because it's one of the few I have left.

This is one of my favorite photos from the early days.  My first graders at Haven Grade School were celebrating the birthday of our great state of Kansas. We were all dressed up in pioneer attire for the day.  It was fun that was attained without the use of today's modern technology.  I love the date on the chalkboard!  So glad I wrote it that morning, never thinking that all these years later that simple act would mean so much to me.