“Learn About” Questions
(informational)
- What were some of the grade level demarcations of the 1950’s in the south?
- What reasons would cause a student to be “skipped ahead” in school?
- At what age did children normally begin school and graduate school during the 1950’s?
“Learn From” Questions
(transformational)
- Have I ever found myself placed into a group of strangers? What was the experience like for me?
- Who do/did I tend to be friends with at school? What kinds of things do/did we do?
- Is it easy for me to get to know new people? Why or why not?
Transcript:
In both elementary school and junior high school probably we were known as the teacher’s children. I’m not sure whether that gave you any special privileges or not but Treopia had gone on to college. I was probably 5 or 6 years behind her and the point I was trying to make was I ended up skipping the 1st grade because my mother was a 1st-grade teacher so I knew how to read and I knew very basic how to count and so they skipped me at 1st grade and put me directly into the 2nd grade. And when you’re a youngster, they have all these age demarcations, you know. A 6-year-old is over here and the 7-year-old is, so I always felt confused because the people in my class that I knew from Sunday school and the Boy Scouts and that sort of thing, they were always a year ahead of me and that when I came along, that having to be in the 7th grade but that I would be 12 and not 13 was always a big deal for me. And I worried about that. I guess I thought being skipped was a bad thing and that probably either being with my class or with my age group was an issue I had to try to work out.
