Emerson School Alma Mater 1955-1962

          School supplies have a unique smell and stores every where sell everything a child needs at this time of year--crates of Star Wars folders, aisles bulging with Disney lunch bags, and huge boxes of Crayolas along with all the other trappings needed for a modern education. I stand, blocking an aisle no doubt, and I am flooded with memories of my own elementary school days at Ralph Waldo Emerson School, Quincy, Illinois. 
     Emerson School took up half a city block.  It was formidable.  It looked like it meant business.  All five of my older brothers and sisters learned how to read (Dick, Jane and Sally), write, and generally received the education provided in the forties and fifties in the very same building I did. When my turn came, it was love at first sight.  A short walk along 14th street, past the ever mindful patrol boy at Washington Street, and I would arrive.

     Class rooms appeared huge with shiney wood floors shellacked and waiting for all those busy little feet.  At the far end of any class was the cloak room, ready to receive any and all paraphernalia including coats, lunch bags, a favorite toy, even a frog or two.  
     The real draw of the cloak room for me were the giant glass jars of thick white paste, reams of colorful construction paper and that special lined paper we all learned to write on with its unique texture and odor.  I'd happily press my nose into it.  The only smell that was better were the mimeograph copies of worksheets, smudged and purple, slightly damp but readable. 

     I know now that my teachers weren't really old, old women, but at my young age with their sensible shoes and embroidered hankies, I thought they were ancient.  Often gray headed, tightly permed and somewhat unapproachable, I interacted sparingly with all of them. I now see these women as hard workers, women that made a real difference. 
     In the fifties teachers still had major support from parents, respect in the community and put up with no shenanigans.  Behavior issues were rare and fascinating.  These talented women (I had one male teacher in the 6th grade, but he left to become a principal) taught and emanated the ideal that education was the key to the world.  Whether teaching us to tell time, multiplication, or state capitals, they took it seriously, and so we did too. 

     Emerson and I enjoyed seven years together. It was my safe place, and  I loved everything about it--the way the floors creaked, recesses that demanded we use our imaginations or sit like lumps.  Swings and teeter boards were about the extent of the playground equipment.  I tried hard to think of something we did using technology, and I can think of nothing.  The 3 R's were provided by teachers; our connection to the outside world was provided by the Weekly Reader.

     Many years later I became a teacher, too.  Though I tried hard to instill the importance of knowledge ,honestly, I never could replicate the love of learning I received in the red brick school of my childhood.  Perhaps too much had changed. I always wanted my students to feel like I did--that school was a magic place.  Dreams could become reality.
     Sadly I "passed" into the seventh grade and a different school. The sixties hit.  Everything changed. My grades plunged, I used a can of hairspray a week, and loved George Harrison. Education took a back seat, a circumstance not allowed within the confines of the old school.  My best memories will always take me back to Emerson. Such a special time for me, the beginning of all that I value today. What a lucky girl I was.  It is still a wonder to me.