The baby boomers have arrived, at least in my chapter about the school in 1953. I've been writing it this morning and I've uncovered one interesting fact. Before the 1953-54 school year, the cutoff birthday for beginning first grade in North Carolina was October 1. (Remember, no kindergarten back then.) The child born on or after that date had to wait until the next fall to start school.

World War II, the men were gone. Nine months after they returned, the boom began. But with the massive number of babies born in 1947 now arriving at the schoolhouse door in the fall of 1953, the date was moved to October 15 to allow some of the boomers a chance to start a year earlier. Who would have guessed that those fifteen days would make that much difference, but it did. It spread out the impact just a bit, just a tiny bit, but enough to add one more teacher to the faculty at Pilot Mountain School. No thought to the child's maturity level.  No thought to pedagogy. This decision was based on postwar reality.

Only recently has the cutoff date been revisited, researched and revised. Now the cut off in North Carolina is September 1. Thinking of the child. Finally.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Children in the 1950's were targets of marketing, just like today. Selling to children is not just a modern concept after all. One company in particular sold notebook filler paper with its Blue Horse logo. For twenty horse head trademarks, the students could get a cap. The cover sheet of each pack of paper offered more incentives, including a shiny new bicycle. What child could resist?

Would it attract enough children to sell the product? You bet it would.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

I could never be a time traveler. Working on this project has shown me how disorienting time travel could be. Take yesterday. I researched 1957 and found that yes, the man was right, there actually was an earthquake during school. I found the newspaper article to prove it. Then I came home and typed an interview from a student who was at Pilot Mountain School in the late 1960's. To discombobulate me even more, the chapter I'm currently writing is in the 1950's and my revising is in the 1940's.

I'm all over the place, so I've had to put the 1940 revising to the side and keep my train of thought narrowed to the 1950's. But then I meet up with a lady who says, "You've just got to talk to this man. He was here when the school first opened." How can I resist!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

News flash: My granddaughter had homework on the first day of school. Kindergarten! Well, she only had to decorate her gingerbread girl, but still. My kind of teacher.

Parents love to exaggerate the "back in my days" stories, especially about school and the eternal homework struggle. The truth uncovered here by the storycatcher: Students at Pilot Mountain School back in the 1940's beginning years usually didn't take their work home. No, not at all. First because the teachers didn't assign it knowing the students had true, honest-to-goodness home work waiting for them in farm chores, or working in the sawmills, or helping in the house. But more than that, these children got their work finished. Every class at this school, with the exception of first grade, was a combination class. While the teacher worked with one grade, the other students did their work assignments. When they finished that work, they listened to the teacher's lessons with the other grade. If the other grade was a year younger, older students heard the lessons for the second time. (Reinforcement) If the other grade was a year older, younger students heard the lessons from the grade ahead. (Enrichment)

What a system! It worked for them. Could it work today?

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Today I take off my storycatcher hat and put on my Grannyhood hat. It's the first day of school for my granddaughter. She's headed to kindergarten and to a life that will never be the same. When it was my daughter and my son, I was so caught up in life and getting them ready on time that I didn't have a chance to think about what a profound day the first first day of school really is.

Today I ponder. I pray. I wonder what her little brain is absorbing. I'm sure I'll hear all about it this evening.

Embracing the Grannyhood,

Gretchen

First day of school, 1944, came and went with Pilot Mountain School empty. The day came, the children didn't. Nor the second day, third day, even weeks later, no children. They were all quarantined at home in an every child left behind kind of way. That was the peak year of the polio epidemic in Burke County, a time of fear and dread when parents prayed that their sleeping children would still be healthy when they woke in the morning.

Health officials had placed a quarantine on all children. No movie houses could open. No youth activities. No sports. No family get togethers. No Sunday School. No running over to the neighbor's to play. After several weeks of staying home, these children were probably more ready than ever to return to school when it finally opened in the middle of September. Wonder what the teachers said to the children on the real first day of school. Did they discuss the epidemic? Did they count noses to see who didn't survive? If they had, they would have been pleased. All the Pilot Mountain children survived.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

School orientations here in Caldwell County begin today. Students and parents visit classrooms, meet teachers.

1940's, there was no such thing. Students rode the bus, met the teacher on the first day, no parents involved. Actually there was no need for orientation at Burke County's Pilot Mountain School. There were only four teachers and six grades and with that little choice, students knew who their teachers would be. In many cases, they had them the previous year. First graders were kept together with one teacher, but the other classes were combinations, two grades together, and no such thing as kindergarten, not in 1940's public school North Carolina. That would come decades later.

First graders did have an orientation of sorts but it wasn't a preschool screening as in this diagnostic day and age. Instead the incoming first grade students came to school with their older brothers, sisters, cousins or neighbors the last week of school in May. Just a glimpse of what life would be like. No parents involved.

Would that work now? Catch of the day,

Gretchen