9th grade was sorta a transitional year for me. During that time 7th, 8th, and 9th graders were boxed together at the Junior High. While the rest of the high schoolers (10th, 11th, and 12th grades) were at the high school down the road. So ironically Freshmen ruled the school….at least at the junior high. There aren’t many junior highs around anymore, rather being replaced by middle schools.
9th grade? Most of my band friends were doing the Jazz band thing during 4th period. This left me out during my 4th grade class…English. Remember Marge Simpson’s sisters who smoked alot? Well that’s my 9th grade English teacher. She had a deep raspy voice from smoking alot. She would give us an assignment, then leave to go to the teachers’ lounge to smoke. Sadly she is no longer with us, as I heard she passed away from lung cancer.
My 1st period class was science and thankfully many of my friends were in there. In fact due to the alphabetical order thing, my good friend got a seat right behind me….and there were no people with last names between P and W (shocker there). That science teacher was in charge of choosing students to go to Disney World that upcoming summer. I don’t know what it was, but I was left out of the selection process. It was sorta like “ok, let’s take some students to Disneyworld. Who wants to go?” And somehow they labeled it as some kind of school sponsored learning experience. Ok whatever. If you can justify it in your own mind, then I guess it’s ok with me. Most people would call it a vacation.
2nd period was Geometry. Our teacher was a strict disciplinarian. I learned to shut up in there and just to my work without necessarily getting mean looks from the teacher. It was one of those classes where you really hated asking questions because you figured the teacher would yell at you.
3rd period? French. I can honestly say that I probably didn’t learn anything in there. Our teacher was one of those who would try to be friends with the students and never really teach us anything. Just sit back and do written exercises. I was in for a rude awakening in French II in 10th grade when I actually got a French teacher with a Doctorate.
(4th period already spoken about above)
5th period was Civics for the first part of the year. Then Health for the 2nd part of the year. Civics was taught in the portable by some Vietnam Vet. Or so I’m told. Sometime during part of the year our original Civics teacher stepped aside and we were assigned to my smoking English teacher. So I had 2 hours with her back to back.
Health was and always will be a joke. I hated it. I can remember one time I got a “C” on my report card..something like an 83. The grade itself was arbitrary. There was no reasoning at all with it. The teacher couldn’t back up the actual grade with the previous grades on the assignments. When I complained about it, he upped it 10 points more or less to shut me up.
In Health we got to shoot guns and learn all about boat safety. My first and only time to shoot a gun. Both assignments were some state requirement for high school students and were just put into heath classes because there was no other place for it.
6th period was band of course, and I was glad to see the rest of my friends at the end of the day. Many of them worked as “managers” for the high school marching band during football season. This basically amounted to sitting the colorguard’s flags out on the right yardline. That’s it. I opted out of that excitement, so I didn’t see my friends very much.
So that’s 9th grade for me. I still made B’s and wasn’t exactly the star student yet. Still trying to figure out how I belonged in all of this.