Junior High and High School Band class was supposed to be either for the musically inclined people OR people who wanted to get out of PE class. It was usually populated by the non-jocks. It is interesting to note that even in band class, which was a haven for more or less non-popular people, there was a pecking order.
Some examples. During away football games and marching contests in high school, bus sign up sheets were posted for us to choose our bus. It was vital for me and my friends to get on bus #3 for some odd reason. That supposedly was the cool bus, at least in our minds. Buses 2 and 1 were filled with undesirables. Yet once during a trip to Johnson City, TN, we were forced to ride #1 when the bus lists were put out earlier than usual. At the time it might as well been the end of the world. Now I look back at it and think it must have been pretty fickle to worry about. So what if you’re not on the bus you want to be on?
Sure, there were cool kids in band, when to the rest of the school, they weren’t necessarily so cool…or perhaps the better term is…”Not so well known.” Again the phenomenon of the microcosm of band. We were in our own little worlds. Where band took to much time and effort out of you, we rarely thought about any other activities, or non-band personalities. Plus in a 1200 student school, it was difficult to be everything to everyone.
Some of them were liked for their musical ability. Others were liked for their personality. Band directors like me because my parents were hard workers, even though I wasn’t necessarily the best musician in the world. I’ll admit it now. I was in band because I wanted to be around my friends. Not because we necessarily enjoyed performing halftime shows. Maybe that was the case for many of us. Therefore it wasn’t too surprising when my friends and I mutually decided not to take band our senior year.
My sister had musical talent. That was seen in her piano playing in elementary school and then later on in band in junior high and high school. She excelled, getting awards and invitations to MidState and All State band competitions. She paved the way for me. I probably had some talent. I took piano lessons in 3rd – 5th grade, but I never really practiced. Same way with band. Never practiced.
I think I have some sort of musical ear for things. I enjoy certain types of music and can distinguish between good music vs. bad music. But as far as band went, I probably should have sat out.

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.

Is it wise to name an 8th grade minischool after a R rated movie with guns and violence in it? “The Untouchables” was a hit movie in 1987 staring Kevin Costner, Robert Deniro, and Sean Connery. It was about the police trying to pin a crime on Al Capone. There was a few cuss words in it (although not as much as your typical R movie these days), plus plenty of violence which gave it an R rating. I can only imagine the brainstorming session those teachers had to come up with this nickname for the minischool. My guess is that one particular teacher was a huge fan of the movie…either enamored with Costner….or just liked the movie in general….and successfully lobbied for the name.
I’m pretty sure they changed the name of it after I left. It wasn’t as if it was a blockbuster hit. Most people have forgotten about it by now.
Minischools. It was a new and exciting concept. Students were divided into groups and rotated among the teachers assigned to the group. Made the schools a bit smaller. When I was at the junior high, we had these 8th grade minischools: Olympians, The Untouchables, and The Challengers. So basically we had one reasonably named minischool and one minischool named after an R rated movie, while the other one was named after an ill fated space shuttle.
On the flip side, we had the 7th grade minischools: The Pioneers, The Constellations, and The Investigators. All are reasonable names, except for the Constellations which was too close to “The Consipations,” and yes, the kids did call them that.
Since in minischools, all the kids have Band/P.E. at the same time…and because most of my friends were in 6th period advanced band….we were all in the same minischool together. I wasn’t all that great in band. I think it was the grace of Mr. Starks, my band teacher, which got me into advanced band. Maybe he knew of the upcoming changes when he was considering me for advanced band. Maybe he knew that I was friends with many of the people he was putting in there. Maybe he knew my sister was a good student and he wanted good student in there. I don’t know why I was placed in advanced band.

Ok so I’ve sorta been negative toward my past teacher experiences. Now for a positive teacher experience. My favorite teacher. My favorite teacher was Mrs. Britnell, my 4th grade teacher. What set her apart from the other teachers is that she truly loved her students and wanted the absolute best for them. Even before this whole prayer in public schools controversy, she was regularly leading our class in morning devotionals at school (this was a public school). This went against the grain, but it was so fundamental in my emerging faith during those vital years. She had inspirational posters around the wall. Each morning we choose a poster and she would give a short devotional about it. Then she was lead us in a prayer. I remember always praying for an absent student of ours. This student was scheduled to be in our class at the beginning of the year, but had to stay homebound for all of the year due to a bad motorcycle accident. We prayed everyday for that kid. And he was able to return to school the following year.
What was great about the class itself is that not only did I have a great teacher, I also had 2 friends of mine who were in there. We remain good friends to this day. And that was 19 years ago.
Mrs. Britnell didn’t like the annual academic awards day celebration because she felt like it was not good for the kids who didn’t get any awards. I would tend to agree with her. While the handful of us were getting all of the awards, the rest of the class was left out. So after the awards program…back in the classroom, she gave all of her students awards so that none of us were left out.
I went back to see her a few years ago. She was at a new school as a guidance counselor. She said she had to get out of the classroom because it was just too stressful. I’m pretty sure she is retired now.

8th grade science was somewhat of a joke. It was Earth Science, and honestly I can’t remember much about it. Our teacher was a typical coach. Passive learning. Read this section of material in your book and do the review questions at the end of the chapter. That was a typical work assignment. That and to deal with all the other rowdy kids in the class. Never did our teacher really get up and actually teach us something. Stand up in front of the class and write on the board? Nope. Instead it was sorta a learn at home type thing. Years later we could have learned by the web in similar fashion.
One 6 weeks we were studying the planets and it was somewhat interesting. Our teacher took the trouble of redoing the room completely with space type junk. Dark curtains and planets hanging from the ceiling. It was cool at the time. Plus we got to giggle whenever someone mentioned Uranus in typical 8th grade fashion.

I made an 89 in my 7th grade computer class. Who would have guessed? First computer class. Maybe it was the new school. Maybe it was my inadeptness with Apple II’s. I did better the next year: 94.
I don’t remember much about the computer class. I remember playing Oregon Trail and Mario Bros. But that’s about it. We might have written a program or two. Infinite loops. You know the drill. I still don’t know why I made a B in computers in 7th grade. That is alluding me. It might have been the new jargon. I hadn’t used a computer in a while….actually it was probably my first introduction to them, apart from my Atari 2600 and Texas Instruments.
Computers, Art, Music and Reading were taken as mini-courses at the junior high. We had each for 6 weeks, having Reading twice. I guess they wanted us to get the most out of reading. Mini-courses were for those subjects which they really didn’t have a full year worth of curriculum. Either that or they just wanted to squeeze in a large amount of subjects within one period throughout the year.
Then again there seemed to be a degree of redundancy since I was already taking band and had another Music class during one six weeks period. Basically I had band during first period, then I moved on to music during 2nd period. A whole morning of music.
Our music teacher was a bit on the strange side. There’s a rumor hanging around that her students always tried to get her upset enough to make her cry. I don’t remember much about it. I remember a bunch of rude people in there who had no respect for the teacher. One day we were allowed to bring our own music to listen to for the entire day. Somebody brought a RUSH tape. That’s all I remember.

My 7th grade English teacher (who’s name shall remain anonymous here) was somewhat of a “by the books” type person. I remember the first day of class. It was 6th period, the last period of the day. I hadn’t been able to visit the restroom the entire day. Those were the days of non-mini schools where we were forced to hike around all over the school to our classes instead of staying in our respective minischool pods…but more on that later. So in lieu of using the restroom, I decided to use my time more productively…like getting to class on time.
Anyways on that first day of class the teacher explained the rules to us. I didn’t bother listening since I usually had a habit of doing my work and following the rules without any problems. There was something about if you got in trouble, a warning would be your name would be written on the chalkboard. For each additional troublesome occurance, you’d get checkmarks by your name. This was standard operating procedures among junior high teachers. By the end of class I was sitting around finishing up whatever assignment had been given to me. I had the urge to visit the restroom. I went up and asked the teacher if I could. She said “no” and I returned to my desk.
At the end of class, she said something to the effect of “Ok, I’ve already written a list of people’s names on the board who haven’t obeyed the rules.” And my name was up there. For asking to go to the restroom! I could have done far worse. But somehow I got up there for bodily functions. Ok whatever.
Knowing that, later on in the year, when colds are common, I developed a hacking cough. I was pretty much coughing my brains out during English class one day. So the teacher says “Do you need to go to the restroom to get some water.” And I go. No names written on the board. Just the soothing taste of a refreshing beverage.
And I remember doing a report on music in the class. I used Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry in it. And then some Huey Lewis song. I think I was big into the Back to the Future movie back then. To play the music I used a tape recorder. I remember pushing “stop” instead of “play.” and the tape ejecting on me. As the class laughed at me, I looked over at the teacher and she was shaking her head and wrote something down on her gradepad. Ugh. I don’t think I made an A on that project.
Years later when I worked at Kmart, on a particular day I took a check from a customer. The name on the check I recognized. I told them my 7th grade teacher had the same name. As it turns out the customer was the ex-husband of my former English teacher. Interesting. I don’t know if she is still teaching or what. I guess I should have asked.
That’s what I remember from 7th grade English. Not any type of story or anything. Just a by the books teacher who doesn’t let you go to bathroom. English classes are just so overtly subjective anyways. You read whatever the school/teacher/board of education wants to you to read. They say it is great literature, but I’d tend to disagree.