For context, up until I was almost eleven years old, I went to a nice Catholic school (with a special needs program) in a relatively liberal suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. In October 2015, we moved to Jenkintown for my parents’ work. Catholic schools that have the budget for a special needs program are not easy to come by, so my brother went straight to public school, but my dad really wanted my sister and me to go to a Catholic school to further our religious education. The first school I went to after moving here was extremely small and conservative, so we transferred to another, different catholic school for my sixth grade year. That one wasn’t a great fit either, so by seventh grade, we’d kind of run out of catholic schools, and I transferred here in seventh grade, so this is my fourth school.
I still remember this one time when I was visiting the nice school in my hometown in eighth grade. I sat down with my friend (and her new friends), and while we were catching up, I shared that I went to a public school. This one girl looks at me with these big, excitable blue eyes, and she goes “Is it like in the movies?” I don’t think I’ll ever know how to respond to that.
Remember the tiny, conservative school I went to in the fifth grade? It was a k-8 school with a grand total of 75 kids in its entire student body. The grades got smaller as you went up, so my grade had eleven students (none of whom were fond of young Clara), and the eighth grade had three. So, when June came around and it was time for the eighth graders to graduate, we had what I remember as the world’s saddest graduation ceremony. We didn’t actually have an auditorium, so it was in a church basement. They had these ““”posters””” up that were just the words “Congrats Grad” printed on to eight-and-a-half by eleven pieces of printer paper (and weren’t cropped quite right, so some just said “Congrat” or, my personal favorite, “rats Grad!”). So the three eighth graders walked on to the stage, and “Pomp and Circumstance” just played out for a good five minutes all while these three middle school-aged kids looked out at this crowd of tiny republicans with this look on their faces like they wanted to melt into the floor and just vanish. And I just think that story sums up my fifth grade year pretty well.
When I was in sixth grade, the school I went to was better--and had more than 75 total kids, though it was still small, K-8 with maybe 35-50 kids per grade--but it was a bit low-budget, and, as such, didn’t have air conditioning. Which made the warmer months interesting, especially since we were a bunch of middle school-aged children. Kids’ arms would peel off their textbooks like sticky notes and the teacher would just give this pained, customer service smile and go “It’s kind of tropical outside today.” Kids would also just pass out, and no one cared. One time a kid passed out in mass and they just went on with the service. They made sure to take her to the nurse’s office and everything, but no one in the room even batted an eye. She didn’t even get to go home; we were talking to her about it later that day and literally no one cared.
One time at that school, though, a kid passed out, and it was different for some reason. This kid needed to be taken to the hospital on a stretcher (he didn’t have a medical issue or anything, he just passed out from the heat like the others, but my best guess is that it was June and everyone was too tired to think very much), so they needed us to clear the hallways, so you know what they did? Naturally, they called a lockdown on the intercom without saying why. I remember crouching against the wall with this girl while we asked the teacher if it was a drill and the way the atmosphere in the room changed when she said she didn’t know. At one point she held up her heart monitor, and it read 150. Then the principal eventually came back on the intercom to call an end to the lockdown, and we just went on with our day. Most people were almost completely indifferent again, too. I don’t think they explained what happened until the announcements at the end of the school day.
Another time, the school staff suspected kids of skipping class in the bathrooms, so they started using these sign-in and sign-out sheets. There was one in the classroom and one by the bathroom. After a few months of that practice, pens from the sign out sheet by the boys’ bathroom mysteriously started disappearing, and, after a few weeks, they found a ton of them shoved down one of the urinals. They launched this entire investigation, and it turned out it was one of the kids from my grade. He got suspended for like two months, but honestly, the resistance was respectable. Kid was dedicated (and apparently covered his tracks rather well). That same year, we had a lunch room that was separate from the main building, so we designated these two kids whose job it was to move the milk from the fridge in the main building to the cafeteria. One time, in English, these two kids--friends of the pen kid--came into our classroom insisting that they found expired chocolate milk from 1972 inside the basement wall. They kept this up until our poor teacher went to check. Of course there wasn’t 70’s milk in the wall, but, again, the dedication is impressive.
Although that school did have a band, it was an after-school extracurricular, not a class, and, because I didn’t pick up the flute until the beginning of my sixth grade year, I was in beginner band at the time, with the fourth graders. Impressive that I’m in honors now, isn’t it? Anyway, chorus was a required class at that school, and we had this one project where we had to sing karaoke in groups, which is all well and good if a. you aren’t almost completely tone-deaf and b. you know literally any of the other children in the room. Being the weird quiet kid at the time, I met neither of those criteria, so, without thinking, I walked up to a random group of girls and asked to join their group. They let me join, luckily, but they were very set on singing “Sweatshirt” by Jacob Sartorius. We got an 88 (because our performance, and I quote, was missing the wow factor), and I wanted to jump off a bridge. They made a whole choreography for it and everything. I still know most of the words--I hear it in my dreams. Stuff like that is why I don’t sing (in addition to the whole nearly-tone-deaf thing). I go to a different school now, but I’ll never truly live that moment down.
Speaking of hardly hearing pitch, we had another chorus program at the tiny Catholic school I went to in the fifth grade (but no band, hence why I didn’t pick up the flute until sixth). The teacher was super stern, and she always had the girls sing the high notes and the boys sing the low notes (even though we were like ten and eleven and no one’s voices would have dropped by then. I guess women can’t sing low; we are simply ♥️ delicate flowers ♥️). But the thing is, even when I am in tune, I have a low vocal range for a girl (and I still did then). So I really should’ve been singing alto or contralto (my range currently is E3 to C6, although I don’t have any training unless fifth grade music class counts. Anyway I imagine my range in fifth grade couldn’t have been too much higher), but the lowest range they even had was alto, and the boys sang that part. The girls--all of us--had to sing soprano. So, I mean, I did try, but one day, we were practicing a church song, and the music teacher glares at us and goes, “One of you is an octave down. You know who you are.” I bet you can’t guess who it was. By the way, I totally didn’t know who I was. The girl next to me had to tap me on the shoulder and tell me. I ended up straining my voice trying to sing up an octave, though, so it turns out my instincts were right. Since I couldn’t hear the difference, I wasn’t that bothered, but I still think about that at night sometimes. Sense of pitch no worky.
In a couple of words, Catholic school was an emotional rollercoaster for sure. For better or worse, the furthering of my religious education certainly did shape me as a person, haha.
I still remember this one time when I was visiting the nice school in my hometown in eighth grade. I sat down with my friend (and her new friends), and while we were catching up, I shared that I went to a public school. This one girl looks at me with these big, excitable blue eyes, and she goes “Is it like in the movies?” I don’t think I’ll ever know how to respond to that.
Remember the tiny, conservative school I went to in the fifth grade? It was a k-8 school with a grand total of 75 kids in its entire student body. The grades got smaller as you went up, so my grade had eleven students (none of whom were fond of young Clara), and the eighth grade had three. So, when June came around and it was time for the eighth graders to graduate, we had what I remember as the world’s saddest graduation ceremony. We didn’t actually have an auditorium, so it was in a church basement. They had these ““”posters””” up that were just the words “Congrats Grad” printed on to eight-and-a-half by eleven pieces of printer paper (and weren’t cropped quite right, so some just said “Congrat” or, my personal favorite, “rats Grad!”). So the three eighth graders walked on to the stage, and “Pomp and Circumstance” just played out for a good five minutes all while these three middle school-aged kids looked out at this crowd of tiny republicans with this look on their faces like they wanted to melt into the floor and just vanish. And I just think that story sums up my fifth grade year pretty well.
When I was in sixth grade, the school I went to was better--and had more than 75 total kids, though it was still small, K-8 with maybe 35-50 kids per grade--but it was a bit low-budget, and, as such, didn’t have air conditioning. Which made the warmer months interesting, especially since we were a bunch of middle school-aged children. Kids’ arms would peel off their textbooks like sticky notes and the teacher would just give this pained, customer service smile and go “It’s kind of tropical outside today.” Kids would also just pass out, and no one cared. One time a kid passed out in mass and they just went on with the service. They made sure to take her to the nurse’s office and everything, but no one in the room even batted an eye. She didn’t even get to go home; we were talking to her about it later that day and literally no one cared.
One time at that school, though, a kid passed out, and it was different for some reason. This kid needed to be taken to the hospital on a stretcher (he didn’t have a medical issue or anything, he just passed out from the heat like the others, but my best guess is that it was June and everyone was too tired to think very much), so they needed us to clear the hallways, so you know what they did? Naturally, they called a lockdown on the intercom without saying why. I remember crouching against the wall with this girl while we asked the teacher if it was a drill and the way the atmosphere in the room changed when she said she didn’t know. At one point she held up her heart monitor, and it read 150. Then the principal eventually came back on the intercom to call an end to the lockdown, and we just went on with our day. Most people were almost completely indifferent again, too. I don’t think they explained what happened until the announcements at the end of the school day.
Another time, the school staff suspected kids of skipping class in the bathrooms, so they started using these sign-in and sign-out sheets. There was one in the classroom and one by the bathroom. After a few months of that practice, pens from the sign out sheet by the boys’ bathroom mysteriously started disappearing, and, after a few weeks, they found a ton of them shoved down one of the urinals. They launched this entire investigation, and it turned out it was one of the kids from my grade. He got suspended for like two months, but honestly, the resistance was respectable. Kid was dedicated (and apparently covered his tracks rather well). That same year, we had a lunch room that was separate from the main building, so we designated these two kids whose job it was to move the milk from the fridge in the main building to the cafeteria. One time, in English, these two kids--friends of the pen kid--came into our classroom insisting that they found expired chocolate milk from 1972 inside the basement wall. They kept this up until our poor teacher went to check. Of course there wasn’t 70’s milk in the wall, but, again, the dedication is impressive.
Although that school did have a band, it was an after-school extracurricular, not a class, and, because I didn’t pick up the flute until the beginning of my sixth grade year, I was in beginner band at the time, with the fourth graders. Impressive that I’m in honors now, isn’t it? Anyway, chorus was a required class at that school, and we had this one project where we had to sing karaoke in groups, which is all well and good if a. you aren’t almost completely tone-deaf and b. you know literally any of the other children in the room. Being the weird quiet kid at the time, I met neither of those criteria, so, without thinking, I walked up to a random group of girls and asked to join their group. They let me join, luckily, but they were very set on singing “Sweatshirt” by Jacob Sartorius. We got an 88 (because our performance, and I quote, was missing the wow factor), and I wanted to jump off a bridge. They made a whole choreography for it and everything. I still know most of the words--I hear it in my dreams. Stuff like that is why I don’t sing (in addition to the whole nearly-tone-deaf thing). I go to a different school now, but I’ll never truly live that moment down.
Speaking of hardly hearing pitch, we had another chorus program at the tiny Catholic school I went to in the fifth grade (but no band, hence why I didn’t pick up the flute until sixth). The teacher was super stern, and she always had the girls sing the high notes and the boys sing the low notes (even though we were like ten and eleven and no one’s voices would have dropped by then. I guess women can’t sing low; we are simply ♥️ delicate flowers ♥️). But the thing is, even when I am in tune, I have a low vocal range for a girl (and I still did then). So I really should’ve been singing alto or contralto (my range currently is E3 to C6, although I don’t have any training unless fifth grade music class counts. Anyway I imagine my range in fifth grade couldn’t have been too much higher), but the lowest range they even had was alto, and the boys sang that part. The girls--all of us--had to sing soprano. So, I mean, I did try, but one day, we were practicing a church song, and the music teacher glares at us and goes, “One of you is an octave down. You know who you are.” I bet you can’t guess who it was. By the way, I totally didn’t know who I was. The girl next to me had to tap me on the shoulder and tell me. I ended up straining my voice trying to sing up an octave, though, so it turns out my instincts were right. Since I couldn’t hear the difference, I wasn’t that bothered, but I still think about that at night sometimes. Sense of pitch no worky.
In a couple of words, Catholic school was an emotional rollercoaster for sure. For better or worse, the furthering of my religious education certainly did shape me as a person, haha.