I know it's been awhile since I wrote about St. Therese, but now that I'm literally having dreams about it - and specifically- the fifth grade - I thought it was time to revisit the school in my blog.
Remember - I went to Indian Village Elementary School until the second semester of fourth grade. At that time, my mother switched my sister and I over to St. Therese and my first experience with parochial school was with Mr. Wunderlin.
One thing to mention to you is that I never felt like I fit in at St. Therese (although this was a pretty universal feeling for me at ALL of the schools I attended). A couple of kids used to make fun of me for the hand me downs I wore (my winter coats always came from Goodwill/Salvation Army) and except for being tall, thin, and one of the smartest kids, I pretty much did my best to blend in to the background.
Fifth grade should have been a lot like fourth grade, right? Same building, same kids, just moving one room over, with a different teacher.
Boy - we were wrong about that!
Our teacher in fifth grade was Miss Majewski (and apologies if I have misspelled her last name). She was new. She wasn't the one that was there the year previously. Miss M - allegedly - used to be a nun before becoming our teacher. I only had heard this as a rumor and still...to this day...don't know if it was true or not.
Miss M's style of teaching was very different. We would spend a great deal of time, during the school day...meditating. Seriously. Like everyday, we would have the lights shut off in the room and the door closed and she would instruct us to close our eyes. We could even move to the floor or sit in a corner if we wanted to. It was very odd.
One day, my mother asked me what kinds of things I was learning in fifth grade. I couldn't think of anything remarkable to tell her - nothing exciting and new. For me, it seemed like a rehash of the past four years. I did tell her that I was learning how to meditate and her ears perked up real fast.
When I told her what I meant by meditating and how often we did it, she was speechless. I wasn't sure if there was something wrong with meditating (was it against the Catholic religion??) but soon enough, she told me that she wasn't spending money to have me sit in a classroom every day with the lights out.
I wasn't sure what would happen next and frankly, I had other things to worry about (they were repaving our street and I wanted to make sure that I could sneak out and leave my handprint somewhere for all of eternity).
Over the course of the next few weeks, my mother was meeting with the parents of some of my other classmates - Shannon Juza's mom, Alice Jordan's mom, Tiena Spears's mom, Gregg Jehl's mom...and pretty soon, there was this small mob of them, knocking down the principal's door. They were pretty ticked off that their kids were "meditating" instead of learning.
It's not like the adults tuned me into what was going on but I assume that Miss M was put on some sort of probation. And then one day - POOF - she was gone.
It's not like I wished her any ill will - she was nice enough - just seemed not interested in teaching the class.
For a short span of time, my mom bonding together with those other parents...well...it made me not feel like such an outsider in their world. I was very proud of my mom for taking action and I had the opportunity to get to know two of my classmates (Tiena and Shannon) lots better.
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