Writer's Workshop: Fourth Grade

This weeks writing prompts from Mama Kat includes:

• Share a story from fourth grade.
• Describe where you were when you met a boy.
• Write about a time you saw someone doing something kind for someone else
• Name something you swore you'd never do when you had kids, but now find yourself doing.
• List the songs that tell your life story (so far).

While making a list of songs that tell my life story would be awesome, I considered how long the list would be and decided instead to tell a story from fourth grade.

The summer before I started fourth grade was the year my brothers and I moved in with my father in the quaint town of Seneca Falls, New York. My father had grown up there with his 3 older brothers and parents, all of which still lived there. It was on a six month trial that we moved in with him,  granted by the judge presiding over the custody case. (I'll spoil that ending, the move became permanent after the six month trail ended)

Moving had been both an easy, and uneasy thing for me. It was great that basically all my family lived in one town. My mother, who had been adopted, had no siblings, no other local family, save her (adoptive) parents; the very cool grandparents I wrote about previously. On the other hand, I knew no one else at all, and especially no one my age.

But that isn't really isn't part of the story I am going to tell you. I am going to tell you about the teacher of my 4th grade class, Mrs Basley. Mrs Basley had a fondness for the Peanuts gang, in particularly Snoopy. I remember she was very kind to me, at a time where, even though I loved being in Seneca Falls more then Geneva, was rough.

Now, I have been called a decent student in my youth. Math and science were subjects I easily picked up and did well on. But one thing no one has ever said I've done well is spell.

I carried a low D grade for spelling in fourth grade (which brought down those A's and B's considerably). And it was with great shock to me that 1 day during a typical spelling test that my teacher bent down and told me to consider re-looking over a couple of my words. I think she may have even said the line numbers to reconsider.

I couldn't believe it! I thought she was helping me to cheat by telling me what words I had gotten wrong, before handing in my test. Looking back now, I know the difference between looking back over my work and actual cheating, but to my little 10 year old self, it blew my mind.

This post will be linked to Mama Kat's Pretty Much World Famous Writer's Workshop. Click here to check it out!