First day at school

My memory is awful but I remember that day vividly. The war was not long ended and there was a shortage of teachers. My mother, who had taught for one year only in 1937/8 then married and had to leave, was persuaded to return to teaching, so long as I could start school a year early while a childminder looked after my 2 year old brother. The school she was to teach in was half way down a long hill and my school was at the bottom on the other side. I had no idea where we were going and when we got to half way Mother stopped two older children and instructed them to take me to the infants’ playground. Then she crossed the road and disappeared while the two big girls dragged me down the hill screaming my head off all the way.

After the register was taken we were asked who had not gone to Mass on Sunday and the one honest/foolish child ŵho admitted to it was slapped on the side of her head. I don’t think I had ever missed Sunday mass so I passed that hurdle. Children were also slapped for not having a hankie in their pocket.

Some months later my brother caught chickenpox and my father insisted mother leave teaching and she never went back. I on the other hand remained in school and went through school a year younger than the class. I hated everything about school except for years 3 and 6 when we had kind teachers who clearly didn’t believe in corporal punishment.

I’m shocked by how nasty some of your teachers were. What a bad example to you.

I remember that another new child was screaming when his mother left on our first day. we were given little white chunky cards with one lower case letter on each one so that we could make words. There was a large rocking horse in a corner of the room but I cannot remember anyone ever having a ride on it.
All pupils sat in rows of desks for two.

l always went to catholic schools so didn't have friends locally and every time my dad was promoted at work we moved which was roughly every 2 years. l was an only child for 8 years and very self contained. My first school was in Cheltenham l just remember being on my own and the nuns asking the same girls to read aloud to the class. l remember thinking how boring Janet & John books were. l was only there a short time and then moved and went to a convent school Notre Dame. The school only had nuns teaching there. l was six and l remember the nun sitting at a desk on a raised platform. After prayers and catechism we had tables. Holding a cane the nun would point randomly and ask you a times table. You would go to the desk and give your answer. You would then hold your hand out palm upper most and if right you were given a sweet. If wrong you turned your hand over and she would smack your knuckles. Sr Gerard was the head and Sr Josephine the class teacher. l am 67 next month and can still remember the faces of those two witches. Lots of cruel things happened that were mentally scaring Needless to say my child did not go to a catholic school.

I hated it. We were given a rough book to colour in on the front. Apparently the teacher told us to use only 3 colours (assuming 5 year olds were numerate!) but I didn't hear that and used many coloured crayons. I got a ruler on the hand for that. I've never forgotten her. She was called Miss Stone and she had an alsatian dog. If you're reading this, I hated you! And any teachers reading, take are how you treat little kids.

I have very distinct memories of my first day at school. I was late as I had a hospital appointment first thing and had had drops put in my eyes which meant I couldn’t see very well. The teacher put a ‘reading card, with a picture and some words on it , in front of my face and barked at me to read it. I couldn’t see it . She then drew dots on the blackboard , asking me how’ve many there were. Again , I couldn’t see them. She seemed utterly exasperated and dragged me across the room to sit with a group of crying children. It was this same ‘teacher’ who broke my foot by making me jump off P.E. apparatus WITHOUT bending my legs. Later in my life , I got to meet her again at church. She was an alcoholic and I felt sorry for her as she seemed pathetic and sad but should she ever have been the teacher of such young children? Maybe the job drove her to it.

I don’t remember my first day in school at all , but I do remember my brothers first day because I cried and screamed that I couldn’t go with him . He’s 16 months older than me I couldn’t start till the following year in 1958, when I was 5 years and 4 months old .
I started school with my best friend who lived across the road which helped a lot as I was very reserved .

But there are pictures proving that I showed up! Cute little tyke.
USA Gundy

No. I do not remember. I’m “old” you know… can hardly recall what I did last week!
Cheers!
USA Gundy

I had long hair in pigtails and the boy brhind me dipped the end in the inkpots that were in each desk, my mother was so annoyed because so much hair took hours to dry. (no hair drier in the 1940's.) wish I had that hair now.

There was a blackboard with letters of the alphabet printed around it and the teacher said that next year we would all be able to read them. A boy who lived in the same road as me, shouted out that I could read and he couldn’t. We both had red hair. Mine dark red, his a brilliant ginger. The teacher assumed we were twins and the first weeks at the local school were delightful. If you are brought up an only child it’s wonderful to have a borrowed brother.
He was a loud boy and took it on himself to tell the teacher everything he thought I wanted to say.
I’d been to a nursery school attached to a boys prep school and had learnt there to be quiet, as everything I said was laughed at. She says she can read !!!! Loud laughter.
She says they have a gas refrigerator for keeping things cold!!!!!! Loud laughter.

I was rising four when I started school. I was desperate to go, I was an only child and my best friend lived next door but one. I cried on my first day surrounded by other children crying. But I was crying because I found out that I would not be in my best friend's class because she was two years older. I was devastated!

I moved around a bit because of my father's job, the next school I hated, then the next one I quite liked. At the age of ten we moved again but stayed in that town for the rest of my school life.

I was sent to one of the top private girl's day schools, still is. I absolutely hated it and my parents made me stay there for nine years because it was the 'best'. For whom? I still harbour quite a lot of resentment for this grove of academe, and my parents. I recently asked my son 'if your daughter wasn't happy and wasn't thriving at school, what would you do?' 'I'd take her away', nuff said.

1953. I do remember my first day very well. I made a friend who is still my friend today, though we rarely meet. I also got caught talking during "story time", which was punished by me having to sit on the prickly coconut gym mat until home time.

I remember my first school but not the first day.
It was an asbestos shed like building with metal doors and windows. A stove in the corner protected by a semi circular guard. Small canvas beds were brought out after dinner so we could all lie down for a nap. Vivid memories of hammering little tacs through wooden shapes to make pictures on a little board and making paint using coloured powder. Sharpening pencils for the teacher using a sharpener bolted on her desk. I also remember sports days and whilst I were no winner we all got to wear a coloured team band so that was good enough for me. I was chosen one day to take teachers empty cup and saucer back to.the staff room after playtime and can remember feeling so so proud of myself for being bestowed this honour. Now for goodness sake don't ask me what I did last week !

I couldn’t wait to go to school, again I was an only child and immediately befriended a girl that was crying. We stayed friends all through school. My mum was in floods of tears but I waved bye and went on my merry way 🤣!

I do not remember the journey to or from school ,..my older sister ( 14) took me!
I don’t think I cried, but so remember thinking why hadn’t anyone brought me here berore.Loved the learning …loved everything apart from the occasional rap on knuckles with the edge of a rule! I was 4 and started in reception then within 2 weeks I was in class 1 …then within 6 months they put me into class 2…..so my mum tells me !
I couldn’t get enough of school .

I was confronted by a boy fighting not to go through the door! His mum was pushing and teacher was pulling!

Oh I forgot to say I was once locked in a cupboard by a teacher
when I was about 7-8 for waving and getting excited about a workman at the window. He was my dad doing some work there. I also hated milk I could drink it if it was cold but in the summer when it was warm I would do anything to get out of it

I hated it I was an only child of older parents both in their 40
and an elderly grandma. I can't remember playing with children at all before I went to school. All my cozens were 10 - 20 years older than me and we only saw them once a year so it was quite a shock to see these children. I cried every day for months until I latched on to one teacher and then cried when she went out of the room. To add to this because I had not mixed with anyone I caught everything going and spent a lot of time ill. By the time I went to junior School I did have a couple of friends but was way behind everyone else school wise. I love maths and dad would do that with me at home but He tried so hard to help me catch up with English. It was a lovely teach in senior school when I was about 14 that realised I had dyslectic tendency's and helped me enormously. I always said when I had children I would make sure they mixed as early as possible.

I think I hated school most of my life. Got quite upset when my mum stopped collecting me from school, when I first started. I don't remember much about my first day.

When I started school my mum got a job, and I was packed off to the neighbours next door to us. Theyre were 3 sisters who were never ready, we were always late for school. My mum said I had to hold one of the sisters hands, on the way to school, and no one would. They hated me being with them.

I remember being bullied by various people. I made friends with a girl called Eileen in infants. She was a twin. The other twin was called Pauline, she told her sister Eileen, not to play with me. Pauline went on to be the bain of my life all through school. She was horrible, in senior school she was part of a gang of rough girls, who belted you if you moved. I couldn't wait to leave. Never felt comfortable at school. I was very shy. In 3rd year I bunked off school because this PE teacher had great joy picking on me. I used to forge my dads signature on notes. Then the school police showed up and spoke to my mum, I was lucky I never got a good hiding from my dad.

The funny thing was, when I was about 8, I wanted to be a teacher. It never happened. I choose a totally different career.

Some people have had the most terrible experience in school, I was just wondering if any of your experiences, rubbed off on your children. My children hated school. We were always moving, dad in army, another new school to face. I never realised until my children were adults, how much all this moving effected them. I felt so awful when I found out.

Later in life, I went to college, and redone my exams. I loved some subjects, I gave up maths as I just couldn't get to grip with anything from Algebra onwards. I've never needed it in adult life, so very proud to still know my tables.

I was five years old and remember it very well. After the first lesson of learning to read I put my hand up and asked to go to the toilet just across the corridor. The teacher gave permission and off I went……home. Except, I didn’t go straight home, a ten minute walk away. I went to play in the fields and apparently was ‘missing’ for several hours. I can now of course appreciate the turmoil this would have caused for my class teacher, my parents and the entire school. I was found just after lunch time in a field close to my home. I even tried the same trick again the next day and a few more times, but they were on to me after that.

Infants were in”temporary “ classrooms across from the main school, which was Primary School on one side and Secondary Modern on the other. My first teacher was Miss Greenwood who had dyed red hair and was the sister of the greengrocer. Andrew ? pulled my chair away as I was sitting down and I banged my chin on the desk. Despite this I liked school!

I started in the reception class of a three-room CofE primary school - a class of 40, yes 40, in double desks taught by the head teacher. I was put on the back row. I can't remember learning anything and my feeling is that it was not an especially pleasant experience. The outside wc's were awful, very cold in the winter. The playground was concrete with a gravel extension at one end. It was shuttered with corrugated iron when I saw it in the late 1970s and is now the office attached to a mosque built on the playground. The wc's were dispensed with!

I should perhaps have said that I loved school, and that Mrs Hamilton who taught Primary 1 was the best Infants' mistress I have ever encountered. In Primary 2 I had a horrible teacher, and after moving schools I encountered her double in Primary 3. Apart from these two, all my teachers were nice women, most of whom could teach and liked children-

The exceptions were two widows, taken on out of pity on behalf of the headmistress, the one taught Scripture and beginners' French, both very badly, the other Art. She was the kind of art teacher who had failed ambitions as a painter, and should never have been teaching small children. She made us draw tea-cups and jam jars in perspective when we were 8!

Most of us were bored stiff and probably like me, most of my class-mates have hated drawing ever since and never dream of going into an art gallery.

I loved school from the start, could already read before I went there and was a bookworm and so pleased to have lots more to read. I was always inquisitive and wanting to know about lots of things and so every day there would be something new to find out which I enjoyed. My sister was two years younger and so although I was quite happy playing with her etc. it was lovely to have older children or rather my age children to play with at games on my level. Remember boxes of quite realistic cardboard money to both use for counting and also in a play shop. The half crown looked very real. Quite a long walk to get there but we all walked so didnt think much of it. My mother had a schiaparelli pink coat, double breasted and to me looked absolutely wonderful and of course I would see her coming from a long way off and knew it was definitely her. ( She had bought it in a sale and it was very good quality and warm but regretted it just for that reason that everyone knew it was her and of course in those days you wore it for some years, not buying a new one. But to me it was a beacon , a comfort blanket knowing she was on her way to fetch me .)