1st Grade With Miss Harvison at Thatcher Elementary
David Walker
I
Miss Harvison’s smile greeted each taker of
An assigned seat of big kids desks
in our very first First Grade class
at Thatcher Elementary
It was early in September after a
Long summer and a
Successful year of half-day kindergarten
The beginning of numbered grades
All in a row
12 years was my first glimpse of forever
II
Miss Harvison was no taller than the
Tallest boys among us
And I was proudly one among them
Gray hair and pale blue eyes
Thin with the skin of an aging angel
She made learning fun
She made us want to come
For another chapter of Dick & Jane
And adding numbers
III
Miss Harvison never married
But by 1960 knew 50 years of children
She was 25 when she first arrived
And had her first 30 in a
Baptism of fire
She knew everyone
by name and by heart
It was the start of a life-long
love affair with teaching and learning
IV
Miss Harvison has always lived in the
Memories of a thousand and a half
Half-pints seated in neat rows
The children who became her students
Her treasures
Her measures of a meaningful life
Categories:
desks, 1st grade,
Form: Free verse
My desk was constructed of
genuine wood, with seat attached.
No, not movable as they are today.
Highly polished with an ink
well, as we used fountain pens!
Books? You lifted the top
and in they went.
We had leather schoolbags
that went below.
Later, when I was a teacher,
they were light as you see today.
Since I taught in the wildest schools,
misbehaving pupils used them in
fights,not for play!
At these times, chairs became objects
of flight.
To the students' joyous delight.
I'd dream of the days of yore!
When children were well-behaved and had
morals that counted ever so much more.
And desks were nailed firmly to the floor!
4/19/2021
Categories:
desks, memory, school,
Form: Free verse
Just sitting has become a fashion and the order of the day of life schooling to shopping,leisure to relaxing,chatting to betting,mailing to billing whatever once standing working sitting on a desk like at schools on line in searching the offline.
Categories:
desks, change, character, environment,
Form: Free verse
I recall the old school desks,
Ink for fountain pens a pesk,
Ink wells with lots of blots,
Blotting paper smudged the lot,
There was ink on all our hands,
Ink monitors in history's land!
Categories:
desks, childhood, nostalgia, school,
Form: Free verse
I am spinning my radioactive waves today.
Alpha beta gamma
There they go!
Beta gamma alpha
Even faster.
Gamma alpha beta
Man can they fly!
I am radium.
My atomic nuclei is rapidly disintegrating
So please get under your desk, school children.
And put your tiny fingers and arms over your heads.
So you will be safe.
Categories:
desks, childhood, nostalgia,
Form: Light Verse
its wide and a guild
for work
kept them alert
and some or jerk
up there feet
to the office best
put there legs to rest
on top of the
DESKS
Categories:
desks, life
Form: I do not know?
its wide and a guild
for work
kept them alert
and some or jerk
up there feet
to the office best
put there legs to rest
on top of the
DESKS
Categories:
desks, life
Form: I do not know?
its wide and a guild
for work
kept them alert
and some or jerk
up there feet
to the office best
put there legs to rest
on top of the
DESKS
Categories:
desks, life
Form: I do not know?