First day at school

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Hughie
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First day at school

Post by Hughie »

What do you recall about your first day at school? I was prompted to recall my first day at Winton Primary in Ardrossan when our son sent an image of our youngest grandchild on his way to his first day at school supported by his big sister here in Melbourne.

My recollections are a bit sketchy. But I do recall my dad lifting me up so I could peer through the round clear glass of the otherwise frosted top section of the classroom door at Winton in Ardrossan so I could see my brother sitting at his desk. Think I might have kicked the door when I spotted him.

What's your recollection of your first day at school?
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morag
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Re: First day at school

Post by morag »

I remember being really excited, rarin' to go!Lots of kids, boys and girls, clinging to parents, crying...my mum may have felt bad that I wasn't! :P
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Re: First day at school

Post by meekan »

I can't really remember my first day at school, but I remember my first classroom at Ardrossan Winton school. It was a big room which was divided by a wood and glass partition which created two classrooms. There was a small door in the partition and two separate doors to each room.
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Re: First day at school

Post by 5siamese7 »

My first day at school, I arrived full of excitement and was met with children greetin and not letting go of their mammies. I thought what is going to happen.? We only stayed for the morning and when my mum came to collect me she asked how was it? Mum it was ok and they gave us a wee bottle of milk.
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bobnetau
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Re: First day at school

Post by bobnetau »

Remember being walked to school from Vernon Terrace to the Academy. Crossing the road at the Belisha Beacon outside Eglinton School. My Mum took me into the classroom and told me to sit beside this girl with lovely auburn long curly hair and wearing a white blouse with a Peter Pan Collar, and kilt.
Wasn't happy to find out this wee girl was actually a wee boy called Philip.
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Re: First day at school

Post by sherlock »

I remember my first classroom and teacher Miss Ness she was tall and slim with white silvery hair tied back in a bun, we had slates and chalk to draw with and were allowed to read picture books for a while unfortunately I fell asleep and had to be wakened by our teacher, great that I can remember that and yet i can,t recall what happened last week, L O L
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down south
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Re: First day at school

Post by down south »

I've already described how I thought I was going to Saltcoats Public when I started school. And so I was somewhat bewildered to be dragged away from my colouring-in one afternoon and told I was going to school, only to find myself being taken up through the Plantation to places I'd never seen before. My parents had never thought to tell me that they had changed their mind.

The sense of everything being wrong didn't alter when we got to the Academy primary and found ourselves in a milling throng of mothers and children; when we went in it was through a door with 'BOYS ' carved in the stone above it, and I was very reluctant to disobey this message and follow the wee boy with dark curly hair ahead of me. ( Serves me right, you may say, for having been precociously introduced to reading by my mother....though I've always been told that our teacher Miss Miller was delighted to discover this. )

And my suspicions increased when we got to the classroom. Everyone scrambled for seats except this good little girl, who was waiting to be told; and when the dust had settled, I couldn't see a place left for me anywhere. I KNEW this school was all wrong and they weren't expecting me at all ! I fear I started to cry...but then Miss Miller pointed out that there was still one seat I hadn't noticed, right down by the teacher's desk. Which was hardly calculated to cheer me up, since I knew that was the dreaded seat that signified the Bottom of the Class.... And what a great sense of injustice I felt at this ignominious start to my school career .

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Re: First day at school

Post by Retsum »

I don't remember my first day at Winton. I'm told that my mother left me tearfully at the gate and I went in and joined the other new kids. In fact I don't remember much about the years at Winton. I spent most of the time in my inner dream world. What teachers said went in one ear and straight out the other. O.K. we chanted the multiplication tables every day and I learned them by default but when it came to addition and subtraction, I just did not see the point. I remember on one occasion we were given a large square of cardboard that was divided into smaller squares containing either numbers or patterns. Some squares had been removed and we were given loose squares with which to complete either the sum or pattern. The teacher kept me back and carefully explained what I should have done. She even completed a couple for me and then asked me to continue. Unfortunately she was speaking Mandarin Chinese and so I just randomly placed squares in position. She was nearly in tears.

After that my mother was invited to see the headmistress. I expect she was told that they were deeply concerned by my lack of progress and I assume my mother expressed amazement. Two things then happened. My father made me a blackboard and easel and night after night we did arithmetic. In trying to please them I eventually 'got it'. The other event was a session with the headmistress during which she gave me what I assume was an intelligence test. She had a book of pictures and asked me to comment on each (comment? - anything unusual?). I didn't see anything in the first few and then she showed me one in which a double-decker bus was about to pass under a very small bridge. I noticed the bus had no wheels and started laughing. I had to explain about the wheels. She said she had not noticed that but thought the bus too big to pass under the bridge. I scornfully dismissed that as obvious. So end of test. She must have concluded that if I saw something she had missed, I might not be retarded after all!

I only really wakened up and left my dream world when I reached the 11+ class at Eglinton. That was fortunate because it meant I passed the exam and went to the Academy. There were still conventions I had to learn. There is the unspoken, tacit agreement between examiners and students that words with a well defined meaning in the real world can have a different meaning in an exam question. I remember a maths exam in the first year at the Academy. One of the questions was on geometry and such questions always had the same form. The first part, worth only a few marks, required you to prove a theorem.
[That is one of those derived by old Euclid and his mates more than 2000 years ago and still taught today. Indeed they have been extended to include coordinate geometry and trigonometry. All the results are true if you are a Flatlander but if you live on the surface of a sphere, as we do, they are all irrelevant. One of Euclid's axioms was that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line which does not exist of the surface of a sphere. There the shortest distance connecting two points is the arc of a great circle and if you fly from Glasgow to New York that is what the pilot will fly because it uses least fuel. Similarly if you are racing your yacht from Ardrossan to Boston you will take either the northern or southern great circle route. None of this is ever mentioned in school. I only became aware of it when I started studying Astronomy at University and was introduced to the celestial sphere and the complexities of spherical trigonometry!]
The second part of the question involved solving a problem and usually required the use of the theorem you had just proved. It was worth a lot of marks. On this occasion it started something like "If angle A = 60 deg, calculate angle B". So I set out to prove that A = 60 and ended up convincing myself it could not possibly be 60. Naturally I got zero for that part of the question. Later Wilf Seggie took me aside and said I should have interpreted 'if' as 'assume'. So why did he not write that? It is not just in maths that such agreement exist - it covers all subjects.
[Incidentally my interpretation proved, many years later, to be correct. Almost all high level programming languages have a statement of the form
IF (some condition is true) THEN (do something).]

I've rather wandered away from the first day but if there are those with children or grandchildren who seem to be slow learners, perhaps they are late developers as I was.
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Re: First day at school

Post by Vinegarjoe »

I remember my first day at Stevenston High. Arriving there in my all-new outfit of LONG trousers, shirt and tie and blazer. There was only ONE guy who turned up in short grey trousers in our year, I wont mention names to save embarrassment.It wasn't long before we were rounded up, the whole lot of us, at least the boys anyway. We were frogmarched to the back of the gym, where there were stairs down to the boiler house, probably about 7 or 8 stairs. We were herded down there like cattle until there was no more room.Then we were spat on by all the elders up above.Thankfully no-one decided it would be a good idea to pee on us!!!!. Then, one at a time we had to run the gauntlet. However, the start being a set of stairs meant that you could never get any momentum up, so being so slow you got punched and kicked pretty often with the gauntlet being one sided and a wall on the right. Then, as if that's not enough, we were herded up again, and our socks and shoes were removed and we were then chucked over the back wall, which led to Ardeer Rec Football park. On the school side it was about 4 or five feet high, but on the Rec side it was about twice that!!!! So by this time it was fast approaching 9 o'clock, bearing in mind it's our first day!!! So we then had to run all the way out of the Rec Park past Livingstone Church and back to the playground, in our bare feet BTW, collect our socks and shoes and bags, and present ourselves for administration. Every one of us late of course!!! And with no time to clean up after being gobbed on!! Great first impression. Don't think it did me any lasting harm, but a bit severe on an eleven year old don't you think. Pretty sure this ritual disappeared 'cos don't remember it happening later, either that or I was not invited to the "ceremony"!!
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Re: First day at school

Post by 5siamese7 »

The headmaster put a stop to this carryon after one lad broke his arm.
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Re: First day at school

Post by gnyaff »

My first day at school is on my recollections. There is a lot more I could add to that day like the description of the room which incidentally was the only one in the school with two entrance doors and it also had a fireplace. I also remember Agnes Neilsen peeing herself when her mum left her there. (Forgive me Agnes).
Then there was a lovely lassie with long black hair who was a few rows in front of me, she was Maureen Hamilton who eventually went on to have a hairdressers shop where the Café Colette used to be at the Auchenharvie shops, next door to what was once Forbes Fish and chip shop. They also sold fruit and veg. during the day. Does anyone remember the Jubbly which was a drink? The Forbes used to put them in the freezer and sell them to us kids for 4d. Sadly Maureen Hamilton passed away a few years ago. (sorry I don't know her married name.)

Wee Boney
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Re: First day at school

Post by 5siamese7 »

Aye and who doesn't still have feelings for their first love?
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