I started middle school when we got to Corcoran, at John Muir Middle School. The first thing I noticed about my new school was that there were outdoor hallways. That means that the door to each classroom opened to outside, rather than an indoor hallway. I remember thinking that was so crazy, but awesome at the same time. Because now we lived in California, and it didn't snow there.
This was also my first experience having different teachers for every subject. I had not been eased into the process, nobody had helped me prepare for it, other than to mention that that's how it works in middle school. At least, I don't especially remember any particular training for it. But I did okay, I didn't get lost, I wasn't late to any classes trying to figure things out. No traumatic experiences there. (yay).
I went to this school for two years, and there are a handful of things I remember from here...
1) My science teacher was a lady with super duper short hair. In her class we dissected a worm. I know that I also dissected a cow's eyeball at some point, which may have been in her class, or it could have been at Turlock High School.
2) I had a history teacher named Mr. Ranger. He was adored by everyone. Not really for any other reason than that he spoke softly, and said really funny things without cracking a smile. I ate that up, I loved it. He always called us "Little Ones," and his tone of voice when he said it was so funny. His response whenever anyone decided to whine or complain about something was "Oh well, life is hard and then you die." Again, the way he said it--with this lazy kind of drawl. Great stuff.
3) My English teacher was Ann Martin. She lived on my street, but way, way, way down. She was not married, but she had a daughter named Adrian who was a couple of years older than me. Ms. Martin would pay me to stay after school and correct papers, and then she would drive me home. I adored her. It may have been in her class where we did an exercise called "fluency." We would get paper and pencil, and she would start her timer, and we had to write continuously until the timer went off. If we couldn't think of anything to say we had to write anyway, even if all we wrote was "I can't think of anything to say I am so bored this assignment is so hard why do we have to do this..." Sometimes I did write that I didn't know what to write about. The idea was that writing like that would loosen up thoughts and ideas that were wedged in the deep dark corners of our minds. And really, lots of things came out of my pen during fluency that probably never would have otherwise. It was pretty cool!
4) Lastly, I had a math teacher named Mr. Hampton. His daughter Darlene was my friend, and their family was in our ward. I remember hearing years and years later that Mr. Hampton had committed suicide, and my heart broke. And then one year (maybe just a summer) Darlene lived down the street from me at College, and was in my ward for a little while.
