I remember at 10

I remember not particularly enjoying my fifth grade teacher when I was ten. Mr. Smith taught me a lot about how to not be a teacher. I still use him as an example when I’m teaching future teachers now. He was from Canada and taught us Canadian history instead of American history, which was a twist. He also brought his RV camper to school and parked it outside our portable and used electricity or something from it to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water (I can’t remember why it required his camper, but apparently it did).

He had us run a lot. According to my journal we ran every Tuesday and Thursday for P.E. At that time I imagined myself a future Olympic athlete winning a gold medal. And because running is a summer Olympic sport, I always won on my birthday. I imagined the announcer and the crowd. But even then I knew I didn’t want to dedicate my life to the training that would require. My feet grew from either a 3 to a 5 or a 3 to an 8 that year, and my toes weren’t poking out of the end of my shoes. I know there’s a 3 and a 5 in there somewhere. We found that out when we went to buy me new running shoes.

My other teacher was my mom. That year, because I was “two years ahead” in math I would’ve had to go to the junior high for math. Instead my mom taught myself and two other boys math. We did some space math, using knowledge of space and the space shuttle to formulate math problems. Negative numbers finally made sense for me that year.

The summer after fifth grade was the first time I went to Shuttle Camp. That was a blast.

Marbles were really popular at the school that year. We did a not-bake-sale to raise money by selling draw-string bags to put marbles in.