There was also this underlying struggle when she began school in the US due to the language barrier she faced. Spanish was her first language and this is what she knew by heart, but because of the focus on English-speaking within the American education system, Claudia was placed into an  ESOL program. Here she studied the English language rigorously but in a fun manner until 5th grade when she became literate enough to get integrated into the general education classes with the other English-speaking students. As she moved on into her years of schooling, she recalls more of the social aspects of school including not fitting in at first. When she attended an advanced academy of sorts for high school, after a few weeks of torment she knew this was not the place for her. Noting the difference between this school, predominantly white and wealthy students of which she shared no commonalities with, and her neighborhood school where there was much more diversity and students in her socioeconomic status, it was much easier to fit in the later. It is in this school that she became more involved and also developed an ambitious drive for learning which she carried into her post-secondary education. 

Rose 2 

in religious services not counted as part of public school time.” ("Background of Controversy in Marion County, 1940s" 3) These recommendations did not appease minority religious groups, as protestant parents in the district sued in circuit court, before the practice of nuns teaching in schools was deemed legal so long as religious teaching did not occur during the school day. This is congruent with Simms’s experience in the 1950s, as there were once weekly religion classes taught off-site at her grandparents’ farm that neighbored the school. Simms claimed that all students at her public elementary school were Catholic and everyone attended and enjoyed the once weekly religion classes. 

In her private, parochial Catholic middle school, Simms’s relationship with these nuns grew closer. Since Simms had to ride the public school bus to get from her home in a smaller rural community to the larger town where her school was located, she had to stay at school an additional two hours until her bus arrived to take her home. As she wanted ways to pass the time, the nuns at the school gave her the responsibility of cooking supper for them. Beginning in fifth grade, Simms gradually gained more important jobs in the dinner-making process, starting with cutting vegetables and progressing to cooking entire meals. Despite the laborious nature of this task, Simms enjoyed being trusted by the nuns and getting the opportunity to know them not just as teachers and catechists, but as people. 

However, not all was excellent with the education given by these nuns, as they were staunch disciplinarians who accepted no excuses for any bad behavior. She described physical punishment of students including slaps and paddling for so much as chatting in class. While not entirely physical, Simms recalled her experience with a form of punishment that students called “comebacks,” where students were given a large number that they had to multiply and divide by a given series of numbers by hand. Simms recalled her hand being in intense physical pain after taking more than an hour to complete the comeback. Despite the harsh punishments and chores that she had to complete, Simms indicated that the nuns who taught her throughout her educational career were the largest influence that forged a lifelong love of reading and writing. Both their qualifications as educators and their staunch imposition of discipline on students set them apart from the lay teachers that Simms had later on in high school, and enabled her to succeed in the long-term, whether as a non-traditional college student, professionally, or socially."

Richard Simons, my grandfather, is an 89-year-old psychiatrist who is still running his own private practice today. He currently resides in Denver, Colorado, where he runs his practice out of his apartment. While his professional achievement amazes me every day, it is fascinating to look back on his schooling years and how influential they were to him as an individual, student, professor, and now psychiatrist. My grandfather’s schooling experience is not that of a simple one, but rather quite complicated.

My grandfather benefited from a progressive education for most of his schooling experience. He was educated prior to a time marked by the obsession of accountability. When he thinks back to his schooling, he does not describe testing, ranking, or comparison between students, but instead a time of exploration of activities that he found exciting and worth wild. The purpose of education was true learning based on the child for the child. The fact that he was able to make the most of his education is a privilege in itself. 

On Monday mornings schools would pick up all their students by bus. At this time in France, it was uncommon to have more than one car, if they had a car at all, because of the price of gas, necessitating the use of buses. Classes would end Saturday afternoon, they would have classes in the morning and get on the bus at noon to go home for the weekend. This extra half day was balanced out by a half day on Wednesday where the school would allow parents to come to visit or for the kids whose parents couldn't visit they would go on outings. Edith's parents were working or couldn't afford to pay for the gas to get to the school so they never came to visit during the week. These were the days when she would notice she was on the low end of the economic ladder and that other kids were better off than her. Edith and her siblings were always jealous of their friends whose parents would come and take them out for “gouter” (4pm snack time) while they had to have the regular snacks at school.

Edith hated living in the dorms, but she attributes this to being the youngest in her family as she often missed her mom and was the “baby of the family.” But she said that her siblings and most of the other kids enjoyed it as they were not lonely like they were in their small towns. The dorms were in the same building as the classrooms, the boys were on the top floor and the girls were on the lower floor. There were two to three kids in a room depending on age and there were no doors on any of the rooms. There was only one shower room in the building with only a few showers in it so each kid was only allowed to shower once a week. They would have recreation time and study hall multiple times a day to keep kids engaged and focused. They also had access to a tutor. However,Edith said it was always hard to get help because there was a single tutor for the whole school. Her favorite recreation was basketball, looking back on it she said the reason she must have liked it so much is that to her it was a fundamentally American sport.