Elementary School

Not long before I began elementary school we moved to a different town, with Girly Voice. At that time I was very outgoing and not at all shy. I had tons of friends in school and my neighborhood was filled with kids. We were all around the same age and as long as it was nice out we were outside playing. The John Bender (Breakfast Club) of the neighborhood had a huge crush on me and would stand across the street from my house until I came out, he wasn't allowed to cross the street alone. I was on a bowling teamed named 3 men and a lady.  

In second grade the school began testing me for advanced placement. Halfway through second grade my mother moved us back to the town I was born in and she grew up in, Little/Big Town. Due to my mother buying a house and not having Girly Voice helping with bills we didn't have a lot of extra money. I wound up wearing a lot of hand me downs, things that weren't in style, and sneakers with holes in them. I never complained, I knew if I had asked for something more my mother would have worked more or missed lunch or dinner to get it for me. In my new school, material things were important and even though it was only second grade it was very cliquey. On my first day only one girl came up to befriend me, she offered to show me around. Most of the other girls in the class were not very nice to her, they made fun of the lisp she had, clothes she wore, and her unclean hair. One day a group of girls actually approached me and told me they wouldn't be friends with me if I was friends with her. I chose her. 

Third grade I started in a non-graded program. It was three classes one of each grade level, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. We changed classrooms for each subject just like in middle and high school. We were placed in classes based on our abilities and not grade level, so you could be in third grade but be in the 5th grade math class. Some point that year the school started testing me for learning disabilities. The school I had started in was more ahead in math than language and they had a different way of teaching children how to read. I learned to read based on memorization. They did not teach us how to sound out words, still to this day that is not how I read. In order to learn how to spell a new word I need to see it and write it. The new school took this as a learning disability and put me in resource room and speech. I honestly never understood what resource room did, I would only do homework there and never asked for any help. I pretty much stopped going to resource when I was in 7th grade but they didn't officially pull me out until 8th grade. Speech, was pointless as well, I had no problem talking, problem was how I learned to read and in neither resource or speech did they try to teach me the right way. They took me out of speech in 6th grade. 

I remained in the non-graded program in fourth grade, most of the same kids from the previous year continued in the program. That was the last year for the program. I went into fifth grade in a regular class. Even though I had been in the school since second grade I really didn't know many of the kids or much about the school. I had the half of year in the regular class and then the next two years in the non-graded program, where I was in the same 3 classrooms, with the same kids, and not even eating lunch with the other kids in my grade. I felt like I was the new kid again, I still was very shy and only had a couple close friends. Just one or two that I would see outside of school. It didn't help that I was pulled out of class a couple times a week for resource and speech. That was just an over all tough year, a couple weeks before it started was when POS beat up Ditzy and my mother, my mother changed relationships a couple times on top of all the other reasons I didn't fit in at school.