I attended Wilshire Elementary.  The majority of Mac people went to other schools like Oak Forest, Serna  or Northwood.  After sixth grade, most Wilshire kids went on to Krueger Junior High and the newly built Roosevelt, except for those of us living in Terrell Hills and Terrell Terrace.  It was strange coming into Garner and not knowing a lot of people.  Besides me there was Debby Large, Layne Summers, Rhonda Warnick, Jeff Fulk, Rusty Hinote, the Berry Brothers, Jimmy and Tommy, Vicki Brown, Neal Willard, Charles Plummer, Michael Wolf, Erika Ison,  Katherine Vivian,  Becky Rowen, Vicki Huegler, Fritz Holmstrom, Phyllis Trcka, Janene Baldree and Jody Collins.  Louis Mizell lived down the street from me, but I don’t remember him at Wilshire.  If you were there, Louis, my apologies.  Hope I didn’t leave anyone else out.

A lot of our elementary memories should be the same, so here goes.

Today it is hard to believe that each grade level at Wilshire had only TWO classes.  Even today, Wilshire only has about 400 students.  We girls wore starched cotton dresses to school every day, with little anklet socks and dress shoes.  Even in the coldest weather, we still had to wear those dresses.  We often wore petticoats to hold out those starched skirts.  Many dresses had sashes and our mothers would tie huge bows in our backs.  We looked like Shirley Temple.  Our hair was set, either with pin curls or spoolies.  It was combed flat on top and then frizzed out on the sides and back where it had been curled.  My mother often gave me those wretched Toni home permanents which made my hair look like a brillo pad.  In those days, we were all after the same “look,” which was curly.  It would be many years before we let our hair go the way it wanted to, whether it be stick straight like me, or curly and wavy.  Boys often wore jeans with the cuffs folded up about six inches to accommodate annual growth.  There were a lot of high top keds (black only), but I don’t think they were very cool back then like they are now.  They were probably cheap.  Girls never wore keds.  We wore mary janes or saddle oxfords.

First grade was challenging for me.  Let me begin by admitting that I had washed out of Kindergarten at Terrell Hills Baptist Church (though I did manage to learn itsy-bitsy spider and chase your tail, kitty, before I departed).  So first grade was the first real classroom experience for me.  My father had offered me a quarter if I would not cry and try to climb up my mother’s leg the first day of school, and I made it.  After the first couple of weeks, I must have been pretty bored.  I learned quickly and easily so all I looked forward to was milk break, lunch, recess and art.  They sent first graders home 30 minutes before the rest of the school, so I soon learned to tell time and became an avid clock watcher .  It was always great entertainment when some hapless student leaned too far back in their chair and went crashing over backwards.  Our teacher would glare out over the class and mutter, “THAT was not necessary.”  She wouldn’t even help the poor kid up or ask if their head was hurt.  After several months of hearing that, the WHOLE CLASS would chant together, “THAT was not necessary,” whenever anyone went over backwards.  My teacher was a grouchy old biddy and she soon singled me out as “strange”.  And she was right.  She called my mother and told her she needed to take me to a doctor to be checked out.  There was something wrong with me.  My mother dutifully took me.  The doctor examined me and pronounced that there was indeed something wrong:  it was the grouchy teacher who was making me nervous.  As soon as I was out of her class and in second grade, I would be fine.  And I was.

In first grade we learned our letters and sounds, numbers, basic addition facts and beginning reading.  We had GIGANTIC crayolas almost as thick as our fingers and these were used to form groups and do those first simple math facts.  From there we graduated to arithmetic flash cards which the teacher would clip up over the blackboard.  We would have to solve them all quickly.  For reading, we were called up in groups (dragging and clanking our little chairs) to sit with our teacher and work.  I was an early fluent reader, but noticed that those who faltered and stumbled got a lot of the teacher’s attention.  I thought I would try the same thing and purposely mess up.  It was a no go.  That woman just didn’t like me and only glared.  She knew I was faking it.  She was forced to recognize my active imagination though.  Around Halloween, she asked us all to draw a Halloween picture.  I got after it and produced a work worthy of the Brothers Grimm:  drawing green-faced witches cooking children in a huge pot, and more witches on their way, flying through the sky dragging tables, chairs, and dishes attached to their broomsticks so they could sit a proper table while feasting on the children.  The teacher called me up to explain my bizarre creation, which I did.  My pictures were completely Freudian (teacher=witch) but she never caught on and I of course was totally unaware of the symbolism of what I had just drawn.  She then placed me in a group that went to Terrell Plaza on a Saturday and painted up the store windows for Halloween.  I gleefully duplicated my gruesome scene in huge full color on the windows of White’s Department store.

First grade brought that first school play: Mother Goose with children acting out, singing and dancing to all the beloved rhymes.    Talk about excited, even though I was relegated to the risers on the back of the stage as part of the “chorus.”  They put all of the attractive and talented children in the leads.  Tall  and skinny, I certainly did not have the look, especially with my freshly permed brushpile hair.  We had it all:  music and songs, costumes, and a nice backdrop.  Mother Goose came bursting out of a paper arch at the end of the play.  She was played by the prettiest little girl in first grade with her  stunning platinum blond hair.    The little boys were mad for her.  We all enjoyed doing the play, though, even if we did not have leads.  It got us out of the classroom to rehearse for many afternoons.

We also got to see a real traveling stage show in First grade.  It was called: Moshi, Moshi, Moshi: greetings from Japan.  I was just fascinated.  The cast was really Japanese and the whole show was about Japanese culture.  Thinking back on it, it was probably pure public relations trying to amend hard feelings between our two countries since we had dropped an atomic bomb on them only about 15 years in the past.  Before we bought any toy, we turned it over and if it read “made in Japan,” we tossed it back.

In most respects, Wilshire was a good and secure experience.  We were very homogenous and solid middle class:  strictly white, and a lot of the families were military, either active duty or retired.   (San Antonio was a real mecca for military people.  Lots of opportunities for the ex-military who needed new careers.  Many of them worked in civil service at the bases around the city).   In fourth grade, we did have Helen, a pretty little half Cuban girl who spoke fluent Spanish and English and she was quite a sensation.  We were almost a zero mobility school.  If someone left, or we had a new student, it was HUGE.   The student leaving got a party with cupcakes and stood in the door and waved at us like the Queen Mother for a long time before the final exit.   When a new student came in the door (which rarely happened) the whole room went silent as we took them in.  For days, we would stare at them like they had two heads.  We were tightly controlled.  Teachers held absolute authority and had our respect (and fear) at all times.  We were programmed to come into the classroom and learn and work, and that is exactly what we did.  It was a puritanical system.  Teachers ate lunch with us and kept their eye on us every day.

To be continued in part 2!

Shirley,

When I began teaching elementary school after college, my first job was at Wilshire Elementary, NEISD.  In 1975 things had changed a lot since you were there! It was a strange mixture of neighborhood civilians , transient military, all economic levels of people top to bottom, and bused-in kids from the north. I had a large class enrollment with non-English speaking children from Vietnam, Korea, Mexico, Germany, South America, etc. who could not speak a word of English in first grade, and the schools had no bi-lingual funding to help educate these kids unless they were Hispanic. I had to tutor and teach them English vocabulary first (making up my own curriculum to do this feat), before they could learn anything else in first grade. Needless to say, WE all learned a lot together by trial and error! One of my Korean students later became a valedictorian at Roosevelt H.S., which was really rewarding to me to know that I had a part in getting him off to a good start in English speaking America.  

Jenice

Things at public schools are SO different than when we sat at our little desks, did our lessons, and gave it our best shot.  Now, it is teachers who are willing to go the extra mile like you did, Jenice, that make the system work.  There is unbelievable stress in the schools and I don't see how people make it.  My poor little niece teaches special ed up in Dallas and is assaulted on a daily basis by one of her more troubled students.