“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” — Graham Greene
On April 1st my sister Tami, niece Gemma and I traveled to Racine to visit our father and Gemma’s grandfather to celebrate his April Fool’s Birthday. We told stories, reminisced about our shared past — updated each other on our current lives — and our plans for the future.
We shared stories about all the pranks our family played on Dad for his April Fool’s Birthday over the years. We updated each other on what’s happened since we saw or talked to each other last. Gemma talked about graduating from high school and her plans to attend the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the fall.
Dad has been downsizing and purging items from our childhood home with the help of my siblings. He’s 92-years-old, uses a walker, and navigates the first floor of his home, and no longer uses the stairs to the basement and second story. Family members have been claiming items one last time from the basement and attic that we each want to keep, before the dumpster was scheduled to arrive later in April and our brother Rick and his crew of two helpers, would dispose of things that weren’t claimed or recycled.
I was looking forward to being reunited with my childhood report cards that were found in a bureau drawer. My recollection of the contents, the grades, and comments by my teachers in the elementary and middle school report cards, were in fact snapshots in time of my future, of the person I would become. My memories, and the myths I created about them, would tell a story.
Elementary & Middle School Report Cards
The past eight weeks have been busy. I presented a workshop with colleagues at the NAMI Wisconsin Conference at the end of April, attended the Wisconsin Recovery Alignment Day at the State Capital the first week in May, and the past three weeks, again with work colleagues, scheduled and designed almost a dozen presentations for June LGBTQ+ Pride Month, including recording two programs for the June Wisconsin Democratic Convention.
I didn’t find or make time to write this musing about childhood report cards.
Before I proceed with my review of my childhood report cards and the snapshots it provided of the person I became, I must acknowledge and pay homage to the recent young lives cut short by gun violence.
Present Moment: Children Robbed of Their Future
Since I was busy on the work front, weekends were spent catching up with the mundane moments and tasks of everyday life, chores, and to-dos, balanced with some time with friends and time to recharge. Then in the past two weeks there were two mass murders, the first in Buffalo, New York, black residents targeted by a young domestic terrorist while shopping at their neighborhood grocery store. This past week 19 elementary school children and two teachers murdered in Uvalde, Texas by another, most likely, untreated mentally ill young man who illegally entered the school armed with an AR-15 assault weapon.
The future lives of the young students and their teachers were prematurely and violently denied. The door to their futures closed. As we learn more about the young victims, we hear stories from their families, friends, and neighbors about their personalities, their hobbies, skills and talents, aspirations, and dreams for the future.
Their Stories Reprinted from the New York Times:
Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, 10: Alexandria, who went by Lexi, played softball and basketball and wanted to be a lawyer when she grew up. Her parents saw her make the honor roll with straight A’s and receive a good-citizen award at her school on the day she was killed.
Amerie Jo Garza, 10: Amerie was “a jokester, always smiling,” her father said. She liked playing with Play-Doh and spending time with friends during recess. “She was very social,” he said. “She talked to everybody.”
Tess Marie Mata, 10: Tess liked TikTok dance videos, Ariana Grande and getting her hair curled, The Washington Post reported. And she loved José Altuve, the diminutive Houston Astros star whose position she emulated. She was saving money for a family trip to Disney World once her older sister, Faith, graduated from college next year.
Jose Flores: “My little Josesito,” his grandfather called him. He was an energetic baseball and video-game enthusiast. In a photo his grandfather keeps in his wallet, Jose has a beaming smile and wore a T-shirt reading, “Tough guys wear pink.’’
Miranda Mathis, 11: Miranda “was very loving and very talkative,” the mother of a close friend told The Austin American-Statesman. Miranda would often ask the mother to do her hair like her friend’s.
Maite Rodriguez, 10: Maite dreamed of attending Texas A&M University to become a marine biologist, a cousin wrote on Facebook: “She was her mom’s best friend.”
Makenna Lee Elrod, 10: Makenna liked to sing and dance, play with fidget toys and practice softball and gymnastics, an aunt told ABC News. She also loved animals, and hiding notes for her family to find. She recently gave her friend Chloe a friendship bracelet.
Xavier Lopez, 10: An exuberant baseball and soccer player, Xavier also chatted on the phone with his girlfriend and made the honor roll. “He was funny, never serious,” his mother, Felicha Martinez, told The Washington Post. “That smile I will never forget. It would always cheer anyone up.”
Eliana Garcia, 9: The second-eldest of five girls, Ellie helped around the house, reminding her grandparents to take their pills, helping mow the lawn and babysitting her younger sisters, her grandfather told The Los Angeles Times. She loved “Encanto,” dancing for TikTok videos, cheerleading and basketball.
Layla Salazar, 10: Layla also liked dancing to TikTok videos, and she won six races at the school’s field day, her father told The Associated Press. She and her dad would sing every morning on their drive to school.
Eliahana Cruz Torres, 10: Eliahana played softball and particularly looked forward to wearing her green and gray uniform, along with eye black grease. The final game of the season was scheduled for Tuesday, and she was hoping to make the Uvalde All-Star team.
Alithia Ramirez, 10: Alithia loved to draw. She wanted to become an artist, her father told a San Antonio TV station. After a car struck and killed her best friend last year, Alithia sent his parents a drawing of him sketching her portrait in heaven and her sketching his portrait on earth.
Jackie Cazares and Annabelle Rodriguez were cousins in the same class. Jackie was the social one. “She always had to be the center of attention,” her aunt said. “She was my little diva.” Annabelle was quieter. But the girls were close — so close that Annabelle’s twin sister, who was home-schooled, “was always jealous.”
Jailah Silguero, 10: Jailah was the youngest of four children, the “baby” of the family, her father said. Her mother told Univision that Jailah liked to dance and film videos on TikTok.
Jayce Luevanos, 10: Jayce, Jailah’s cousin, would brew a pot of coffee for his grandparents every morning, his grandfather told USA Today. Friends would come over to his house, a block from the school, to play in the yard. He enjoyed making people laugh, another relative told The Daily Beast.
Uziyah Garcia, 9: Uziyah enjoyed video games and football. His grandfather told The Los Angeles Times that Uziyah “was the type of kid [who] could get interested in anything in five minutes. Just the perfect kid, as far as I’m concerned.”
Nevaeh Bravo, 10: “She’s flying with the angels now,” a cousin wrote on Twitter.
Rojelio Torres, 10, was “intelligent, hard-working and helpful,” his aunt told a San Antonio television station.
Eva Mireles, 44: “She loved those children,” a neighbor said. Mireles had worked for the school district for about 17 years. She enjoyed running and hiking. “She was just very adventurous and courageous and vivacious and could light up a room,” a relative told ABC News.
Irma Garcia, 46: Garcia spent 23 years at Robb Elementary, five of them as Mireles’s co-teacher. She liked to sing along to classic rock tunes and help her nephew, a college student, with his homework. Garcia was known as a steadfast optimist. She enjoyed barbecuing with her husband of 24 years, Joe; he died yesterday, of a heart attack.
Guns are the leading cause of death for American children and teens.
This Memorial Day, in addition to the soldiers who died sacrificing their lives defending democracy, and family members and friends who are no longer present in my life, I grieve the innocent victims of gun violence and mass murder, not just from this month, but the decades that led up to this moment.
Childhood Report Cards: Snapshots of the Future
I’m grateful my parents saved my report cards, 10 years-worth, 1955 -1965, kindergarten through ninth grade, elementary through middle school. I went to kindergarten at Stephen Bull School, elementary and middle school years at Henry Mitchell Elementary and Middle School, for the exception of fifth grade at S. C. Johnson and sixth grade at Starbuck, a new school which featured only 5th and 6th grades for accelerated academic-tracked students its first year before it was fully open. All schools were in my hometown of Racine including my high school years, freshman year at Washington Park H.S., and junior and senior year as the the first graduating class of J.I. Case H.S.
The Backstory & Memorabilia
Besides my report cards, like most people, I’ve saved my yearbooks, and since I was the first editor of the J.I. Case H.S. newspaper, the paper which I named Just In Case (apparently, I was already mixing metaphors!), I have a bound copy of the first-year of school newspapers. I’m lucky. All of those memorabilia and keepsakes tell a story, in the comments of teachers, some in my own words, and the messages classmates scribed in my yearbooks. Oh, My!
Three quick stories before I introduce the snapshots of my future told by my report cards. I’m the eldest child of six. I was raised in a Catholic home. We had Irish heritage and attended St. Patrick’s Church on the northside of Racine. We lived on the southwest side. Before attending first grade, my father asked me to choose between attending parochial school at St. Patrick’s, requiring me to take a bus across town to school, or I could walk the mile-or-so to school at Mitchell Public School. I chose the latter, because I wanted to walk to school, yet it was probably one of the most important decisions I made in my young life. All my siblings after me also attended public school and attended Catechism classes at St. Patrick’s on Sunday following Mass.
The second story: My father later worked at Michell School, as a custodian, then later as the lead trainer of the custodial staff for the Racine Unified School District. He made friends and played poker with some of the teachers, and had access to all of my teachers and my grades before the report cards were sent home for parental signatures. Needless to say, that added incentive for me to perform well academically.
Gratefully, I also liked school. It was a social environment in which I thrived. I made friends easily. My earliest crushes were my female teachers, until I reached sixth grade and developed a crush on the new young male teacher who taught poetry, and used music like the Beatles and Bob Dylan as part of the curriculum. He was also the theater director, and I had already developed an interest in plays and the stage.
Lastly, my baby boomer neighborhood included the Mitchell School Principal down the street, and two of my teachers around the corner and parallel to the street I lived on. Beginning at the age of 11, I began a thriving business, babysitting for four of my middle school teachers, Mr. Liljegren (music), Mr. Rather (social studies), and Mr. Flagg & Mr. Kis (science).
Snapshots of the Future: A Timeline Tour of the Past
Kindergarten-1955-56, Stephen Bull School
Nancy Lee, Teacher, “Linda has been a pleasure to work with.”
(C – Indicates Commendation for Special Effort, S – Indicates Satisfactory Progress, N – Indicates Need for improvement)
- C – Final grading period, showed improvement in social, physical, and emotional development
- S – Overall performance first grading period
- N – Work habits: Start work and complete on time, first grading period
Kindergarten Report Card
First Grade-1956-1957, Henry Mitchell School
Beverly Feldhake, Teacher, “Linda has been a real joy to have in my room.”
(In addition to C, S, N, grades that measure relationship between the child’s ability and achievement. E, G, F, P grades within the class measure achievement level judged by standardized tests)
- G – For reading, E for arithmetic, both grading periods
- Mostly C and some S scores in all categories (S scores in music and physical education)
Second Grade 1957-1958, Henry Mitchell School
Jayne Brouman, Teacher (No comment)
- E – For all grading periods for reading, arithmetic, and spelling, except G for reading in first grading period)
- Equal number of C and S scores
- I was sick 10 days during the first grading period. It may have been the year my sister Roz and I had measles.
Third Grade 1958-1959, Henry Mitchell School
Mildred Swenson, Teacher, “Library reading very good. Needs to work more quietly*. Keep it up during the summer. Should do good work next year.”
Special note: This is the first teacher I had a crush on.
- E – For all grading periods in reading, arithmetic, and spelling, except first grading period for arithmetic.
- C – Scores for all categories and grading periods except S in physical education*.
*This is the beginning of a trend.
Fourth Grade 1959-1960, Henry Mitchell School
Helen Hood, Teacher, “Linda is a good worker. She enters our work with zest. Linda’s been a fine pupil. She seems to like 4th Grade.”
Special Note: I did like 4th grade. Mrs. Hood was an engaging and fun teacher.
- E – For all grading periods and all primary subjects, reading, arithmetic and spelling.
- C – For all grading periods and subjects except S in science and physical education.
Fifth Grade 1960-1961, S. C. Johnson School
Mary Geertsen, Teacher, “Mature responses to questions. It has been a pleasure to work with Linda.”
(Grading system changed to A, B, C, D, F for primary subjects reading, arithmetic and spelling. H, S, N for the rest).
- A – For all grading periods for spelling, B for reading and arithmetic until an A final for grading period.
- C – For most of the categories except H in the final period in spelling, language arts, and social studies.
Sixth Grade 1961-1962, Starbuck
Cornie Jockisch, Teacher, “Linda is a very reliable student. She gives very good oral reports. She could improve in arithmetic. Linda is very quick. She’s a good thinker, but needs to watch spelling in written work*.”
*This is the beginning of a trend. I need a proofreader in for writing today.
- A & B in reading., C in arithmetic, A in spelling except as noted.
- S – For most grading periods and subjects except I earned an H in physical education because I became the school tether ball queen!
Seventh Grade 1962-1963, Henry Mitchell School
Middle school, different teachers for each class.
(Grading system A, B, C, D, F. Grades reflect final grading period. Secondary skills H, & N)
Art – A, all H
English – B, mostly H except one N (does required reading*.)
General Science – A, mostly H
German – A, all H
Mathematics– C, one N
Music – A, all H
Physical Education– B, half N, half H
Practical Arts – Homemaking A, Home economics B, mostly H, but I couldn’t sew worth a damn. I earned an N
Social Studies – A, all H.
*Didn’t complete reading assignments
Eight Grade 1963-1964, Henry Mitchell School
Middle school, different teachers for each class.
(Grading system A, B, C, D, F. Grades reflect final grading period. Secondary skills H, & N)
English – B, all H except N for weak for completing required reading*. “Linda should have an A in English but she has only 4 book reports signed up. She does not ever meet a minimum requirement.”
Health Education – B
General Science – B
German – A, all H in secondary skills
Mathematics – A, all H in secondary skills. “I appreciate the way Linda volunteers in class.”
Music – B, all H in secondary skills
Physical Education – B, a mix of H & N. “Tumbling & apparatus grades low.”
Science – A
Social Studies– B, a mix of H & N
*Continued slacking trend. I liked reading. Apparently, I didn’t like assignments.
9th Grade Report Cards
Ninth Grade 1964-1965 Henry Mitchell School
Middle school, different teachers for each class.
(Grading system A, B, C, D, F. Grades reflect final grading period. Secondary skills H, & N)
English – A, all H except N for accepts responsibility, makes good use of time and materials
German – B, all H except one N
Health Education – A, all H
Mathematics – C, except one grading period for Algebra, I received my only D, final grade C, Lots of N and some H for secondary skills.
Music – A, all H
Physical Education – B, mostly N
Science (Biology) – A, all H
Social Studies – A, all H
9th Grade Report Cards
What Does It All Mean?
First and foremost, I liked school. Some subjects more than others. I enjoyed reading, social studies, art and biology. There were subjects that I liked, but I didn’t possess all the natural skills or talent. An example, physical education. I especially liked team sports, or individual sports that I was good at however, I was not a gymnast or a dancer. Young girls took mandatory Home Economics classes. I learned to cook, and failed at sewing. I liked music though I never learned an instrument. Other than geometry in high school, I was poor at math. When I did attend to the University of Wisconsin, I was required to take a remedial math course.
Some of the teacher comments in elementary and middle school foretold my future. I had a tendency to slack when I saw an opportunity, I worked fast, sometimes made mistakes, didn’t finish reading assignments, and I often disturbed my neighbors. I performed better when I liked my teachers, and I excelled when the ‘strict’ teachers set high standards. I would take advantage of teachers whose expectations were more relaxed. In the end, I guess, I must admit to an opportunistic lazy streak.
The latter habits didn’t help me in high school or college. I learned quickly however, that my oral work in the classroom, my enthusiasm for the subject, helped my grade. I sometimes didn’t test well, overthinking answers. I was not above using Cliff Notes for a book report. I was often reading something of my own choice rather than the assignment. I lacked good homework and discipline skills, I often procrastinated and completed the work the eleventh hour. I did maintain a 3.5 average in high school making the honor-roll most semesters. I had a high I.Q. yet I wasn’t a candidate for Mensa membership.
In high school I was active in a number of clubs. One year, I was named Optimist Youth of the Year. I was a Quill & Scroll Member, a Thespian (don’t laugh), a Girl Scout, member of Junior Achievement the first editor of our high school newspaper, active in theater, President of the Red Cross Club volunteering at the Southern Center, Racine County Home, and Great Lakes Naval Hospital, where we sent-off Vietnam inductees with care packages, and then visited some when they returned home to the hospital and played Bingo with them. I later became a community activist based on these experiences.
Middle & High School Pins
Because I lacked good study skills and self-discipline, I dropped out of the University of Wisconsin, not once, but twice. I became involved in the civil rights and antiwar protests, a second wave feminist fighting for women’s rights, including reproductive freedom and later LGBTQ+ rights. My education moved to the streets and I was a member for a brief time of the hippie counterculture. Over time, I became the writer and community activist I was destined to be.
In addition to becoming a writer and social activist, I continued to ‘disturb my neighbors’ by telling stories, and I transitioned from the class clown to standup comedian (semi-retired). I’ve often stepped up as the group leader or facilitator, I sometimes don’t complete assignments on time, and if there’s a shortcut, I may take it. I lack self-discipline in some areas, and I don’t possess the natural abilities I need to be a competitive athlete. Math remains a challenge; I transpose numbers. I still make spelling or grammatical mistakes when writing, and could use a proofreader and editor. Lastly, I’m a good babysitter!
I’m grateful for my education, both in the classroom and in the streets. I’m grateful too that I’ve had a future, and I’m saddened by all of those who lost their futures and their lives in war, from gun violence, hate and domestic crimes, and mass murders in schools, in grocery stores, movie theater, places of worship, and the streets where we live.
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