Grade School, Middle School, High School

[Taco-Calamitous]

I have a question regarding your grade school (or elementary school, or whatever) years: When you were in grade school, did you have lockers? Did you have different "periods" or classes that you went to, and did these feature different instructors?

I ask this because I see grade school in different media in which I seem to see elements of middle school/high school mixed in, as well. When I went to grade school, we were in one class room all day, and taught by one teacher. We went to the library at a specific time, where there was a librarian, who may or may not have aided the teacher in teaching us. We also went to P.E. in the gym, which was taught by the same teacher. I suppose in 4th or 5th grade, in order to help us make the change from grade school to middle school, after lunch, we were sent to another classroom with a different teacher for the rest of the day. I'm kinda foggy on the details, but that's about what it was. We did not have lockers, either. So, when I saw Tiny Toons, and they had lockers and such, I assumed they were in High School. But Bart and Lisa also had lockers in the Simpsons for some reason. I also vaguely remember some other cartoons/comic strips with similar elements of middle school/high school incorporated into the grade school... realm.

So is grade school different in different areas? What was your grade school like, if you can remember? It's something I've always been vaguely curious about. Maybe I live in happy little country bumpkin land... Anyhoo...

Wuv, Yer Mom

[Dimi]

We never had lockers or the middle school/high school elements mixed in with the grade school I went to years ago. I was only in one class throughout the day with one teacher, three recess breaks, and lunch. They didn't start to alter things till I went on to middle school.

As for middle school, that was when the transition had began from going to one class into seven classes a day. We had a 0 period which was Silent Reading for everyone in the school that I went to. From there on, we had our schedules to go through different subjects throughout the day. Luckily, I joined ASB and that became my zero period for the rest of middle school school. And the sad thing was we never had lockers. My school didn't have enough funds to have them so throughout the day, I was forced to carry about three or four textbooks.

High school was sorta like Middle School. I started off with 6 classes my freshman and sophomore year. I did as well during the first half of my junior year so it went down to 5. And since I was ahead on credits, I decided to only take four classes during my senior year. And again, the school that I went to didn't have any lockers either aside from the ones in the gym or in the work out room but we were only allowed to use it during P.E. or if you were in a sport.

[Doc Rocco]

My grade school, or primary school as we call it here, didn't have any middle/high school elements mixed in. We basically lulled around, and had one teacher in one classroom for the entire year. They'd take us for library classes and P.E. or to the computer lab. There was no transitional phase either, so you were just thrown into high school life.

We Australians don't have middle school, only high school. I'm pretty sure all high school in Australia have periods and teachers for each specific subject. At my high school, we have six periods a day each with a different teacher depending on the subjects you take. No lockers though, as they kept getting broken into so the school took them out. Which sucks for my poor vertebral column.

[Rocky]

Let's see, in Elementary school (K-5), we had the same teacher, cubby holes in the classroom to store our backpacks and stuff, three recesses, one lunch, the usual. My elementary memories are very similar with Taco's, pretty much. Except once I hit fifth grade, we lost one recess each day and we also switched teachers for a while during the day, just normally for one subject length's worth of time, so it was no big deal.

At middle school, we had lockers and stuff, so thats when we had to use them. We had teachers each instructing different subjects, we had a homeroom we reported to at the beginning of each day, and believe it or not, the use of backpacks during school was NOT allowed, as this rule was ment for us to use our lockers more often or something, I can't remember.

Once I got into high school, we could use our backpacks freely again (backwards much? lol), and we still had lockers, but I never used mine past my freshman year. All my classes after that year were way on all sides of campus, so it was worthless going to my locker for pretty much anything. Also, my schedule was quite wierd, as my school went on Trimesters instead of the old quarter/semester stuff, and we also went on a block scheduling malarkey thing, which meant that in class we only met every other day, which turned out to be pretty useful (no more homework in math every single day! lol). On top of that, we only had 4 classes a day, so things got pretty crazy all the time, with different classes each day, and with schedules having big changes 3 times a school year, it was like playing a game of Marvel vs Capcom 2 on Turbo mode, all kinds of flashing lights and shite were going off at all times, it was hard to keep focus, lol. But yeah, somehow I got through it all and turned out alright, so it was good times for the most part.

[-x-DarkHeart-x-]

iim home schooled...idk how it feels to go to a school...

[Govinda]

There aren't any middle schools in Scotland either. You go to Primary School from age 5-11, where you have one teacher and one classroom every year. We didn't have cubby-holes; bags are kept on the floor, and each person has a little tray that slides out from under their desk to keep pencils/jotters etc in.

Then you go to an Academy (basically High School with a different name). At our Academy, it was six periods a day, six different teachers. When you got to Fifth Year at Academy and were allowed into the Common Room, there were lockers but they were miniscule and shite.

You can leave Academy when you're 16 as long as you can prove you've got a job or something to go to. My school was a 'disadvantaged' school (we had a resident police officer, who was actually really cool and used to slip me Marlboro Reds) so most people hightailed out of there at that age and now work on building sites. Others left then to pursue community college and vocational things, if they had the nows to figure out that they were shite at academia.

The final two years are Highers years, Fifth and Sixth Year; most people who want to take the straight route to uni do a whole bunch of Highers in Fifth Year and then just loll about for Sixth Year playing with university applications. I'd had enough of that shitehole by then and went to college, which did earn me rejections from several institutions whose entry grades I had already passed in Fifth Year (they see a college qualification and assume you're a ned, it's ****ing ridiculous).

I like the Scottish system for its flexibility. After age 16, you can completely mould it to suit what you want to achieve and when you want to achieve it, and the government will pay for it.

[Furore]

Down here as Rocco said, there's just primary school (for 7 years including kindergarten) and then another 4-6 years of high school before going to University, Tafe or just plain working.

The primary school I went to didn't have lockers I believe, but it was structured similarly to high school apart from how lessons were held. In primary school we tended to have just one teacher with an occasional different teacher for a few special subjects, whereas high school for me consisted of seven lesson periods split into single and double period lessons. Both had time to muck around before and after school, and both had a recess earlier in the day and then lunchtime around midday (or just after).

Either way as we weren't forced to use lockers, most of us just jammed an unhealthy weight of school crap into our bags or found other solutions such as using a binder with a section with removeable pages for every subject. My bag in primary school was a few small exercise books, my lunch and a pencil case, my bag in highschool was often 5-7 exercise books, the same amount of textbooks, my laptop, lunch, any projects or props for subjects requiring them, sports uniform on sports days, lunch, a pencil case or two with different things different classes required and a few odds and ends. It was also common for me to find room for a gaming system and/or a magazine so I wouldn't actually have to do schoolwork.

[winterborn86]

We have primary schools over here aswell, but it's not middle/high school its first/middle schools instead. I think they are trying to get rid of middle schools in England cos like Govinda the primary schools in England ranges from 5-11 aswell then goes straight to high school.
But I was sin school before the primary schools starting popping up all over place. in middle school we had 3 teachers for each year and between the 3 learnt all our lessons, like my registration teacher used to teach R.E, English and Science and another taught math and History and so on, but in high school I had a different teacher for every lesson we had lockers up only years 10 and 11 were allowed to use them, but they were crap ! big kick and the door would break, they were optional so I never bothered to get one.

[Zidane-Tribal]

Same as winter except I guess elementary school would be key stage 1? Middle school would be key stage 2 and High school would be Key stages 3 and 4.
I had one teacher in primary school and Junior school then a set of teachers in high school and have to change rooms.

[Taco-Calamitous]

So the consensus here is that nobody had lockers when they were in grade school. So those cartoons/comics/whatever are full of shit; nobody has lockers in grade school! I wonder what the idea behind this was. Was it to say, "These characters are cool grade schoolers; they have lockers and everything!" or was it because they don't remember their own school years clearly, and have to replicate it in a giant mix of everything? Or were they trying to appeal to older viewers? *shrug*

So yeah; middle school and high school were basically like Rocky's for me, as well. I had four periods a day in High School; the first day was a "Blue Day," and the second a "Gold day." After our school colors. Go school spirit! I think I also remember a transition thing they did in Middle School, where we had a couple hour long classes all day instead of the hour classes that were the norm.

Yeah; I could've done better in High School. I slacked off seriously my first three years, then tried a little harder my Senior year, and nearly got a 4.0 that year (a couple B's the second semester.) However, I ended with a 3.07 GPA, and never took the SAT's or tried to apply for scholarships, so... I went to LBCC, the local community college, where I got an Associate's Transfer degree that is fairly useless. I got a 3.57 GPA there, though, so if I ever wanted to go back to school, I could probably get in most places... Anyhoo...

Wuv, Yer Mom

[Violet]

On the East Coast(of USA), my elementary(grades K-6 there) school had lockers. I forget what I put in mine o_O. Probably my coat or something.. but we'd bring our backpacks into the classroom.

We had two teachers(the main teacher and the assistant teacher) all in one classroom. For other activities, the music teacher and the art teacher would come to our class. For library, we'd go to the library in single-file and be taught by the teacher that was in charge of that section. Same goes for P.E. Our regular teachers stood on the sidelines and watched or kept the kids in line. We also had 5(or 7) recesses and on Fridays it was a "free day", so we'd get to play with the toys on the shelves instead of the playground.

This was all in Illinois. They're a bit different than the west coast of USA. When I moved to Nevada, it was the same thing except we didn't have lockers. Also, it was grades K-5 there. I had lockers in middle school, and we had different teachers for each subject(just like high school). They had things called "terms" which would break the kids up in different schedules and lunches. Like.. let's say I was Term 2. Term 2s and term 4s would have lunches together(remember, this was middle school, not grade school) and would often have the same classes. So, in all of my different classes, I had the same damn kids who I didn't get along with. It was why I didn't have much fun in those years. Middle schoolers= evil incarnate. At least I didn't have to wear uniforms ^^.

edit: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that my highschool in California didn't have any lockers. They had lockers in the P.E. area to put our clothes in, but other than that, no regular lockers because people were hiding drugs in them, so they had them removed eons ago.

[Halie]

Heh. I think the schooling system over here is completely different to over there.

This is how it goes...

We have Infant School, which is just... easy. Really easy. You're in one classroom with one teacher everyday, and you have two breaks, one for fifteen minutes and then an hour for lunch. The first year is called "Reception" and then there are two other years called Year 1 and 2. You usually begin this school when you're four or five, depending on your birthday.

Then there's Primary school, which is basically the same only harder and goes on for four years. It's Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 (Ages 7-11).

Then High School, which is five years, and again is Years 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 (Ages 11-16.)

We don't have lockers throughout any of them . I always wanted lockers when I was a kid.. I was really disappointed when I got to High School and found out I had to lug around a big bag all day to five different lessons. We never used to have Proms either, but we do now. And yearbooks. =/.

[Chez Daja]

Yeah, we don't have lockers over here, I've never even heard of an English school that uses them, so I guess there might be a couple.

I left school before high school though, due to numerous reasons. But I know enough about high schools to understand that they usually don't have lockers over here. Ah the joys of not having to go through high school. Still, I had to work from home, but I could sneak an extra break here and then if need be.

[Wolf]

Ah yes my younger school years.

Well at the school I went too, we had elementary school Kindergarten through 5th grade, there we would go and have one teacher we would do stuff with for most of the day. We would also have a few special half hour classes too. We had phy ed., music, and art. For Kindergarten through 2nd grade we would have hooks to hank up our backpacks and coats. For 3th grade through 5th grade we had lockers. We also had three 15 minute recesses every day.
For middle school we had lockers and eight class periods with a hour long lunch and recess in-between.
High school was also the same thing except we only had a half hour lunch and no recess.

[Sean]

My schooling was pretty scattered post 6th grade, every school used different systems.
K-6 School A
7 School B
8 (1 mo) School C
8 (rest of the year) School D
9-10 School E
11-12 School F


School A K-5 was static class rooms. Come 6-8 their system was that you'd hop around between the 3 classrooms and each teacher had different subjects to teach to all the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. There were never any lockers, we had desks that would open to hold all our things, and we were not allowed to go back to our original classroom to get our items if we forgot them.

7 was an average middle school, every class was a different teacher in a different part of the building, with my own locker next to my homeroom.

My first month of grade 8 was the same, except this was actually split between two buildings and we'd go outside and across the street for two classes each day.

The remainder of my 8th grade year was spent at a school that housed grades 5 and 6 in one room, and 7 and 8 in one room. We had two teachers, but they were split up during the day, and they would teach the entire class, more or less. The 7th graders were on different subject material than the 8th, but they'd teach the 7th graders their math while the 8th graders went to Confirmation Class, and in the afternoons the teachers would overlap, teaching one subject to one half then going to the other half... or some such thing. I don't really remember too well, it was a bad system.

High school was all the same, just no "home room" this time around. Had lockers, every class in a different section of the building, so on and so forth.

My college had lockers when I was in the culinary arts program in the locker room in the HRM (Hotel and Restaurant Management) building, but mostly because we had to wear "chef clothes" in our kitchen "labs" and most students didn't like walking to their math class on the other side of the building still wearing that shit...

Soo.. TLDR: K-6, no lockers, 6-start of 8, switched classes, 7-start of 8, had lockers.

[Lilium]

In Virginia:
I went to a Christian school from K-1st grade. Then I went to public school in 2nd grade.

In Texas:
I went to public school from 3rd to 8th grade.

In Virginia:
I am now currently in my Junior year at a Catholic school.

I never had lockers until I started High School going to a Catholic school. From K-2nd grade, you didn't really need text books because they didn't give assignments from text books. It was just taking papers home and such for homework, and completing them. Like worksheets. In 3rd grade, they had lockers, but I rarely, if ever, used mine. I'm not sure if anyone really did.

In Texas, they gave us textbooks to take home, so we didn't need to bring them to school, since they had textbooks in all of the classrooms. At the end of the year, though, we had to give the textbooks back.

Then, in Catholic school, we had to buy the books, and take them to school each day, and use our lockers to store our books and other possessions that we didn't need/didn't want to carry around at the time.

[loaf]

My Elementary School was the typical all day one class one teacher. Certain time during the day you go to another class that was taught by another teacher. Art, Music, PE, etc. No lockers.

Middle School we had lockers, and it was 6 classes that we called hours. (Your 6th hour class, 1st hour class etc etc)

High School was the same as Middle School until my Senior year when our school was given Standard Student Attire (a collared shirt and nice pants) and block scheduling. A Day you had 1 3 5 and 7 classes. B day was 2 4 6 8. I was lucky and A day I had 1 and 3 and B day I had 2 and 4. 4 classes and I got out in 3 hours!

[lottiepop]

I'm not too sure what middle/ grade school equates to over here, although Halie (who I think I can assume lives in the UK) described our schooling system perfectly. The only thing is we finish school at 16, not 18, but we can opt to do further studies and then go to university (I think your college is our university?)

Anyway back to the point, nope we've never had lockers because if you're common like me you went to a comprehensive state school which does not have the money to afford lockers, even though it would be a good idea.

My school day started at 9 and finished at 3:10, we had 6 lessons a day and each one was 50 minutes and each one had a different teacher, unless it was a repeat of an previous lesson, e.g. You have English period 1 and then have it again period 3 with the same teacher.

[SapphirePR]

My elementary school didn't have lockers and we didn't have different teachers except for special classes like Physical Education, Music/band, and Spanish...I remember if we didn't finish our homework in class we'd have detention during lunch to finish it..I still think that was weird XP..but fortunately i didn't have detention more than a couple of times. I loved elementary school though Wayyyy better than high school, for me at least. Middle school was great too.

Haha, I loved Tiny Toons when I was a kid

[loaf]

Elementary started at 9AM for me. Middle school was at 8am. and High School was at 6:55AM. I hated going to school. One time my high school was split so school started at 6AM and ended at noon and then 12:30 the other school went in and took their classes.

[Taco-Calamitous]

One time my high school was split so school started at 6AM and ended at noon and then 12:30 the other school went in and took their classes.

Eeeewwww, that's the ugly school day! I think that kind of thing would cause me to destroy those around me. That probably means you had to get to the bus around 5 AM, huh? Reminds me of getting up at 4 AM to go to work last year...

Wuv, Yer Mom

[loaf]

Actually that happened when I was in the 2nd grade. My sister had to deal with that actually. But even if it did happen to me I lived a mile from my High School so a 15-20 min walk.

[SapphirePR]

My high school started at 7:35 am..Who were those evil bastards who chose to start school so unfairly early? -_- Middle school was just thirty minutes later lol. 8:10 am. I can't believe they made me wait till college to be able to pick what time i wanted to go to class

[loaf]

Please, since the 8th grade I had an early bird class. Since 8th grade all the way till 12 grade school started at 6:55AM.

[sonicisrad]

At College (High School in New Zealand), We do have lockers, but you have to pay like $20-30 to haveone for the entire year. But normally we just carry our Bags around for the whole day. We also have 5 Periods a day.

Heres the Time Table:

> Form Period (Home Room 8:30am - 8:45am)

> Period One (8:50am - 9:50am)

> Period Two (9:55am - 10:55am)

> Interval (10:55am - 11:15am)

> Period Three (11:20am - 12:20pm)

> Period Four (12:25pm - 1:25pm)

> Lunch Time (1:25pm - 2:15pm)

> Period Five (2:20pm - 3:20pm)

Then... Schools Out...'till the next day... aha.

[Storm]

Woo- time to confuse with good old Britishness!

We didn't have lockers until we were in secondary school (year 7-11/13 or ages 11-16/18 -the slash indicating whether one leaves school after GCSEs or continues onto A-levels). Through my Infant school years (year Reception-2 ages 4-7) and the first 2 years of Junior school we didn't have different classes to go to, we were just taught by one teacher. Now, I can't remember if different class lessons began in year 5 or 6, but i'm guessing it was year 5. Anyway, it was here we were preparing to go to big school by having English, Maths and Science taught by "specialist" teachers. The year was divided into ability groups for these. Everything else (art, pe, etc) was taught by our main teacher and tutor. The multiple classes didn't begin in full-scale until Year 7.

Not all schools in the UK have an Infant and Junior School- some have both incorperated into a single Primary School. I really enjoyed Infant School. I was fast a fast learner, talkative and in Year 2 was so good at reading I helped teach other children. It was a lot of fun- a big, educational playtime! Everything caught up with me in Junior School and I wasn't quite as fast-track but still bright. Once I got into Secondary School things went a bit downhill. Although I was still higher tier in everything (though not fast-track), I had issues with bullies and people mocking me for no apparant reason, which really affected my confidence. Thankfully I had great friends that made me not worry so much about what people were saying- and after starting University last year, although modest, i'm a bit of a cocky bugger again!

[Deserthawk]

Well, from elementary school to high school we always had 7 different classes, lunch not included- taught my different teachers. We had lockers all the way from middle school to high school(current).
high school- we have 10min breaks (plenty of time if you know what i mean) then we would be excused at 13:00... damn i hate getting up so early...
plus- might i conclude i have semester exams so i have to go to school even earlier...at least i can go back to sleep after my 3 tests a day...

so, anyone have it kinda like me? except for the 10 minute thing...cause if you do you are...nevermind

[Darkdragoon]

Well, in grade school, we only had lockers in 3rd grade.
Grade school was K-4TH.
Middle school (Which im in right now)
Only the 7th and 8th graders have lockers (Im a 7th grader)
The in high school, I believe all students have lockers.
In 7th and 8th grade we had:
Art and music (Optional. If in a math/reading clinic, you can only chose one.)
band (Optional. If you dont take it, you have study hall.)
Then, English, Geography, Math, Comupter, Science, and tech.
Grade school, we had:
Socail Studies, Math, Sicence, english, Art, Spelling, and Libary.
Also, in 5th and 6th grade we had the same thing, just harder.

That's my schools i guess ^^'

[GypsyElder]

Hmmmm, lemmee seee.... Elementary school (k-6) I didn't go to pre-school, which is probably why I'm partially stupid. When it came to actual subjects in grade school, it was always a different subject at the same times everyday. P.E. was usually before we went home and lunch before recess. We never had our own lockers, just cubbies and those lame cards that you have to pull whenever you got in trouble -_- Did anyone else have those? I'm not sure if everyone had to pull cards when they got in trouble. What was it...? Green: good, Yellow: warning, Orange: phone call home, Red: detention or something....Purple: meeting with principal.

For Middle school (grades 7 and 8), I had 7 periods. all the gen eds plus a zero period reading class and an elective. Food was great, then when I got to high school, after freshman year they finally decided that everyone is too fat and tried to make everyone more "fit" by literally starving us. Nothing to eat but baked, 50 cent bags of chips that weren't even filled up btw, so you only got literally a handful of chips in a bag, the other three fourths was air. So I spent money for bagged air, also the only thing I could eat was a slice of expensive ass pizza because we made over the limit for me to get free lunch. 2.50, 2.75 by the end of the year for ONE slice of pizza, this was a normal sized lice here.

we didn't have lockers in high school either, only one you were assigned to to put your belongings in while you were out at P.E. I didn't even need that because I was in a sport, so my P.E. was practice last period of the day that just continued into practice after school.

This is another thing I'm curious about, did anyone HAVE to shower after sports? I never showered in at school, middle or high school. None of ours were used, well not for any of the girls at least from what I could tell.

EDIT: lolol I just remembered that they replaced all the Soda machines with Gatorade we've already established that it's not any better for you than soda.

[Treize]

I went to a private grade/middle school, so it was a little bit different than the public schools, but it was mostly the same.

First of all there is a K4 and K5 program at the school I went to. Almost all of the students who continued into grade school went to K4 and K5/kindergarten. For these school was only half a day. There was a morning and afternoon program. I also think you could choose between having this everyday or just three days a week. Now it is different, though. There are only choices for everyday all day (7:50-2:50) or everyday for half a day in the afternoon. For this we just had one teacher and an aid. It was more like babysitting for working parents to be honest. We also only had cubbies, since we were only there for a couple of hours and didn't need to bring anything besides coats, etc.

For grade school (grades 1-5) we had one main teacher in one main classroom. There were about 40 students so we were broken up into two groups with a teacher for each group. Here with this teacher we would learn the core subjects like math, reading, etc. However it was different for social studies and science. One of the two teachers would teach either social studies or science. We would then have to switch classrooms with the other group of 20 students for social studies and science. Then we would have different teachers for non-core subjects. For example a teacher would come to our classroom and teach us foreign languages twice a week. When I went to school we learned either German or Spanish one semester, and then the other the other semester. Now Chinese is also taught too. We would also have to go to a different classroom to learn art, learn music, go to the library, and go to gym. In grades 1-4 we had one locker and a desk to put all of our supplies, coats, and stuff. In fifth grade we had two lockers and a desk.

In middle school (grades 6-8) we had a different teacher for every subject. I went to a small school, though, so we had pretty much the same teachers each year. It was kind of strange, though, because teachers would teach seemingly unrelated classes from one year to the next. For example one teacher would teach English one year and then math the next. We would also then pick one foreign language to take every other day for the next three years. We had one locker and a homeroom each year. We would go to these homerooms in the beginning and end of each day to listen to announcements. There were usually seven classes each day, but there were no electives or anything.

For high school (grades 9-12) it was completely different from middle school. The grade size increased 20-30 times from what it was at my other school, so there were a lot more options. We all had to take required core classes, but then there were numerous electives. There were art, music, band, business, humanities, etc. You could also have study halls or "off hours" where you just went to the cafeteria or the library. It was nice that you got to pick whatever classes that you wanted to go to. There were countless options of what you could do. The scheduling is kind of strange at the high school, though. There are bells that tell students when their class ends. But several times during the day, there are bells that would ring during class that would excuse some classes, but not all of them. It made things confusing knowing when the classes actually ended, and it was annoying for the bells just to go off during the middle of class everyday. We also had lockers every year. In 12th grade we had to share lockers with another student. Two students were assigned to each locker, but students usually switched lockers, so some lockers ended up having three students, while others ended up only having one.

I don't see how you could not have lockers every year. Does it never get cold or snow where you all live? I know that especially in grade school we had to bring a coat, gloves, a hat, boots, snow pants, a sweatshirt, etc. to school for almost half of the year. You couldn't possibly keep this on throughout school, could you?

This is another thing I'm curious about, did anyone HAVE to shower after sports? I never showered in at school, middle or high school. None of ours were used, well not for any of the girls at least from what I could tell.

We had to shower in middle school, but then at the high school it was never enforced. It was optional, so the vast majority of the students chose not too. It was pretty awkward when the female gym teacher came into the boys locker room to make sure that all the boys showered after gym in middle school, though...