As we close out Back to School Month 2026, it’s important to record our own school memories. They might be supplemented by photos, but we all have memories that weren’t documented on paper or in photos.
For example, what was you typical school day like? What time did classes begin and when did they end? What were regular activities and when were there special, out of the ordinary, activities?
The majority of my own school memories are of Roosevelt School #10 in Passaic, New Jersey as I was a student there from kindergarten through the middle of 6th grade. Passaic was, and is, an inner city school, but I had a fabulous education there.
My experience in a suburban school, James Fallon School, in Wayne, New Jersey was quite different and I have fewer memories there because I just finished out part of one grade.
#10 School was a school with not a single regular school bus. In fact, no Passaic schools had buses. Add to that that #10 had no cafeteria either or recesses so what was a school day like?
Everyone walked to school, twice a day! I don’t remember many kids being driven to school either because in the 1950s, if a family even owned a car, they had only one and it was used for adults to get to work.
With no cafeteria, everyone went home for lunch except the teachers who had a small, comfy lounge in which to eat if they didn’t leave the building.
As best I can remember, school started about 8:30 in the morning. By 8:00 AM, the first students would be arriving. You see, before the morning session and before the afternoon session was our “recess.” That was our social time.
Boys were relegated to the dirt side of the playground and the girls were required to stay on the cement side.
Morning class ended around 11:30 when we were dismissed for lunch and began again around 12:45, I think. However, we didn’t finish the afternoon session until maybe 3:45.
I don’t ever remember having regular homework at #10 School, although my Catholic school friends at Holy Trinity always had homework.
During the morning, reading groups were the most important activity. Students were grouped by ability and each spent group time with the teacher instructing and listening to individual readers.
We had paper assignments to complete when our group wasn’t with the teacher. Spelling was also taught in the morning with reading.
I think arithmetic lessons were generally in the morning, but sometimes in the afternoon.
That’s because Passaic schools provided supplemental lessons in music with Mrs. Tiessen, Spanish lessons with Miss Meyers and Gym with Mr. Zurichin (for grades 4-6).
The afternoon was set aside for history and, although I remember science books, I don’t ever remember using them very much. Science, even though we were at the dawn of the Space Age, didn’t feature prominently in our lessons.
We also had art, but that was taught by our own teacher and some of the teachers were more artistically inclined than others! Those teachers spent more time on art.
We also had frequent school assemblies. Sometimes, the program was a play or musical presentation by another class. Occasionally, the presenter was a speaker not from #10, but the only one of those I remember is when Joey Dee and the Starlighters came in 5th grade and did a show for us. That’s because Joey was a #10 School graduate!
I have some specific memories of every teacher.
Mrs. Tanenbaum in kindergarten was kind and provided a balanced program of developmental play, learning to be part of a group, encouraging alphabet and printing skills and providing art and music activities.
Mrs. Fine was my first grade teacher and my mother told me years later that she was also a first year teacher the year I was in her class. I loved her reading lessons and I will never forget the handmade Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls we all sewed together. She had a friend who painted the faces on the completed dolls and we got to keep them. My mom said she was an excellent teacher.
Miss Ferraro was my second grade teacher. I don’t know why, but I was somewhat afraid of her even though I was a really good student and never misbehaved. In an earlier post in this series, I mentioned remembering Dick and Jane workbooks and it’s in Miss Ferraro’s class that I can still see myself filling answers in the blanks and circling other answers.
Unexpectedly, I had two teachers in third grade. We started off with Mrs. Bremer, who was there for the first two or three weeks of class. I actually remember her more because, two years later, she returned to #10 and my younger sibling was in her kindergarten class because Mrs. Tanenbaum had retired. The class came back after lunch for the afternoon session and Mrs. Bremer was crying. She said she was being transferred to another school and Mrs. Gootman was going to be our new teacher.
I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that perhaps a school ended up with too many students in a particular grade and she was transferred perhaps because of less seniority to take a class. I don’t know, and don’t think she ever told us, the school to which she was sent.
I liked Mrs. Gootman and I loved the history unit we did on our new state of Hawaii. We got to make Hawaiian outfits. I think the boys maybe made some kind of hat and the girls all made hula skits by cutting crepe paper that was later taped to our waists. We also sang some tropical tunes.
Miss Guttman was my fourth grade teacher. I think she was the only teacher who really scared me because she had a temper. Apparently, she specialized in art and later only taught art, but I don’t remember doing even one art project with her.
I do remember that instead of teaching us how to multiply upside down numbers, e.g. 27 x 563 (with 27 as the top vertical number and 563 as the bottom), she sat and read a book after she told us to work on it until someone figured out how to find the answer and shared it with the rest of the class.
Mrs. Wallace, in fifth grade, was the strictest teacher, but she was kind (not scary) and taught us well. I don’t remember any particular lessons, but it was in her class that I was a sentry in the George Washington play that we put on for the school assemblies and I distinctly remember that she refused to go on stage and dance with Joey Dee!
By the time I got to 6th grade, I was aware of who all the teachers were and dearly wanted to be in Mrs. Wachs‘s class. I got my wish, but was only there until December, when we moved to Wayne. We were learning about Mexico and making our own float like the Floating Gardens of Xochimilco. It was in Mrs. Wachs’s class, a couple of weeks earlier, that the principal came by and told us President Kennedy had been assassinated. We were all sent home early that afternoon.
The second half of my sixth grade year was very different. #10 School was an old building first opened in 1907. My father went to school there.
James Fallon School, on the total opposite end of the spectrum, was only a year old, newly built and opened in the fall of 1962.
I walked to school in Wayne, too, about the same distance as in Passaic, but I only walked there and home ONCE a day because James Fallon had a marvelous addition – a school cafeteria! We had the option to bring lunch from home, which I usually did, or buy, which I did once in a while because I loved the spaghetti meal.
Although I lived close enough to walk, Wayne schools even had school buses for those who lived too far away to walk! That was another eye opener for me.
Mr. Donhauser was my new teacher and one of at least two male teachers (Mr. Petkus across the hall was also a 6th grade teacher) in the school. That was a bit of a shock because #10 School only ever had one male teacher who was a student teacher.
We learned reading, writing and arithmetic, but I don’t remember any extracurricular subjects like art or music and definitely no Spanish teacher. I do remember the super-boring SRA reading kit on the closed- off stage between my classroom and the one next door. When we finished our assignments, we had to do SRA.
Since I had always been a good student, and my Passaic education served me well, I remained a good student in Wayne and finished most of the stories in that darn SRA kit.
June came quickly, though, and my elementary years were done.
I’ve shared just a few of my own memories, events that would be forgotten to time when I’m gone, but my son can read about them and know what school was like for me.
Be sure to share your own school memories with your family. Don’t just tell them stories, write them down!
