I went to 4th grade in Foret d’Orleans in 1963-64. The elementary school was in the furthest wing of classrooms from the front of the school… My 4th grade classroom was on the top floor, on the side nearer to the playground. We had recess in the chain-link fenced, dirt yard beside the school and I can remember kids linking arms and chanting, “Hey, hey, get out of my way, I just got back from the U.S.A.” I remember being a volunteer in the school library, which was on the bottom floor nearer the middle of the wings. We, volunteers, used an index sorter for the cards of the checked-out books. Those cards came out of the flaps inside the books and we stamped the Due Date on the pocket, pasted inside the cover, that held the card.
We must have been pretty modern since I remember staying after school once for a poetry club where the teacher recorded us on a reel-to-reel recorder, reading poetry and then played it back to help us become our best at reading poetry.
And I faintly remember dancing the Virginia Reel indoors – maybe in the lunchroom with tables removed? And of eating our sack lunches at long tables and trading egg yellow for egg whites if I didn’t bring my American baloney sandwich.
