My Teachers: Mrs. Finley

Second grade is the one year I don’t remember quite as clearly as my other years in school. Perhaps because, by then, I was on my third year at Marshall County Elementary so the novelty had certainly worn off. Because that school district split elementary between two schools (Kindergarten through 2^ndat Marshall County and 3^rdthrough 5^thnow at the new West Hills up behind our house), 2^ndgrade was considered “upper classman”. Aka: we were the oldest kids at the school. That, of course, meant we were also the coolest and best. 

 

My second grade teacher was Mrs. Finley. She was a family friend, although I don’t know how. I just know my parents knew her, my grandmother knew her, and even decades later when my grandmother died and she dropped a pie by the house she told my mom to tell me “hi”. She didn’t mind that my sister Katey (age 5 but not yet in Kindergarten) joined me in class if my mom was volunteering at the school. And I remember Katey and I helping her clean the classroom at the end of the year and then going to Horton Park for a picnic and swimming afterwards. Not something we did with any of our other teachers no matter how well they knew my family.

 

I will say Mrs. Finley was very different from Mrs. Steely. That isn’t to say she didn’t keep her students in order just as Mrs. Steely did, but she had a different way of doing it. She didn’t seem as strict, but I can remember her using the paddle at least once on the same boy who had required it of Mrs. Steely several times. She just had a easier-to-approach personality.

 

I do not recall anything I particularly learned in second grade that I have taken with me my whole life. Thinking back, the one thing I remember clearly is learning about the weather and clouds. In the days before the internet and smart phones, we did what people had done for centuries: opened the outside door in our classroom and looked up at the sky. One of us got to do this every day for our chart while we were learning about the weather and clouds, proudly reporting what just about everyone in the classroom could see out the window. After that, we did it one day every other week or so. Probably just often enough that we all got a turn to be the class “weatherman”. As fun as that was, I’m pretty sure not one of us grew up to become a meteorologist.

 

The only other thing I remember markedly clearly about second grade is accidentally popping open a small bag of Doritos in one of the aisles, the wrong end popping open and my chips scattering far and wide all over the classroom which meant every eyeball there was on me. I was so mortified I will not pop open a bag of anything to this day. In fact, I won’t let my kids do it either. I don’t want the same thing to happen to them…apparently, it could potentially scar them for life.

 

Me: second grade. I loved this dress!