Starting School

Karla Von Fumetti standing on the front 

steps at the entrance to Irving School.

First Day of School.

I started kindergarten at Irving School in Dubuque, Iowa the Tuesday after Labor Day in 1961.  Mom wanted me in the morning class so that I could go home and take my afternoon nap, but I was assigned to the afternoon class. My kindergarten teacher was Mrs. Dew-Brittain and I had 36 classmates, several that I am still in touch with 60 years later.  My memories of Mrs. Dew-Brittain are fuzzy, but I do remember her as being a genuinely nice, kind woman who clearly loved small children.  I remember being in awe of her and going to school as being such an adventure.  

I was thrilled to go every day.  That was my first exposure to organized education outside of Sunday School at church.  Preschools did not exist and for the few mothers that worked at that time, most had family, or in-home babysitters for their young children.  Head Start and other preschool programs were largely still in the future.

Our kindergarten classroom was a wonderful place to start school. Oh, to have a classroom like that today! We could enter the classroom from the interior hall of the school, but we also had a back door to the upper playground area.  It was an exceptionally large room divided almost into quarters. One corner was the teaching area with desks, in the back corner was a play area, we had a large sunroom area for art that looked out over the back playground of the school on one side of the teacher's desk and a large cloak room on the hall side of the room. 

I loved the cloak room; it was such a novel thing to me.  We each had a hook to hang our coats on and we set our umbrellas, rain, or snow boots below. The smells in that room really told a tale of the time of year. During the warm weather, the cloak room was nearly empty except on rainy days when the wet raincoats and umbrellas dripped on the floors.  Early fall and late spring the room was full of sweaters and little jackets.  Wintertime had the cloak room chock full of winter coats, hats and mittens, snow boots and snow pants.  Little girls were required to wear dresses to school.  To keep warm, we wore snow pants under our dresses and coats.  Modesty required some significant gyrations to pull off your snow pants or wiggle back into them and still stay on your feet!  Many was the day that someone had their boots on the wrong feet, misplaced a mitten, or argued about whose umbrella was whose.

I do not remember sitting in the little desks much at all.  I remember being taught colors, the alphabet, and our numbers, which I largely already knew before kindergarten.  My favorite memories come from the art area of the room.  We had easels and counters that rimmed the wall under the bank of windows.  Finger-painting was an amazement to me.  I loved creating pictures and was astonished that we were allowed to put our hands in paint and get creative with our fingers.  Painting with brushes was also a new experience along with drawing with chalk.  

The play area had a large open area where we could sit on the floor as a group or play with a few friends with some of the materials provided.  At some point in the afternoon, we also had to pull out mats and lay down on them to "nap".  It was strictly required that we be quiet and lay still. I do not remember it being chaos but with 37 children napping on mats I cannot imagine it was as quiet as my memory thinks it was.  Recess followed our quiet time, and we would line up to go out our own back door to the upper playground.  We were allowed to run and play in that area with each other but were not allowed to go to the bigger, lower playground where the "big kids" were.

We were still living in the Hale Street house when I started school and Mom drove me those first afternoons until we moved two weeks later to New Haven Street.  Mom walked to school with me the first couple of days to teach me the way but living in a new neighborhood with lots of other children, I was soon walking on my own with a lot of new friends.  Upon leaving the house I would find my new neighbors, and off we would go.  Groups of young children walking along the streets by themselves was a common practice and we largely walked together by age groups as the big kids wanted little to do with the small ones.  

I loved my walk to school.  Although I had previously had a few unsanctioned adventures taking off before I started school, I had done little walking about on my own. Even then I enjoyed seeing the different types of houses and watch the seasons change.  We usually started school after Labor Day, and it was not long before we could see our breath in the crisp air.  We tried making different shapes with the little puffs that came from our mouths. Usually by the end of September the leaves were changing colors and the breezes turned to wind rustling through the trees.  It was a lot of fun looking under the trees for pretty leaves and acorns.  I usually went home with something in my hand on those days. 

Pretty soon the grass was frozen in the mornings and walking on it and listening to it crunch was great amusement.  Shortly after, the occasional flurry would drift from the sky and eventually the time for heavier snowflakes would be upon us.  Winter was a long part of the school year in Iowa, and we found many things to do on the way to and from school.  Making snowballs from the heavier snow or just grabbing a handful of the fluffy flakes and tossing them at someone.  My aim was never any good and I usually ended up being covered in snow rather than my friends.  On the days that the sidewalks were covered with snow we would do our best to run and slide on the slippery surfaces.  If we found a patch of undisturbed snow when we were headed home, we would tromp in the snow to look at the footprints we left behind or drop down and make snow angels. 

As sure as the snow fell for months, eventually it would melt and weather would be wet and cold and the ground, muddy and quite often it was rainy.  Those were the least pleasant days for walking as I felt cold to my bones.  My favorite part of this time of year would be walking home under an umbrella watching it drip from each of the metal points around me.  By mid-April, the weather usually started warming up and by May we would see all the flowers start peeking through again.  We did not care much about someone's flower beds but loved to look for and find the little Jumping Johnnies, clover blossoms, dandelions and anything that could pass for a flower.  Those we were allowed to pick and collect to our heart's content and we had many little water glasses at home with our bouquets.  

I have only one official school picture from Irving.  That was our kindergarten class photo.  Our teacher glued the photos on to a piece of construction paper along with the names of everyone in the photo.  It truly is a moment frozen in time: the way we looked, the way we dressed, the obvious fun we had in having our photo taken.  I am guessing most of us are looking at Mrs. Dew-Brittain rather than the photographer.   

Mrs Dew-Brittain's Afternoon Kindergarten Class. 1961-62.

© Karla Von Fumetti Staudt

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