Walla Walla Memory 6

   

Extra Curricular:

One thing that I remember about going to school in Walla Walla is that there were a lot of activities to participate in at school.  Here they have "city league" sports but I remember that in 5th grade we were able to play basketball, coed volleyball, and had track meets against other schools.  I don't remember this costing anything and if it did, it was maybe $5 for the jersey.  This enabled more kids to be able to participate even if they didn't have a lot of money.  I remember participating in the track meets.  I didn't really excel at anything in particular.  I was probably just average at everything.  I tried my hand at running, jumping and even tried doing the shot put when I couldn't really participate at much after a suffering a concussion in gym class.  Also in 5th grade we got to take turns being the crossing guards before and after school.  We got to wear the orange vests and had flags that said stop.  They taught us how to properly stop traffic and I don't think they ever had any problems with anyone getting ran over.  The only thing that I didn't like about it was when it was winter and you had to stand on the corner for a long time.  Another thing that we got to do around that age was called "Conflict Managers".  Basically select kids were chosen to be Conflict Managers and went to a class to help us learn how to mediate conflicts on the playground.  So everyday we took turns during lunch recess walking around with a clipboard.  (Becca says we had yellow hats and shirts but I don't remember)  Whenever there were problems, the kids would come to us and we'd help solve them.  Basically instead of the kids tattling to the teachers, they'd tattle to us.  Now looking back, it was kind of a waste of recess but we didn't seem to mind at the time and I don't recall any difficult problems that needed to be solved.  Both of these "jobs" seemed to help us learn to be responsible and we seemed to all enjoy it.  One other thing that I remember was some kind of school wide math competition that I participated in.  Yes, it's hard to imagine now, but I was pretty smart at one time.  I think we took a test in 5th grade and the kids that ranked the highest got to participate in the competition.  It was held on a Saturday and kids from the different schools basically took tests all day and they gave out awards for the kids that scored the highest.  I don't remember winning anything (I wasn't that smart after all), but it was still an honor to be selected.  I did end up playing basketball in 6th grade which was middle school.  I think there were a 2 coaches and the students were divided into 2 and then the coaches divided you into 3 teams based on skill level.  A, B, and C.  I was on the B team.  I was pretty insulted and thought that I should have been on the A team.  (Looking back, the ranking was justified because I really wasn't as good as I thought I was.)  We competed against the other team from our school and also the other teams from the other middle school.  All this was documented in my journal from the time.  It's pretty funny.  I would write down all the scores from all our basketball games from each team.  Although I didn't exactly excel at any of the sports I participated in, I am grateful to have enough coordination and skill not to be the worst person on the team.  Oh, that would have been embarrassing!  It was also a lot of fun.