My classroom experience in my second year of Spanish class at Broad Ripple, during the last month of my first fall term and second spring term as a high school sophomore in Indianapolis in 1963, was different than what my experience in Spanish class as a 9th grader at a junior high school and, later, as a sophomore in Bayside High School in the fall of 1962, in New York City had been.
During my first year taking Spanish at Junior High School 67 in Little Neck, Queens, most of the other students in the class were grade-oriented students who, like myself at that time, were seeking to get the best final grades from Mrs. Lipton, the fairly skillful, experienced, half-friendly, half-authoritarian foreign language teacher (who, in her late 40's, was probably not considered as physically attractive by most of the teenage guys in her classes as was Mrs. Garfinkel, the other foreign language teacher in the junior high school who taught Spanish). Consequently, Mrs. Lipton was pretty much able to present her daily Spanish lessons to the class I attended in a business-like way, without having to interrupt her daily language lessons to respond to any student disruptions during the classroom period or having to deal with any "classroom management"issues.
The mostly grade-oriented 9th-graders in the class were not going to risk being penalized by Mrs. Lipton for fooling around in class; and they would also tend to immediately pressure any of their peers who looked like they might be trying to disrupt the Spanish language class to "shut up" and not block them from learning what they needed to know, in order to score high enough on Mrs. Lipton's multiple choice tests to maintain their 85-plus or 90-plus term grade averages.
And although during my first term as a sophomore at Bayside High School I was assigned to a second year, non-honor Spanish class, that met during the 10th period late afternoon last class of the day and which seemed to include only a few grade-oriented classmates or a student like me (who, by that time, was becoming less grades-oriented/less mark-happy and more intellectually/knowledge-accumulation-oriented, as well as less intellectually competitive), the low-keyed Spanish class teacher who seemed to be in his 50's, a white man named Mr. Durkin, was able to present his second year Spanish class lesson without being interrupted by any disruptive students. For at Bayside H.S. in the fall of 1962, even the sophomore, junior and senior students who were not grade-oriented, not in honors classes and not interested in studying a foreign language like Spanish would tend to just sit passively in class and daydream without paying much attention to what the teacher said.
These same students would generally not ask any questions, even if they still didn't understand the lesson the teacher was attempting to teach them, and would generally spend only a minimal amount of time doing homework or studying for tests. But they were generally not into disrupting the class in a way that might provoke the teacher to send them to the high school dean's office, from where their parents might then be telephoned, etc.
Bcause Mr. Durkin's second year Spanish language class lessons, however, were usually just a repeat version of the same Spanish language lesson concepts Mrs. Lipton had presented to my first year Spanish class the year before, and based on the same Spanish language El Camino Real textbook chapters that I had already studied in the 9th grade, even if the other students had been into disrupting his class lessons, it probably would not have affected the limited degree to which I was learning to read Spanish at that point, though.
I can't remember much more about the first semester of second-year Spanish class at Bayside H.S., except that (because I had previously learned what was being taught in this class in 9th grade), I scored 90 or 95 percent on the class mid-term exam and thus received either a 90 or 95 percent mark for the class on my mid-term report card at Bayside H.S.; and also a little bit about two of my classmates in this Spanish class, who sat nearest to me in the classroom.
Neither of the two sophomore classmates in this class that I remember seemed either very grade-oriented or very interested in the second-year Spanish language class that they were apparently being required to take in order to eventually obtain their high school diplomas from Bayside High School. One was a tall African-American working-class guy who, having apparently been the star of his junior high school's basketball team and, as a sophomore, already a starting member of Bayside's basketball team, seemed eager to see the class period end; so that he could join his basketball teammates in its daily after-school practice session on Bayside's gymnasium floor.
And because he apparently hadn't already had a first-year Spanish class in which the teacher covered the same lessons that Mr. Durkin was again presenting in class (like I had had), he seemed to find it more difficult to get a high mark on the Spanish class mid-term than did I. But because, as a sophomore, excelling on the basketball court on Bayside's basketball team seemed much more relevant to him at that time than getting a high mark in a Spanish language course (which he would never have probably taken if it hadn't been a class he was required to take), as long as Mr. Durkin gave him some kind of passing grade of over 65 at the end of the term for attending each class, so that he could earn the required academic credits he needed for a high school diploma, whether he actually learned much or not in the Spanish class probably didn't interest him too much.
The other classmate sitting nearest me in my Spanish class that I remember was a long brown-haired, white Italian-American working-class sophomore woman, about 5 feet 2 inches tall, who came to school each day wearing lipstick and make-up, as well as, tight, short skirts and dresses, and blouses, that showed off her figure in a flattering way. And most of the white Italian-American guys who attended Bayside H.S. at that time probably regarded her as physically attractive.
She didn't seem like someone who was planning to attend college or very interested in trying to get high marks in any of her academic classes--unlike nearly all the 9th-grade women in all my junior high school classes had been or nearly all the sophomore women classmates in the "honors" biology and "honors" geometry classes I was in during my time at Bayside in the fall of 1962. And I suspect that she didn't spend much time bothering to do the homework that the teachers of the classes she was required to take assigned.
One afternoon, after school was dismissed for a few minutes, I noticed her and another white woman student at Bayside High School, who was about her size, pulling each other's hair and fighting in the park across the street from the front of Bayside H.S., before a crowd of student onlookers. Apparently she or the other woman student felt that the other female student had "stolen her boyfriend." Fortunately a teacher or a dean rushed past the crowd of students to break up the fight before either of the women students had seriously hurt each other.
My impression was that the Spanish language class classmate who was involved in this after-school fight was mainly interested, as a sophomore, in dating (and eventually going steady and marrying soon after high school) whichever Italian-American working-class guy she found most sexually attractive and had fallen in love with at that time. So although we sat next to each other in second year Spanish class each day, neither she nor I seemed to feel there was any kind of basis for ever exchanging words with each other, either before or after each class period.
And, since in the social circles I had attended classes and sometimes gone to boring weekend parties with, when in junior high school, did not include the type of women classmates who would ever get into any kind of physical fight with another female classmate over some kind of "stealing my boyfriend" dispute, I think I became even more wary of exchanging any words with this particular Spanish language classmate at Bayside, before moving to Indianapolis for the last month of my first semester as a high school sophomore.
At Broad Ripple H.S., the second-year of Spanish class, that I was placed in for the remainder of my sophomore year between January and early June of 1963, was taught by an elderly white woman teacher, who seemed to be in her late 50's or early 60's, named Miss Dipple. The main difference between being in Mrs. Lipton's first-year Spanish class in 9th grade in Jr. H.S. 67 and being in Mr. Durkin's second year Spanish class during most of my first term as a sophomore in Fall 1962 at Bayside H.S. and being in Miss Dipple's second year Spanish class at Broad Ripple, was that in Miss Dipple's class a significant proportion of the students didn't let Miss Dipple present her class lessons without constantly interrupting her and openly ridiculing her. And the students who disrupted Miss Dipple's class were led by some of the sophomore, junior and senior Broad Ripple H.S. jocks and the sophomore, junior and senior women in the class whom they dated or who were eager to be asked out on dates by the jocks.
By disrupting Miss Dipple's class, the non-intellectual and non-academic-oriented jocks like Rick (who was on the high school golf team) and Tony (who was on the football team) were able to encourage most of the other students in Miss Dipple's class to act like the more academically-oriented students in my junior high school class in NYC used to act, if a substitute teacher was filling-in for our regular subject teacher on a particular day. And, as a result, most of the students in Miss Dipple's Spanish class didn't bother to spend much time either doing any of the homework she assigned or paying much attention to what she was trying to teach them, in-between all the times she was forced to spend responding to the students in the class who were into spending the Spanish class period immaturely fooling around.
Despite the fooling around that the other students in the class did, I was still able to learn enough of the additional second-year Spanish grammar Miss Dipple was attempting to teach us, by doing the assigned homework and reading from the Spanish language textbook chapters that she assigned each week, to be able to apparently answer more of the multiple-test Spanish class quiz, mid-term or final tests that she gave us between January and early June 1963, than did most of her other second year Spanish class students. And, in addition, I was one of the students in her class who sat quietly and took notes when she attempted to present her Spanish lessons each day; and was not one of the stueents in the class who either laughed with or encouraged the non-intellectual jocks and the jock women friends who were ridiculing her each period.
So, not surprisingly, Miss Dipple realized by the end of my second semester in her second-year Spanish language class that it made more sense for me to be, in the following academic year as a junior, in a third-year Spanish language "G" class, with Spanish language-class students who were more academically-oriented than were the ones I had been placed with, during my sophomore year, in Miss Dipple's second-year Spanish class between January and early June 1963.
I now remember very little else about the time I spent in Miss Dipple's 2nd-year Spanish class other than that my assigned seat in class was near two high school women, Mary Jo and Kay, who both seemed to be popular with the white male jock athletes in the class. Mary Jo was a buxom high school cheerleader, whom I actually only first saw leading cheers for a Broad Ripple team on the football field the following fall, when I no longer was in any same class with her.
Mary Jo had a pleasant, friendly personality and seemed to be regularly dating a steady boyfriend who was on one of the Broad Ripple sports teams. Most of the guys at Broad Ripple in the early 1960's likely felt that Mary Jo was very pretty and physically attractive, as also I did at that time.
So even if I wasn't then more into making money, from my newspaper delivery route, and still watching a lot of TV at home, than into dating somebody outside of school, during the second semester of my sophomore year in high school, I realized then that there was no possibility that Mary Jo would ever regard me as some classmate she might ever be interested in dating; if, by chance, she ever broke up with her steady boyfriend. If that happened, the guys on the school's various sports teams (who already knew how to drive, had their own cars and were the guys with the highest status in the out-of-school socializing scene at Broad Ripple) would all be asking Mary Jo for dates and they would be the kind of guys that Mary Jo would still be most interested in going out with in early 1963; not some classmate like me who hadn't yet taken drivers' ed, had no car and wasn't on any of the high school sports teams. And because Mary Jo apparently wasn't devoting as much time to her academic work as she did to her cheerleading activities in high school in the early 1960's, when I was mostly placed in "G"/honors classes, with students who were apparently more into spending time doing homework than was Mary Jo, I only saw her at a school-related activity, from a distance, as she helped lead cheers from the football field.
The other seemingly popular high school woman student near my assigned seat in Miss Dipple's Spanish class, Kay, was either a junior or senior, who apparently was more intoo her science courses than into studying Spanish; and who seemed to be planning to enroll at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, after graduating from Broad Ripple with her academic diploma. Like Mary Jo, Kay was likely considered to be physically attractive by most of the jocks at Broad Ripple who seemed to be asking her out for dates each weekend; although I thought her to be less physically attractive than either Mary Jo or Ginny.
Kay had apparently been either one of the football game "homecoming queen" finalist candidates or "homecoming queen" before the time I became a student Broad Ripple. But her personality seemed less good-natured, less easy-going and less friendly than Mary Jo's personality; and, unlike Mary Jo, Kay tended to join in with the male athletes in Miss Dipple's class, whose notion of what being "cool" in 1963 seemed to be to show that you could ridicule the elderly Miss Dipple and disrupt a required class you had no interest in studying for, with impunity. And I can't recall ever noticing Kay either inside the school or outside of school in Indianapolis, after June 1963.
The jocks seemed able to get away with disrupting Miss Dipple's class with impunity because the coaches of the high school teams they were members of were apparently able to get the high school dean's office to not hold the jocks accountable for disrupting her class; and because the number of students in the class who were actually interested in studying Spanish was too small for any non-jock students in the class to bother to question how "cool" it actually was to disrupt Miss Dipple's Spanish class in 1963.
Showing posts with label Bayside High School. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bayside High School. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
Monday, October 14, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 29
Another difference between going to school at Bayside High and going to school at Broad Ripple High was that at Bayside High School sophomores, juniors and seniors all had to include a period of physical education/gym in their scheduled program each term. At Broad Ripple, however, after a student's freshman year, no student was required to take any period of physical education/gym in their sophomore, junior and senior years.
In the fall of 1962 at Bayside High School, most days of the week your individualized program required you to spend one period during the school day going into the school gymnasium's locker room to change into your gym suit, prior to being led by some authoritarian gym instructor in exercises, running around within the school's football stadium's track, a few blocks away from the school, or spending a portion of the gym period involved in some sports game with the other male students who were taking gym class in the same period with you. And since Bayside High School, besides having a gymnasium and small football stadium with a track, also, inside its school building, had its own pool, gym period also sometimes meant a period showering in school and, if you were a male student, then swimming during most of the period in the nude in its high school pool.
Both Broad Ripple High School's gymnasium and its football stadium with a track, however, were larger than Bayside's gymnasium and football stadium; and, unlike Bayside's small football stadium, Broad Ripple's football stadium included a lighting system that enabled its high school football team to play opposing high school football teams under the lights on Friday night games, whereas Bayside's football stadium lacked a similar lighting system. So Bayside's football team generally only played their high school opponents in afternoon games after school at 3 p.m. or, perhaps, on Saturdays sometimes. In addition, the spectators' seating capacity of Broad Ripple's gymnasium and stadium was much greater than was the spectators' seating capacity of Bayside's gym or small stadium's spectators' stands.
One reason Broad Ripple (and other Indiana public high schools) may not have required their sophomores, juniors or seniors to take gym/physical education classes after their freshman year is that a greater percentage of the male students at Broad Ripple H.S. seemed to be members of one of its school sports teams than the percentage was at most New York City public high schools in the early 1960's. So school administrators in Indiana may have felt that most male students at their schools were already getting enough physical exercise by being part of their school's teams; and school administrators could, therefore, save some money by substituting a period of "study hall" for a required gym period for those male high school students who had no interest in being some kind of high school team "jock", after their freshman year was over.
Another reason why physical ed or gym was not required after the freshman year of high school in Indiana may have been that in Indiana, unlike in New York City where most high school students only could get their licenses at 18 years of age and usually only started driving in their own cars after high school, most Indiana high school students usually got their driver licenses at 16 years of age and began driving their own car (or their parents' cars) by their junior year of high school. So, by their sophomore year, most Broad Ripple High School sophomores were also both more in need of and more interested in taking driver's education courses in their sophomore, junior or senior years than in continuing to take physical ed/gym during their last three years of high school.
Another advantage of not having to include a period of gym in your daily individual program at Broad Ripple in your sophomore, junior and senior years was that it also enabled students who felt like joining schools clubs or getting part-time jobs at 16 years of age in stores after school to have some more free time from having to be in a class than Bayside H.S. students had.
In the fall of 1962 at Bayside High School, most days of the week your individualized program required you to spend one period during the school day going into the school gymnasium's locker room to change into your gym suit, prior to being led by some authoritarian gym instructor in exercises, running around within the school's football stadium's track, a few blocks away from the school, or spending a portion of the gym period involved in some sports game with the other male students who were taking gym class in the same period with you. And since Bayside High School, besides having a gymnasium and small football stadium with a track, also, inside its school building, had its own pool, gym period also sometimes meant a period showering in school and, if you were a male student, then swimming during most of the period in the nude in its high school pool.
Both Broad Ripple High School's gymnasium and its football stadium with a track, however, were larger than Bayside's gymnasium and football stadium; and, unlike Bayside's small football stadium, Broad Ripple's football stadium included a lighting system that enabled its high school football team to play opposing high school football teams under the lights on Friday night games, whereas Bayside's football stadium lacked a similar lighting system. So Bayside's football team generally only played their high school opponents in afternoon games after school at 3 p.m. or, perhaps, on Saturdays sometimes. In addition, the spectators' seating capacity of Broad Ripple's gymnasium and stadium was much greater than was the spectators' seating capacity of Bayside's gym or small stadium's spectators' stands.
One reason Broad Ripple (and other Indiana public high schools) may not have required their sophomores, juniors or seniors to take gym/physical education classes after their freshman year is that a greater percentage of the male students at Broad Ripple H.S. seemed to be members of one of its school sports teams than the percentage was at most New York City public high schools in the early 1960's. So school administrators in Indiana may have felt that most male students at their schools were already getting enough physical exercise by being part of their school's teams; and school administrators could, therefore, save some money by substituting a period of "study hall" for a required gym period for those male high school students who had no interest in being some kind of high school team "jock", after their freshman year was over.
Another reason why physical ed or gym was not required after the freshman year of high school in Indiana may have been that in Indiana, unlike in New York City where most high school students only could get their licenses at 18 years of age and usually only started driving in their own cars after high school, most Indiana high school students usually got their driver licenses at 16 years of age and began driving their own car (or their parents' cars) by their junior year of high school. So, by their sophomore year, most Broad Ripple High School sophomores were also both more in need of and more interested in taking driver's education courses in their sophomore, junior or senior years than in continuing to take physical ed/gym during their last three years of high school.
Another advantage of not having to include a period of gym in your daily individual program at Broad Ripple in your sophomore, junior and senior years was that it also enabled students who felt like joining schools clubs or getting part-time jobs at 16 years of age in stores after school to have some more free time from having to be in a class than Bayside H.S. students had.
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 27
Another difference between Broad Ripple High School and overcrowded Bayside High School was that at Broad Ripple every student was assigned their own individual hallway locker. So they all didn't have to carry all their textbooks at once when shifting from classroom to classroom during the school day.
At Bayside, you were assigned a locker in the band room in which you could store your musical instrument during the week, like the locker in which I kept the saxophone I individually practiced on during my daily Band class periods each day, as a first-term sophomore. But students at Bayside did not have individual hallway lockers assigned to them like the Broad Ripple students did in the early 1960's.
The number of students who had previously played in their previous lower schools' bands before entering Bayside High School or who were newly interested in being in Bayside's school band was greater than the number of students who wished to be in Broad Ripple's band in early 1963. So there was a much greater need for a student who could play tenor saxophone in Broad Ripple's band than there had been in Bayside's band in the fall of 1962. And since I had shifted from taking weekly alto saxophone private lessons to taking tenor saxophone private lessons out of school during my 9th grade in Queens, one gain for me from transferring to Broad Ripple was that I was able to become part of my high school band more quickly than I would have been able to have done if I had continued to attend Bayside in 1963, 1964 and 1965.
Between the last month of my first term as a sophomore and the end of my second term as a sophomore at Broad Ripple, I was able to spend the last 45 minute period of the day playing tenor saxophone with the band; prior to finally officially becoming a full member of both Broad Ripple's marching band and its concert band between August 1963 and June 1964, during my junior year of high school.
Had I not been in Broad Ripple's high school band and, during my senior year, in Flushing High School's band, there's a good possibility that, even with Mrs. Griggs's letter of recommendation, Coulumbia College's admissions office would not have accepted me into its Class of 1969. I probably would not have then seemed "well-rounded enough;" and would probably not have been seen then as a Columbia College student who would probably be able to eventually fill one of the tenor saxophone player positions in Columbia College's undergraduate marching band and concert band.
Because the person who interviewed me on Columbia's campus, prior to Columbia's decision to admit me, was both from Indiana and some kind of a music department instructor (whom I never bumped into again afterwards while attending Columbia), my impression is that the Columbia admissions office just expected me to mainly spend my time outside of class on Columbia's campus playing tenor saxophone in its band for four years. And, after graduating in 1969, just enrolling at Columbia Teachers College for a year, so that I could then teach high school social studies in the inner city public schools to support myself, at the same time I tried to "make it" as a playwright or writer (which is what I indicated on my admissions application were then my post-B.A. career plan).
Instead, of course, once I was on Columbia's campus as a freshman, I had no interest in being in Columbia College's marching band or concert band; and, also instead, in the second term of my sophomore year at Columbia College just discovered that Columbia University had secretly become an institutional member of the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank in 1960.
At Bayside, you were assigned a locker in the band room in which you could store your musical instrument during the week, like the locker in which I kept the saxophone I individually practiced on during my daily Band class periods each day, as a first-term sophomore. But students at Bayside did not have individual hallway lockers assigned to them like the Broad Ripple students did in the early 1960's.
The number of students who had previously played in their previous lower schools' bands before entering Bayside High School or who were newly interested in being in Bayside's school band was greater than the number of students who wished to be in Broad Ripple's band in early 1963. So there was a much greater need for a student who could play tenor saxophone in Broad Ripple's band than there had been in Bayside's band in the fall of 1962. And since I had shifted from taking weekly alto saxophone private lessons to taking tenor saxophone private lessons out of school during my 9th grade in Queens, one gain for me from transferring to Broad Ripple was that I was able to become part of my high school band more quickly than I would have been able to have done if I had continued to attend Bayside in 1963, 1964 and 1965.
Between the last month of my first term as a sophomore and the end of my second term as a sophomore at Broad Ripple, I was able to spend the last 45 minute period of the day playing tenor saxophone with the band; prior to finally officially becoming a full member of both Broad Ripple's marching band and its concert band between August 1963 and June 1964, during my junior year of high school.
Had I not been in Broad Ripple's high school band and, during my senior year, in Flushing High School's band, there's a good possibility that, even with Mrs. Griggs's letter of recommendation, Coulumbia College's admissions office would not have accepted me into its Class of 1969. I probably would not have then seemed "well-rounded enough;" and would probably not have been seen then as a Columbia College student who would probably be able to eventually fill one of the tenor saxophone player positions in Columbia College's undergraduate marching band and concert band.
Because the person who interviewed me on Columbia's campus, prior to Columbia's decision to admit me, was both from Indiana and some kind of a music department instructor (whom I never bumped into again afterwards while attending Columbia), my impression is that the Columbia admissions office just expected me to mainly spend my time outside of class on Columbia's campus playing tenor saxophone in its band for four years. And, after graduating in 1969, just enrolling at Columbia Teachers College for a year, so that I could then teach high school social studies in the inner city public schools to support myself, at the same time I tried to "make it" as a playwright or writer (which is what I indicated on my admissions application were then my post-B.A. career plan).
Instead, of course, once I was on Columbia's campus as a freshman, I had no interest in being in Columbia College's marching band or concert band; and, also instead, in the second term of my sophomore year at Columbia College just discovered that Columbia University had secretly become an institutional member of the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank in 1960.
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 26
Besides not at least being somewhat racially integrated like Bayside High School had been in the Fall of 1962, Broad Ripple High School differed from Bayside H.S. in other ways. So the experience of attending Broad Ripple, as a high school student in 1963 and the Spring of 1964, differed from the experience of attending Bayside in the Fall of 1962.
Compared to Bayside, Broad Ripple was much less crowded with students, despite it being a 4-year high school of 9th-grade freshmen, 10th-grade sophomores, 11th-grade juniors and 12th-grade seniors. Within the Indianapolis public school system in the early 1960's, students attended a grammar school until the end of the 8th-grade and then began attending high school in the 9th-grade as freshmen. In New York City's public school system in the early 1960's, however, you usually only entered a real public high school as a 10th-grader and just spent only three years as a public high school student.
Unless you maybe went to one of the specialized elite public high schools (like Brooklyn Tech, Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant High School, Hunter High School or Music and Art), a Catholic parochial high school or a public vocational high school in New York City, you first attended an elementary school until the end of the sixth grade and a junior high school until the end of the ninth grade. So if you were seeking either an academic high school diploma (that you needed to get if you planned to apply to college), a commercial high school diploma (if you just planned to enter the 9-to-5 skyscraper business office work world without looking to go to college) or a general high school diploma (if you just planned to get some kind of blue-collar factory job or join the U.S. military if you were a man, or just get married and have children rapidly if you were a woman), you usually only entered a real public high school as a 10th-grader.
Yet even though Broad Ripple H.S. included a freshman class of about 400 students, as well as sophomore, junior and senior classes of about 400 students each and Bayside H.S. only included sophomores, juniors and seniors, because Bayside was located in a much more heavily populated area of the United States--New York City's borough of Queens--than Indianapolis, in the early 1960's it had so many students attending the school that it was a "triple session" school.
What Bayside H.S. being a high school on "triple session" meant in the early 1960's was that some of Bayside's students began their school day at 8 a.m. or 8:15 a.m. in the morning in what was called "zero period," a second group of Bayside students began their school day at 9 a.m. or 9:15 a.m. in what was called "first period" and a third group of Bayside students began their school dat at 10:30 or 10:45 a.m. in what was called "third period." As a consequence, if you began your school day at zero period, your school day would end after 7th period at around 2:15 p.m., If you began your school day at first period, your school day would end at the end of the 8th period, at around 3 p.m. And if you began your school day at 3rd period, your school day wouldn't end until after the "10th period" at around 4:30 p.m..
In contrast, at Broad Ripple H.S., all students just reported at the same time to their first period class at 8:15 a.m. each day; and at Broad Ripple all the students were released from classes at the end of the 8th or 9th period by 3 p.m., at the same time.
Another difference between Bayside H.S. and Broad Ripple H.S. was that Bayside was so overcrowded with students in the early 1960's that a portion of each year's entering 10th-grade sophomore class at Bayside was assigned to attend classes as a group not inside the Bayside H.S. building, but in a different, separate building a few blocks away, that was called "The Annex."
Were it not for the fact that the Bayside H.S. administration clerks assumed that, since I had been enrolled in a group music class as a 9th-grader at Jr. H.S. 67 learning to play the cello, I also was going to want to be in a group music class at Bayside H.S. as a sophomore learning to play the cello well enough to become a member of the high school orchesta by my junior or senior year, I would have ended up spending my first term as a high school sophomore in Bayside's annex, and not in Bayside's main building.
So even though, by the time I entered Bayside H.S. as a sophomore in September 1962, I was now into the saxophone and not the cello, I felt happy that the assumption by the school administration clerk that I wanted to be still studying a string instrument in high school had enabled me to avoid being assigned to attend "the annex;" which I felt would just provide a sophomore year high school experience too much like still being in junior high school. And which would deny me the opportunity of having an individual program of classes, where I would have a greater chance of having different classmates each period than I would, if I just mostly moved from classroom to classroom each period with the same group of 30 classmates in "the annex."
Of course, as soon as I received my program card on the first day of high school, I got my program changed, in a way I no longer can recall. So, instead of being in a morning music group class studying cello, I was in a group band class practicing saxophone.
Yet, unluckily, during my first term as a sophomore at Bayside I was still one of the 10th-graders who began school at the 10:30 or 10:45 hour third period class and whose last 10th period class didn't end until around 4:30 p.m.. So starting to attend Broad Ripple in early 1963, where I reported for class at 8:00 or 8:15 a.m. each day and got freed from school by 3 p.m. each was was what I liked more; although the 10:30 or 10:45 start of my Bayside High school day did allow me to sleep an hour longer in the morning. Since I didn't have to catch one of the crowded NY Transit Authority city buses that picked up the Bayside H.S. sophomores, who lived in the Beech Hills and Deepdale garden apartment developments in my Douglaston-Little Neck neighborhood, for the 30 minute bus ride to Bayside H.S., until around 9:30 or 9:40 a.m..
At Bayside H.S., daily attendance was marked for each student during their 15-minute homeroom period; and when I attended Bayside the 15-minute sophomore homeroom period for all the sophomores who began classes in the third period, was located in the school's auditorium, rather than in a classroom. Each "homeroom teacher" was assigned to take the attendance of 4 or 5 rooms in which their "homeroom class" of around 30 students sat.
While I no longer can recall whether or not students had to report to a "homeroom" for attendance taking each day at Broad Ripple, I recall having to attend homeroom at Bayside for a reason other than it was in the school auditorium and not in a classroom: A white guy of Italian-American background named Alfred, whose assigned auditorium seat was next to mine because his last name also began with "F", who ad apparently attended Catholic parochial school for 8 years before entering Bayside H.S., apparently tried to ridicule me and another guy sitting in our row, who was also of Jewish religious background, by repeating our names aloud in an imitation stereotyped Yiddish accent a number of times. In a way that made me feel he was somewhat anti-Semitic on an inter-personal level.
Prior to sitting next to Alfred in my 10th-grade homeroom class at Bayside, I had never personally experienced even any hint of inter-personal anti- semitism during a day in the local public schools. Maybe because, until I entered the 10th grade, about 90 to 95 percent of the students in the public schools I had attended were also of Jewish religious background.
Compared to Bayside, Broad Ripple was much less crowded with students, despite it being a 4-year high school of 9th-grade freshmen, 10th-grade sophomores, 11th-grade juniors and 12th-grade seniors. Within the Indianapolis public school system in the early 1960's, students attended a grammar school until the end of the 8th-grade and then began attending high school in the 9th-grade as freshmen. In New York City's public school system in the early 1960's, however, you usually only entered a real public high school as a 10th-grader and just spent only three years as a public high school student.
Unless you maybe went to one of the specialized elite public high schools (like Brooklyn Tech, Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant High School, Hunter High School or Music and Art), a Catholic parochial high school or a public vocational high school in New York City, you first attended an elementary school until the end of the sixth grade and a junior high school until the end of the ninth grade. So if you were seeking either an academic high school diploma (that you needed to get if you planned to apply to college), a commercial high school diploma (if you just planned to enter the 9-to-5 skyscraper business office work world without looking to go to college) or a general high school diploma (if you just planned to get some kind of blue-collar factory job or join the U.S. military if you were a man, or just get married and have children rapidly if you were a woman), you usually only entered a real public high school as a 10th-grader.
Yet even though Broad Ripple H.S. included a freshman class of about 400 students, as well as sophomore, junior and senior classes of about 400 students each and Bayside H.S. only included sophomores, juniors and seniors, because Bayside was located in a much more heavily populated area of the United States--New York City's borough of Queens--than Indianapolis, in the early 1960's it had so many students attending the school that it was a "triple session" school.
What Bayside H.S. being a high school on "triple session" meant in the early 1960's was that some of Bayside's students began their school day at 8 a.m. or 8:15 a.m. in the morning in what was called "zero period," a second group of Bayside students began their school day at 9 a.m. or 9:15 a.m. in what was called "first period" and a third group of Bayside students began their school dat at 10:30 or 10:45 a.m. in what was called "third period." As a consequence, if you began your school day at zero period, your school day would end after 7th period at around 2:15 p.m., If you began your school day at first period, your school day would end at the end of the 8th period, at around 3 p.m. And if you began your school day at 3rd period, your school day wouldn't end until after the "10th period" at around 4:30 p.m..
In contrast, at Broad Ripple H.S., all students just reported at the same time to their first period class at 8:15 a.m. each day; and at Broad Ripple all the students were released from classes at the end of the 8th or 9th period by 3 p.m., at the same time.
Another difference between Bayside H.S. and Broad Ripple H.S. was that Bayside was so overcrowded with students in the early 1960's that a portion of each year's entering 10th-grade sophomore class at Bayside was assigned to attend classes as a group not inside the Bayside H.S. building, but in a different, separate building a few blocks away, that was called "The Annex."
Were it not for the fact that the Bayside H.S. administration clerks assumed that, since I had been enrolled in a group music class as a 9th-grader at Jr. H.S. 67 learning to play the cello, I also was going to want to be in a group music class at Bayside H.S. as a sophomore learning to play the cello well enough to become a member of the high school orchesta by my junior or senior year, I would have ended up spending my first term as a high school sophomore in Bayside's annex, and not in Bayside's main building.
So even though, by the time I entered Bayside H.S. as a sophomore in September 1962, I was now into the saxophone and not the cello, I felt happy that the assumption by the school administration clerk that I wanted to be still studying a string instrument in high school had enabled me to avoid being assigned to attend "the annex;" which I felt would just provide a sophomore year high school experience too much like still being in junior high school. And which would deny me the opportunity of having an individual program of classes, where I would have a greater chance of having different classmates each period than I would, if I just mostly moved from classroom to classroom each period with the same group of 30 classmates in "the annex."
Of course, as soon as I received my program card on the first day of high school, I got my program changed, in a way I no longer can recall. So, instead of being in a morning music group class studying cello, I was in a group band class practicing saxophone.
Yet, unluckily, during my first term as a sophomore at Bayside I was still one of the 10th-graders who began school at the 10:30 or 10:45 hour third period class and whose last 10th period class didn't end until around 4:30 p.m.. So starting to attend Broad Ripple in early 1963, where I reported for class at 8:00 or 8:15 a.m. each day and got freed from school by 3 p.m. each was was what I liked more; although the 10:30 or 10:45 start of my Bayside High school day did allow me to sleep an hour longer in the morning. Since I didn't have to catch one of the crowded NY Transit Authority city buses that picked up the Bayside H.S. sophomores, who lived in the Beech Hills and Deepdale garden apartment developments in my Douglaston-Little Neck neighborhood, for the 30 minute bus ride to Bayside H.S., until around 9:30 or 9:40 a.m..
At Bayside H.S., daily attendance was marked for each student during their 15-minute homeroom period; and when I attended Bayside the 15-minute sophomore homeroom period for all the sophomores who began classes in the third period, was located in the school's auditorium, rather than in a classroom. Each "homeroom teacher" was assigned to take the attendance of 4 or 5 rooms in which their "homeroom class" of around 30 students sat.
While I no longer can recall whether or not students had to report to a "homeroom" for attendance taking each day at Broad Ripple, I recall having to attend homeroom at Bayside for a reason other than it was in the school auditorium and not in a classroom: A white guy of Italian-American background named Alfred, whose assigned auditorium seat was next to mine because his last name also began with "F", who ad apparently attended Catholic parochial school for 8 years before entering Bayside H.S., apparently tried to ridicule me and another guy sitting in our row, who was also of Jewish religious background, by repeating our names aloud in an imitation stereotyped Yiddish accent a number of times. In a way that made me feel he was somewhat anti-Semitic on an inter-personal level.
Prior to sitting next to Alfred in my 10th-grade homeroom class at Bayside, I had never personally experienced even any hint of inter-personal anti- semitism during a day in the local public schools. Maybe because, until I entered the 10th grade, about 90 to 95 percent of the students in the public schools I had attended were also of Jewish religious background.
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