I like to look at old class pictures, and they don't necessarily have to include me in them. This is especially true with elementary school, in particular the 4th through 6th grade pictures taken at Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School in Davie, Florida. For my 1st through 3rd grade years I attended Boulevard Heights Elementary in West Hollywood...just a couple of blocks from my home. In those years the kids in a particular grade were divided into a few separate classrooms with teachers...and they stayed in those classrooms the whole school year, apart from students in other classrooms in their same year. When I got to Nova Elementary in 1965, it was a completely different situation. There the 4th graders were assigned to Suite C, comprising five "home stations" (classrooms) and the 6th graders were in Suite B, split among six home stations. The 5th graders were rather arbitrarily divided between Suites B and C. Now the home station was where I would meet with the other assigned classmates at the start of the school day and its end, but in between the students of the entire suite would mix in various classes, so I ended up getting to know quite a lot of them within a relatively short time. But our yearly class picture was always of those kids in the same home station. Since my parents were responsible for deciding, year-to-year, whether to purchase classroom pictures, I was fortunate to get my 4th grade picture from home station #7 with Miss Kidder as the teacher, but for the 5th and 6th grades, which I spent at home station #18 in Suite D (renamed from Suite B) with Mrs. Williams as the presiding teacher, we didn't buy the class pictures...I believe that in one or both of these years I was out sick when they were taken. But since the kids in a particular suite pretty much got to know one another over the course of a school year, any of the other home stations' class pictures were fun to examine...as I have recently on a Facebook Nova alumni group page. Marjorie, with whom I went to Nova from the 4th through 12th grades, put up her 4th grade class photo (Mrs. Jenkins, Station #9), 5th grade (Mr. Boyle, Station #13), and 6th grade (Ms. Bryant (I don't remember her), Station #16). And Alan, another classmate with whom I attended through those same years, posted his class's picture from the 6th grade (Mr. Niedermeyer, Station #17). And although he attended the "second" Nova Elementary School and not the "original" one I was at, I appreciated someone else's classroom photo as well since it included many kids who later attended Nova Junior and Senior High with me. A few years ago I posted on this blog my old 4th grade picture...I'm seated in the back/left next to my friend Eddie Simmons: click HERE for a link to it. One thing about these classroom pictures that bugs me, though, is that if you don't remember the name of a particular student then since they're not identified there's no way of knowing who they are...there were several of these in Marjorie and Alan's pictures. What's really frustrating is when I distinctly remember them by their faces but still can't name them. Ah, nothing like a mystery demanding to be solved...
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