Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey English learners.
This is Connor and you're listening to episode 254 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're doing great and that you're ready to practice your English listening with another episode in which I speak slowly and clearly.
In today's episode...
I'm going to talk about some of my memories from elementary school.
You might also hear the phrase primary school.
However, in the US, we usually say elementary school.
For most of us, that's grades one through six.
In some schools, it's different.
But that's what's typical for a lot of people.
Elementary school is first grade through sixth grade.
In the last episode, I talked about some memories from college.
And so I had the idea of also talking about some memories from an earlier school period in my life elementary school.
So I'm sure you'll enjoy hearing about some of my memories.
And of course, this will be good practice for your listening.
If you want to try my content, my advanced episodes in which I speak fast, then make sure to become a Listening Time family member so you can start practicing with those.
The link to sign up is down below.
Also check out my US Conversations podcast, in which I talk to different people from all around the US about a lot of different topics and we speak at normal speed.
If you want to practice with that, that link is also down below.
Okay, let me talk about some of my memories from elementary school.
I went to two different elementary schools because when I was about eight a little before I turned eight years old my family moved from one city to another city.
And these cities are a little over two hours apart driving.
So it was a big transition for me.
I liked my first elementary school.
I had a group of friends that I really liked.
I was a shy kid.
However, I made friends and I had friends that I spent a lot of time with when I was in first grade and in second grade.
But then my family moved and I had to start third grade at a completely different school.
And this was extremely hard for me.
As I said, I was a shy kid.
And when I say that I'm upset understating it.
I was actually a really shy boy.
I had a lot of trouble talking to people and in my earlier years, like when i was four years old, for example, people thought that there was something wrong with me, that I did not have normal social skills at all because I refused to talk to anyone.
So I was extremely timid, extremely shy.
I only wanted to be with people who I was really comfortable with, like my family for example.
However, I was able to grow out of that a little bit.
As we say, when you grow out of something, it means that you no longer do that thing.
You move past it.
So I grew out of that a little bit and made friends, like I mentioned, when I was in first grade and second grade.
However, when I had to change schools and start third grade at a completely different school, That was really difficult and I had to start all over again.
I had no friends and I remember that I was miserable for a while.
It took me a long time to make even just one friend in third grade.
It wasn't like on the first day of school, the other kids came up to me to Befriend me because I was new.
No, nobody did that unfortunately, and it took weeks and weeks before I made a single friend.
It was a really hard time.
I remember that whenever we had recess which is the break during your classes where kids can take a break and go outside and play or eat a snack when we had recess, and when we had lunch and lunch recess, because after lunch we were also able to just go around and play for a while I remember that during those periods I had no one to play with, I had no one to talk to, and And I just walked around the school pretending that I had somewhere to go or something to do.
I remember planning this out.
Like, okay.
I'm going to walk really slowly over to the drinking fountain to go get a drink and that will kill a few minutes.
And then I'll walk really slowly over to the bathroom on the other side of the school and that will kill like five minutes.
And then I'll walk here like I had this plan so that it made it look like I was always busy.
I had somewhere to go, something to do, because I was afraid of people seeing me just sitting alone by myself with no friends.
It was a really hard time.
I know you can tell that by now.
However, eventually I was able to make a few friends Not with the popular kids for sure.
I made friends with some of the nerdy kids actually.
But it took a while.
It was not at the beginning of the school year.
It took weeks and weeks for that to happen, I think, and so there's a lesson that i learned from this, and that is that kids don't automatically include you in public schools.
You don't just make friends automatically.
You actually have to put in the effort, and even in third grade, when kids are still pretty young, it doesn't happen automatically.
If you don't make an effort.
Because I made no effort during those first weeks.
And because of that, I had no friends.
Nobody came up to me to ask me to play.
I just...
I expected that to happen eventually and it didn't really happen like that.
I had to be a little bit friendly and finally I was able to make a few friends.
So that was a really hard environment to be in as that type of kid who was really timid, really really introverted, really self-conscious.
But eventually I made some friends and I never had to go through that same experience again.
Talking more specifically about my education the academic part of my elementary school experience I learned some pretty interesting things.
I definitely learned some things and we were taught some things that were not very interesting or useful, just like in most schools.
However, I do have some memories of interesting topics and subjects that we learned about in elementary school.
Some of my favorite things were related to history, actually.
So I remember us studying ancient Greece for a while.
That was interesting for me.
I remember learning about Athens and Sparta.
And I think we even had like a Greek feast day.
A feast is a large meal that you share with other people.
I remember us having this Greek feast where people brought different things, things that were related to Greece, like grapes and olives and things like that.
I have some memories about learning ancient Greece.
I also liked learning about ancient China.
I remember learning about ancient China and we even learned how to use chopsticks in class.
I don't know why we learned this, But we learned how to use these.
If you don't know what chopsticks are, these are those two sticks that you use to pick up your food instead of a fork.
So we learned how to use chopsticks in one of our classes in sixth grade, I think.
And so that was interesting for me to learn about ancient China and the history there.
And then also ancient Egypt.
I liked learning about that as well.
Learning about King Tut and other kings.
So you can tell I was pretty interested in history.
I found it fascinating, especially the really old history Greece, China and Egypt from many, many years ago.
That was cool.
I still have memories of learning about those places, those different civilizations.
I also remember learning some random history or about certain people from more recent years.
For some reason, I have a very vivid memory of learning about Amelia Earhart, this pilot.
I think she was trying to fly all the way across the world, and then she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean somewhere.
I think that's why I remember learning about her, because disappearances and mysteries were always really interesting for me.
I was fascinated by those types of stories.
I still am.
So I think that's why I remember learning about her very vividly. meaning very clearly.
So I liked learning about history and different people, historical figures.
Those were some of the most interesting things that I learned.
Of course, I learned about a lot of other things, but those are the things that have stuck in my mind, that I remember the most.
One activity that I really enjoyed doing and that I developed a strong interest for in elementary school was reading.
So not everyone likes to read or is introduced to reading at a young age.
But I think that if your parents or someone who has influence over you introduces you to books and helps you find books author or a series of books that really interests you when you're a kid, I think that it really helps set you up to be a lifelong reader.
I've talked about this before, how that most people that I know that like reading are They have always liked reading or they at least somewhat enjoyed reading when they were young, when they were a kid.
And many of the people I know who don't like reading as an adult.
They never had the habit of reading as a kid.
So I am very thankful that my parents, specifically my mom, tried to cultivate this habit in me.
She wanted to help me become a reader and my mom always liked reading.
When I think back to memories of her, I can always remember her with a book in her hand, when she was lying on her bed or sitting out in the backyard on a chair.
She loved reading and she helped me develop that love.
So in elementary school I would always go to the library and check out books, meaning you rent books.
I didn't buy a lot of books, but I checked out different books and I really enjoyed reading.
A few of the series of books that I really enjoyed were the Redwall series.
That's one.
This is a series of books that is about life like a medieval environment during the medieval period, but instead of people, it's all animals, like a bunch of mice and other animals that are fighting these battles and wars against each other, and they're trying to defend the castle.
It was such a fun series of books that I really liked.
If you have kids, they would probably enjoy this if you don't mind them reading about some battles, there's of course a lot of that in these books, so if you don't mind your teenagers reading this or whatever, they might like that.
I also really liked Goosebumps, which is this series of scary books for kids.
And then I also really enjoyed a series of unfortunate events.
Some of you might know what I'm talking about.
There were also movies made about these books.
This series was a lot of fun.
I can remember reading these books, just devouring them like I read them so quickly.
So I really enjoyed reading as a kid.
Of course, I played a lot in elementary school.
So the first few years of elementary school maybe, we played on the playground.
However, once I turned like nine years old, maybe once I started fourth grade, we stopped playing on the playground and then we moved on to types of games, other types of playing.
Specifically, there was this game called 18 square.
We had four square and 18 square.
These are games where there are squares painted on the ground and and you are in one square, you occupy one of those squares and there is a ball that you hit onto other people's squares and you try to get them out.
Like you hit it hard onto their square and It bounces once and if they can't hit it into another person's square before it bounces again, then they're out.
They go to the lowest square or something.
So I don't know if you got that, but that's basically the game, and there was 18 square as well as four square, and this was our favorite game.
And one of the reasons why we liked it so much was that one of our teachers would always come and play with us.
He liked playing 18 square with us.
And we loved it when he came and played with us.
It was always really intense and we were very competitive.
And so that is like the top memory I have of playing in elementary school. playing 18 square.
And then the peak excitement that we would have was when we would see this teacher slowly walking over from his classroom to come play with us.
Because he didn't play with us every day.
It was maybe once a week or something.
And so we would get really excited when he would come.
And that was like my peak excitement of playing in elementary school.
I still have very clear memories of him walking over.
I can even remember like, what clothes he wore, because I have that image in my mind of him slowly walking over and everyone's saying oh, there he is.
So that was always super fun for us.
And another experience that i remember from elementary school was the start of my experience with girl boy dynamics, because At a certain point it becomes cool to talk to girls and kids say that they have a girlfriend.
Quote unquote.
It's not like a real relationship usually because kids are really young at that point.
But this starts to become cool. something that people are aware of.
And I remember becoming aware of this.
And I remember one of my first experiences with girl boy dynamics was, I remember, receiving notes.
Specifically this one note I can remember super well.
People passed this note to me in class because at least when I was in elementary school people would pass notes.
They would write things on a piece of paper. and secretly pass it over to another person.
And I remember receiving a note during one of our classes, and it said, we like you.
Do you like us?
So two girls had written this note to me and they put two options.
They put yes and no.
And I was supposed to circle one of these two options.
And when they said like on that note, they didn't just mean like are you fond of us?
Like do you enjoy our company?
Do you like us?
That's not what they mean.
And in elementary school.
Maybe even in middle school and high school, if I remember correctly.
In my time, people would also use the word like in a more romantic way.
Like we would say, oh, he likes her.
What we're saying there is like he's interested in her.
He thinks she's pretty and maybe he wants to be her boyfriend.
Like the word like also had that connotation, that meaning.
So when they asked me, do you like us?
That's what they were saying.
And, to be honest, one of the girls was like the cutest girl in class according to the people at that age in that class.
Of course, we were still pretty young at that point, but that's what people thought that this girl was the prettiest girl in class.
So of course, I was like, whoa, this girl likes me, but I was too shy to answer.
So I circled the blank space between yes and no because I was too shy to actually put anything else.
And so that was my way of just avoiding that contact.
And so that was like my first experience with boy girl dynamics and all of that when i was in elementary school.
I mean, that's super young.
I can't believe that that was already something people thought about at that age, but It was.
So some friends of mine ended up having girlfriends in sixth grade.
Again, I'm using the term girlfriends loosely meaning.
This is girlfriends in quotes, quote unquote girlfriends.
But I never did.
I was way too shy, so that wasn't something I did in elementary school.
The last two things that I wanted to mention memories from elementary school are sixth grade camp and cotillion.
I've already talked a lot about sixth grade camp in other content of mine, so...
I'll just briefly mention it here.
When we were in sixth grade, we all went to this camp for a week where we slept there.
Our parents weren't with us.
We all slept there from Monday to Friday, I think, and did many activities like rock climbing and archery and hiking and crafts.
It was super fun.
And we were there with people from other schools, two other schools, I think, or maybe just one.
But it was fun to play with other people in that environment and sleep in these cabins with the other classmates of ours.
It was super fun.
It was one of my best memories from elementary school.
And the other thing I mentioned is cotillion.
That's the last thing I wanted to mention.
For us, cotillion was this dance that we practiced for, where the boys would dance with girls, and we learned how to do these different formal dances and also some line dancing where you're just all in a line, you don't have a partner.
It was super interesting at that time.
When you're in sixth grade, you're somewhat aware of girls at that point, if you're a boy.
So you get a little nervous about dancing with them.
And we had to learn how to go up to the girl and ask her to dance.
And it was amazing.
A really interesting thing and I ended up really liking it to be honest.
It was fun to dance even though I'm not good at dancing.
I find it pretty fun actually, and I'm talking about like formal dancing here, like the waltz and things like that.
It's actually really fun.
And we ended with this actual event, this formal dance.
I think it was called A Night to Remember.
And we all went to it and we dressed up and we performed our dances in front of our parents.
And it was a really fun experience, to be honest.
So I don't know if that still exists today, but in my days of school, cotillion was still something that many schools did.
But who knows?
It might not be in existence anymore.
Okay, I hope you enjoyed hearing about my elementary school experiences.
I'm sure this was good practice for your listening.
If you feel ready to practice with my advanced content, in which I speak fast, then make sure to sign up for my advanced podcast episodes by becoming a Listening Time family member.
That link is down below.
And, if you want, you can also sign up for my US Conversations podcast to practice with my conversations that I have with other people from around the country.
It's a lot of fun and it's great practice for your listening.
That link is also down below.
Thank you all for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
