My Seventh Grade Home Ec Teacher Hated Us

In an all-white school system, the elitists will still find someone to discriminate against

When I was in the seventh grade in Edgewood, Illinois back in the late 1980’s, the girls all had to take Home Economics, while the boys got to take shop class. The regular Home Ec teacher was on a medical leave that year, so we got stuck with a sub who made it clear that she didn't like us very much.

Our Home Ec sub, who I’ll call Mrs. Landry to protect the innocent and/or otherwise, was forever rolling her eyes and getting snippety with us. One day, my small group was assigned to make a recipe in a blender. Two of us had never used a blender before, while the third student insisted she had one just like it at home. The two of us who had never used a blender before were skeptical. We suggested that maybe we should wait for the teacher to help us put it together since we didn't know what we were doing. The other girl went ahead and assembled the blender and began to throw ingredients into it while we watched. A few minutes later, when she turned it on, the bottom came off the pitcher section, and our liquid ingredients poured out the bottom and all over the blender’s base.

Mrs. Landry came stomping across the room, screaming her head off the whole way. She shoved us out of her way and grabbed a towel. “If this is broken, I know some little girls who are going to be buying the school a new blender!” she yelled.

We stood back and watched while she cleaned up the mess and lectured us. The two of us who didn't want to use the blender to begin with exchanged angry scowls. First of all, we weren't exactly “little girls.” Secondly, why should we have to pay for the blender when it was the other girl who insisted on putting it together herself?

As it turned out, Mrs. Landry overreacted. The blender wasn't broken, and we all went about our business. Part of me still wonders if she didn't wish the blender had broken so she could prove herself right about us.

About halfway through the school year, we got the news that the elementary school we had all attended in the nearby town of Mason was going to close its doors for good at the end of the school year. All of our younger elementary school siblings and cousins (it was a small town, and we were pretty much all related to one another) would be shuffled into our school. To make room for them, we middle schoolers were going to be folded into the huge Central Middle School population in Effingham, about fifteen miles away.

None of us wanted to go to Central. There were about twenty-three students in our entire seventh grade class at Edgewood School. We had all gone to school together since kindergarten. We didn't want to spend our last year of middle school getting used to a new school with 150 or more new classmates where we would have to see a different teacher for every single class period.

But there was more to it than that. We all had older siblings, or cousins, or aunts and uncles who were already at Effingham High School. We knew how bad the Mason and Edgewood kids were treated in Effingham. Back then, the school was almost entirely white. With the absence of minorities to discriminate against, the Effingham elitists discriminated against the kids who came from the smaller surrounding towns. Up until then, we could avoid this foul treatment until high school. But these changes would now throw Mason and Edgewood kids into that hostile learning environment as early as the fifth grade. On top of all of that, most of us would soon be stuck on a school bus two full hours a day just to get back and forth to school.

Many of our parents knew what we would be facing as well. They had fought for several years to keep this consolidation from happening. We finally lost out to a school board whose main concern was shuffling students around in an effort to come up with the funds to build a new country club high school complete with all new, state-of-the-art athletic facilities. Education had nothing to do with it.

One day in Home Ec class, we were all sitting around a big group of tables complaining about having to go to Central the following school year. There wasn't a student in that class who was happy about the change. We knew what we were in for, and we knew it was unfair.

However, Mrs. Landry didn't agree. She jumped in and cut off the conversation. She scolded us for being so closed-minded and informed us that we should be thanking our lucky stars that we would get to go to Central school now. She lectured us for at least ten minutes on how much better Central school was than Edgewood School. Meanwhile, we all sat there hating her and hating the entire school board for turning our lives upside down.

Toward the end of the school year, we were sent on a field trip to Central Middle School so we could learn our way around the massive school building. The tour was doubled up with the eighth graders’ trip to Central to practice for the upcoming eighth grade graduation ceremony, which was combined with Central’s ceremony. I was one of the seventh grade students chosen to carry a flag at the graduation, so I had to go to practice with the eighth graders rather than touring the school with my classmates.

During the graduation practice, I “got” to meet a few of the students who would be my new classmates the next year. One, a tall girl with springy hair, asked me what we all thought about being sent to Central. I told her we weren't happy about it. We liked where we were just fine.

The girl put her hands on her hips, looked down at me, and said, “Well, we don’t want all of you people coming up here and overcrowding our schools anyway.”

I pretty much kept to myself for the rest of the day and went back to my own school that afternoon with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew eighth grade was going to be a nightmare.

The following fall, I rode the bus to Central Middle School with a busload of nervous kids. When we got off the bus that first day, we all scattered in a million different directions. My locker was smack dab in the middle of a bunch of huge boys I didn't know. They blocked our section of the lockers so I had to wait until they moved away to get into my locker. Then I couldn't figure out how to get my locker open. I didn't know how to get to any of my classes because I had missed the tour everyone else got to take the previous year while I was stuck practicing my flag carrying skills for the eighth grade graduation.

It only got worse from there. I didn't have a single class with anyone from my old school. No one from my old school had the same lunch hour I had. I was probably the shyest person in my whole class, and I was lost in a sea of people I didn't know.

At least eight times that first day, I heard the words, “Are you a new student?” I should have pretended like I was new, but that didn't feel like the truth to me. I didn't just move to town. However, I think I might have been treated better if people thought I was “new” rather than one of the hated transfers from Edgewood School. I ate lunch by myself every day that year.

I was surprised, and a bit dismayed, to find the springy haired girl from graduation practice in one of my classes. I was even more surprised when I learned that she had the same last name as my seventh grade Home Ec teacher. As it turns out, she was Mrs. Landry’s daughter. Go figure.

To this day, I still count eighth grade year among the most traumatic experiences of my life. It took me some time to figure out what to do with myself after high school. Not once did I ever have a high school counselor talk to me about college. I was from Mason, so it was automatically assumed that I would either get knocked up right away or head straight to the factories or waitressing after high school graduation. College? Mason kids are all a bunch of losers. Why would anyone waste their time helping us figure out how to get to college?

It was the military that finally got me out of Effingham County, Illinois. A few years later, I decided that I could go to college if I wanted to, and I figured out how to get there on my own. I now have two Master’s degrees. I like to think I got to where I am today in spite of my Effingham public school education, not because of it. My friends and family are always asking me why I don’t move back home. The answer is simple. I don’t want my kids in the Effingham School District. They deserve better than that.