Home Economics was a required half-year class in both 7th and 8th grade for girls in Junior High School back when I was in school. Most of the boys were required to take Shop or Industrial Education. I believe that in the older grades girls could sign up for Industrial Education, or boys for Home Ec, but I actually don't remember for sure. Mostly we just did what we were told.
Seventh grade Home Ec concentrated on cooking or foods, and eighth grade concentrated on sewing and clothing. I didn't really mind my Home Ec classes, but they weren't my favorite classes either, since they taught the very basics and I felt I already knew just about everything that was taught. Some things I learned from my dear Mother, and others from the mothers of my friends in town who volunteered to be the leaders of the local 4-H classes. We were eligible to join our local 4-H clubs when we were 8 years old or in the third grade, and had a lot of fun with the weekly meetings/classes where we baked cookies and cakes and biscuits learned about nutrition and and prepared vegetable relish trays and egg salad sandwiches and such. We also learned basic sewing skills and so by the time those of us in 4-H reached junior high school, we had already done quite a bit of cooking and had each made our own simple dress.
Hauling hay is a given when you grow up on a dairy farm. Granted, I wasn't always the biggest help with the hay hauling crews, but I have been out in the hay field almost every summer since I was only a toddler. Since I had 5 other siblings and a variety of cousins who would also come and spend several weeks to help with the hay, I usually got away without doing a huge amount of the actual gathering up of bales of hay from the field and throwing them on the wagon. Sometimes I would be on the wagon helping to stack the bales, and sometimes I would have the job of driving the tractor or truck pulling the wagon through the hay field. The haying season usually started in late June and lasted through the middle to the end of August, depending on the year. Some summers we had quite a bit of rain, and it was always a challenge to get the hay cut, dried, baled and into the barn before the rain came and ruined the hay. Watching the weather forecast was a daily, sometimes multiple times daily event in our household.
During my senior year of high school I was honored to be elected as the Student Body Historian. I wasn't expecting to be nominated for any kind of Student Body Office, but somehow I made it through the election process and was given that responsibility. I attended the student body meetings and put together a scrapbook that highlighted the main school events of our Senior year, including the fact that our football team won 1st place in the State Championship for our division. Being Historian was an honor, but it was also quite a responsibility, and one that I didn't quite finish until nearly the end of the summer after we graduated and headed off to college, but thankfully I was able to get the job done!
Did you take Home Economics Classes?
Were you ever involved in 4-H clubs?
Have you been involved in Student Government activities during your school years?
No comments:
Post a Comment