The Road to Senior Year: A History

Remembering our past

Ruby Hudson, Staff Writer

Primary School:

Kindergarten (2010-11): This was our first official year as a student in the Cullman City School System, and we had no idea of what was to come. But as 5 or 6 year-olds, we weren’t concerned with the future. Instead, we were wholly concerned with the Playdough, playground, and coloring sheets that made up the best parts of kindergarten. Who needs Chromebooks when you can play with a LeapFrog? Why worry about graduating high school when that’s 12 years away? Spelling was not too important yet, as evidenced by the daily journals that are still somewhere at my house, but as long as you kind of knew the alphabet and how to count, you did not need much else to thrive in kindergarten.

1st grade (2011-12): In first grade, our curriculum mostly focused on writing coherent sentences with somewhat correct spelling, and being able to count to 100. However, most importantly, this year, the “Cha Cha Slide” was all the rage. You may remember practicing this dance for what felt like every day in P.E.. We then performed it at field day for our parents in our class-colored CCPS shirts. Currently, the primary school is undergoing rennovations to make it even better, so it will be much different now than when we were students there.

Elementary School:

2nd grade (2012-13): This was the first year of elementary school. No matter if you went to East, West, or neither, this was where you found some of your best friends. This is also the year of spelling tests and learning how to pronounce words. Some of the activities we did may have been useless, such as raising butterflies, but we had a lot of fun in second grade.

3rd grade (2013-14): In 3rd grade, we continued learning foundational math, language arts, science, and social studies, but school was still more fun than work. This year, I remember learning songs to help us memorize the multiplication tables. Most importantly, though, this is the year Frozen came out in movie theaters.

4th and 5th grade (2014-16): These are the years where elementary school became slightly more demanding as we reached an age where we were able to begin learning harder subjects. We began to drift away from the coloring sheets and fun activities, but we still had the occasional movie and popcorn day. 5th grade consisted of much more writing and academic activities than the previous years of elementary school. By the end of this year, we were looking forward to 6th grade and being the biggest kids at the school.

6th grade (2016-17): I may not remember much from 6th grade, but I do remember this as the year “x” was introduced in math, and everyone was waiting for the world to end. I mean, letters in math? Who would have thought of such a thing? This is also where we began the concept of switching classes, but the teachers avoided mass chaos by having the class orderly walk in a line from class to class.We probably did not appreciate ementary school as much as we should have. However, we will all fondly remember Mr. Wiggins and his kindness towards each and every student. Everyone who went through East Elementary will miss him, and knows that he cannot be replaced.

Middle School:

7th grade (2017-18): The transition from elementary school to middle school was slightly daunting. We knew that we would have mch more expected of us than in elementary school. Also, this year, instead of swapping classes with your entire class as a group, you would be expected to swap classes by yourself. And lockers? No more cubbies or hooks labeled with your name on colorful laminated paper. Instead, you got your very own locker with a combination lock and everything. Also, this may or may not have been the year that school went from fun and games to work. Hard work. However, we did enjoy the newfound freedom that came with middle school.

8th grade (2018-19): This year, we graduated to the coveted round building. Walked past your class? Just keep going, you will get there eventually! By the end of 8th grade, we had most of the foundational knowledge we needed for high school, but in high school we would be taught to dive deeper into everything we knew. For example, we would go from being able to discuss plot and theme in 8th grade, to being able to analyze the significance in plot and theme in the later years of high school.

High School:

9th grade (2019-20): Most people remember this as the last year we had a 10-minute break, and some say this was their favorite year of high school, but how could we ever forget the most significant event during our freshman year: COVID-19? It seems crazy that COVID has been around since our freshman year, but that means that we have never had a true high school experience. However, we did have a normal first half of freshman year, and who would have known that once we went virtual, it would take a long time to begin to return to normal?

10th grade (2020-21): This is the year the hybrid school system was born. When you were at school, you wore a mask and were spaced out from the other students in your classes. When you were virtual, you attempted to pay attention to the teachers on the Zoom meetings. To be frank, this was one of the worst school years.

11th grade (2021-22): So close, yet so far. You may remember hearing people say that junior year is the hardest, especially since this was the first year we were able to take AP classes. For example, we went from learning that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell in Pre-AP Biology, to learning the exact process of how and why the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell in AP Biology. This year was not only harder because of the classes, but also because we had to begin thinking about college and what we wanted our future jobs to be. Instead of focusing on the present, during junior year, we began thinking more about our futures.

12th grade (2022-23): Finally, it is senior year. It seems that we have been dreaming of this year since the beginning of high school, and now that it’s here, we have to fight the urge to want to rush through high school and finish. With senioritis infecting students by the hundreds, graduation can’t come soon enough. I hope that when we look back on our senior year, we remember it fondly.