Minimum Daily Requirements

Back in the good ole days of St. Mary School, we SMFs had minimum daily requirements for each student each day. We were an eight class school with eight rooms. Quite a step above the one room school house painted red with a single pot-belly stove; but then again, not too much more sophisticated either. It was a lovely but basic brick building that served its purpose with each corner, nook and cranny utilized in service to a parochial education.

As devoted students, we were sent out every day by our parents with the necessary tools in hand for success. I’m not just talking about our homework and a good bye kiss at the door but the mandatory minimum daily requirements for a perfect day. These included lunch in a brown bag or in your favorite lunchbox with milk money, a placemat to cover your desk for lunch, book covers on every book for daily inspection and a book bag to carry the books in to and from school.

When we talk about ‘back to basics’ these were our basics. These were the items needed for our daily routine and they were mandatory. Our desks were protected from abrasions, fingerprints and pens gone awry during our Palmer Method writing exercises by our necessary placemat.  Lunches had to be brought from home as there was no cafeteria as in the larger schools. Milk money was placed on the corner of the desk awaiting its exchange each noon. We politely filed to the front of the class each day to purchase our carton of milk. Books had daily inspections as well for rips, tears and book covers. We had to be considerate of these gifts of knowledge, not just for ourselves, but the next year’s students as well. To protect these books further, they had to be in a book bag. It was our obligation to see that all these rules and routines were implemented. Any infractions meant a note went home to your parents. This was a lot of responsibility for young students.

Difficult lessons and training for us perhaps, but it gave us an appreciation at a young age for the books that our parents purchased and the school property so lovingly supported by our parish. With these lessons was the understanding of continuity from one class to the next. These lessons would hopefully transfer from one generation to the next in our future as we carried the memories through our lives.

Cathy