Thursdays

Thursday morning! How I hate Thursday mornings and those "Weekly Tests" everyone should know by now. I'll never be able to spell, no matter what they do. Last night I went over and over the words we were given for homework, my sisters helped, but why did we waste our time? I can't spell them this morning.

At least I can do my maths test. You'd think that would keep my teacher happy – but no, not her! Every Thursday it's the same old thing 0-0-10, 0-0-10 ........ The 0 is for spelling and the ten for Maths. Actually I know she doesn't even bother to read my dictation, because she puts a great big cross right through it. It would be a joke wouldn't it one day by some miracle I remembered how to spell the words correctly, but second thoughts I'd never know, would I.

You know what she does to those who can't do their mental arithmetic? She canes them! Fair dinkum! (Luckily I never get the cane for not being able to spell) In the Mental Arithmetic test she starts out by saying to the class "All those who get this wrong will get the cane" and the five or six who got it wrong get the cane. This goes on for each question and by the time we get to the tenth question she is caning almost all the class.

Naturally I would rather be good at maths than being able to spell. Anyhow I have a good excuse for not being able to spell because in our compositions the teacher would tell us to use our dictionary. Well let me tell you; that is a waste of time. Last week she told us to look up "Photo". Naturally I looked under "F" but couldn't find it. It's under "P" can you believe that? Now take words like "BOW" for bending the head and "Bough" for a branch of a tree, and "calf" any person in their right mind would look under "CAR". Now there you go; in that sentence I just had three more 'loopies'. "Two", "their" and "Two", what on earth is a "W" in there for? Crazy! As for "their" and "would", well you can spell them two ways but if you're like me and can't spell, you don't know these things so you look it up in the dictionary and if you find the wrong one first, bad luck. There's another 'loopy' "Wrong", well you can look all day under the "R's" but you won't find it.

Now you're getting my drift aren't you? Any poor kid would have nightmares about it. What makes me really mad is when we have other lessons like Composition, History or English, instead of marking me on my ability, she marks me on my spelling, now that's not right is it? I quite like composition and history, but am I any good at it? Well I just don't know. But what I do know, is that some teachers are not very bright people.