Why 5th grade was both the best and the worst year of my life
Some years teach you facts.
Some years teach you who you are.
Fifth grade did both—loudly, theatrically, and with a little emotional whiplash for balance.
We Didn’t Just Learn—We Immersed
My fifth-grade teacher didn’t teach the curriculum. She built worlds and dropped us inside them.
When we studied Colonial America, she physically sectioned off the classroom. We were assigned historical figures and expected to become them. I was Dolly Madison. Not “here’s a poster, read your facts” Dolly — but dressed-up, in-character, presenting to visiting classes like I’d just stepped out of a candlelit parlor.
I got especially creative during this project, proposing a stained-glass window made from construction paper and tissue paper — light filtering through colors I’d chosen myself (pictured below).
Learning wasn’t passive. It was performative. And something in me cracked open in the best way.
Another time, she transformed the room for what my other schools called “Mini Society.” I can’t remember what she named it, only that it felt real. We each ran a shop. Mine was Sweet September Sapphires—a name that still feels aggressively on-brand in hindsight, especially considering I was out here using alliteration before I even knew what it was.
We were required to build items demonstrating pulley systems (because science), sell them to visiting students using fake money (because math), make change correctly (because accountability), and then—plot twist—we could keep the money to spend in my teacher’s store.
Yes. She had a store.
The Economy of “Good Bucks”
She gave out “Good Bucks” for…everything. Kindness. Effort. Creativity. Showing up.
Behind her desk lived tiny treasures, and I hoarded my Good Bucks like a dragon guarding gold until I could afford a baby Indian porcelain doll. I loved that doll fiercely. I still do, honestly.
This woman understood motivation before it became a buzzword.
Puppets, Marionettes, and Early Foreshadowing
She had a traveling puppet theater. Actual marionettes.
After watching older students perform, I spent the summer before fifth grade writing a script about bullying, hoping I’d get picked. I did. I performed it for younger grades, strings trembling, heart racing.
For Christmas, she gifted every one of us our own marionette. Mine was a little blue jester. I still have him somewhere—proof that some adults take children seriously enough to invest in their imagination.
She also set up a teepee during our Native American unit. My mom arranged for my Uncle Bear to come in with Grandpa’s chief headdress to talk about our tribe, and I felt untouchably cool in a way only a ten-year-old can.
The First Camera, the First Friend
This was also the year I met Jamie.
Jamie, Wendy (a friend I made in 2nd grade), and I filmed our first video project about famous explorers. Mine was Sir Francis Drake. It is, unfortunately, uploaded to YouTube and will absolutely never be shared here.
Jamie and I filmed another project too—less successful, apparently forgettable—but something stuck. The camera didn’t scare me. Telling a story didn’t scare me.
Foreshadowing, in retrospect, is rude like that.
Grams came for Grandparents Day. I dissected a pig’s lung. I felt smart and creative and seen.
Truly the best grade ever.
And Then My Body Betrayed Me
In December, I caught the flu.
We went to the pediatrician, as you do when you’re sick, and I picked up pneumonia there—a sentence that still feels unreal to write. Shortly after, my lung collapsed.
I was out of school from Christmas to Valentine’s Day.
I missed the MEAP tests—Michigan Educational Assessment Program exams, the standardized tests Michigan used to measure student progress. Missing them was, honestly, a silver lining. I was ten. I had bigger things happening.
Like learning what it feels like when your body stops cooperating.
Coming Back Changed
When I finally returned, I wasn’t the same kid. You don’t disappear for months without consequences. But my love for that teacher never faded.
I loved her so much that when I reached middle school—where we got out an hour earlier—I went back to volunteer in her classroom.
I wanted to be near the magic. I wanted to protect it.
Why Fifth Grade Still Haunts Me
Fifth grade showed me who I could be—creative, expressive, trusted, capable—and then immediately showed me how fragile all of that is.
It was the year I learned that adults can change your life for the better.
And that bodies fail.
And that people leave without warning.
And that art can carry you through all of it.
Best year.
Worst year.
Both true.
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