J.H.S. 56 - Corlears School

I graduated from J.H.S. 56 Corlears School. I went to this school, even though it was almost a mile and a half away, because it had a special "SP" program, where I was supposed to skip the 8th grade. Things didn't turn out that way at all.

Instead of skipping the 8th grade, along with five other students, I was left back to repeat the 7th grade. I managed to make it back to the 8th grade after the first quarter, and went on to finish the 9th grade when I normally would have, without skipping.

I remember my 7th grade home room and social studies teacher Mr. Winevsky. In social studies he would have three large maps covering the blackboards until everyone was seated. Then he would raise the maps and have us copy everything from the three packed blackboards into our notebooks. When we were finished we were to read what we had copied. When we were finished we were to read it again. When we were finished we were to read what we had copied the day before, and so on. There was never any discussion, unless someone was misbehaving, which someone ultimately was.

I remember my science teacher, Mr. Katz, who went on to become dean, yelling at us, because we were always clowning around and never paying any attention. It was sad, because he was really trying to teach us.

In the seventh grade I played tenor saxophone, but just like in elementary school, I thought the music was boring and I never put any effort into it. In the eighth and ninth grades I took drama and writing instead of music. I remember my drama teacher, Mr. Alaimo, was a lot of fun. We read a lot of great books, including Firestarter, Salem's Lot, and other Stephen King excerpts. I remember hearing that he died from AIDS. I don't know if I knew what AIDS was at the time.