(OT) From the teacher's desk...4th grade troubles

[SKTHOMPSON_1 at msn.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 10704

> Penny wrote:
> > Lucky you.  I still remember bitterly contesting the loss of a 
4th grade spelling bee because I spelled it "honour" instead 
of "honor."  I insisted that both spellings were correct, but I lost 
the argument.  Obviously, I was bitter about it since I can still 
remember it to this day.  <g>  I guess it's because I wasn't 
outwardly Hermione enough.
> 
>John wrote:
> I'm still bitter about my fourth-grade teacher (yes, I was still in 
the US education system then) taking a point off because I used "got" 
as a past tense instead of "gotten". I can remember being made to 
look through Webster's Collegiate dictionary ::spits on the ground:: 
until I found it, as well. It was in a Wordly Wise test...does anyone 
else remember those? They were great, I always got over 100% because 
they gave us bonus questions. I AM the male Hermione. Goodbye.
> 
> --John

Bizarre.  I remember in 4th grade some exercise (don't remember the 
point of it,) in which we were writing sentences.  I wrote: "Lisa had 
gotten a bicycle for Christmas."  Mr. Minar made me find 'get' in the 
dictionary being used this way.  I did find it, and he said "Okay, 
then."  No big arguments, don't know why I remember this; I do 
remember thinking my sentence sounded fine and couldn't figure out 
what he was objecting to.  I was only eight, or maybe nine, at the 
time, of course...

Kelley