Fourth Grade Math Class

The first day of fourth grade, my Language Arts class read a short story in which a dog appeared to able to respond according to what his owner said. My teacher, Mrs. Hawkins, asked the class how we thought the dog was able to do that. She specifically warned us to not say that the dog understood English, because dogs clearly cannot speak. Thinking I had the answer, I raised my hand and she called on me first. I don’t know why, but I was so confident in my answer which was the dog acted the way it did because it understood the human. The moment it came out of my mouth I was horrified, but it was too late to take back. My teacher stared at me and shook her head and chose someone else. Apparently, the correct answer was the dog understood

From that moment on, I never raised my hand in class ever again and I fully mean that. Fourth grade wasn’t all that bad, however. There were plenty of good memories, specifically in my math class. Mr. Basset taught that class for me, and though I don’t remember the entirety of what I learned, I could never forget his mental math quizzes. Every so often, each student would have to get out a piece of paper and number it one through thirty. Then, Mr. Basset would read out loud math questions, beginning with very basic ones and ending with some equations I swear I still couldn’t do to this day. After, we would practice mathlete games. This is the only math memory that I find tolerable and even somewhat enjoyable to this day. A few months of practice went by and I became the best Lines and Dots player in the fourth grade, thanks to a fifth grade tutor who came once a week. In the competition, I lost the very first game, yet still managed to not get last. How that happened, I’m still not sure. The rest of fourth grade consisted of me terrifying the boys in handball, spraining two fingers in tetherball, and playing shadow tag. I also discovered some useful talents such as reading while walking, figuring out which colors