Dubbya Ceee Essss...

confession: I went to a christian school....

Disclaimer: I LOVED my christian school....the teachers, the students, the building. I had great memories and many great friends, and overall i would not need to think twice about sending my children there. I would 100% do it. It was such a wonderful experience!

OK, seriousness over....For those who have NOT attended a christian school for your entire schooling career, you are in for some shockers!! Lets start it off with a good old favorite of all who attended...

"Dress Code"
Back in the day when, they had this thing called a "dress code". Said dress code, was pretty vague in description, like a small paragraph in the student handbook, and in summary it said, girls Dresses and skirts only, and they must be knee length (which means below the knee). Boys, collared shirts, no jeans, and of course a tie for chapel. Easy right? WRONG! Do you know how impossible it was to find dresses and skirts that covered the knee? (i would add that were stylish too, but clearly i didn't care, cause momma was rockin' jumpers until 9th grade. yes i said it 9TH. GRADE. sad i know. i shoulda been slapped with the style stick...not a shining fashion moment in time for me). So not only did we have an impossible dress code, but they actually would check to make sure your skirt was indeed below your knee.... by making the student kneel down. I'm pretty sure yours truly had to kneel a time or two. Oh and stockings, did i forget to mention you needed to wear stockings or socks if you were a female....boo hiss. Try waiting at the bus in a skirt in the winter or stockings in the summer....awful!

"Open gym"
Is it normal for high schoolers to essentially get recess during their lunch hour? I don't know, but we sure did. There was a period of a few years where we were allowed to "play" in the gym during lunch. I'm sure it was the teachers way of getting all that hormonal energy out of us. Popular games were 4 square (yes, we were in HS), double dutch (again, still in HS), burn ball (i think the guys may have made that up, something with throwing the ball at the wall and trying not to get hit when it came back or else the person who threw it gets to chuck it at you as hard as they can, execution style...)

"Hot Lunch"
Apparently my husband tells me most schools offer FULL hot lunches. Our "hot lunches" were bagel pizzas (which were the BEST) on Wednesday and Pizza sold by the senior class on Friday. One class tried to sell spaghetti lunches one year, and that was a bust. We got cheeseburgers (that you microwaved - try not to gag), cup 'o'soups (those were quite popular) and an assortment of ice cream desserts (i was a fan of the GIANT cookiewiches) other than that you had to bring your lunch or go hungry. (oh and don't even THINK about leaving to go to breakfast, even if you have a signed note from your parent, because said note will be void and you will still get detention for it...not that i am bitter or anything...)

"Locker rooms"
The current students are living it up... They don't realize that back before the school upgraded with the snazzy second addition, we changed in the NASTY art supply overflow room...aka "the locker room". It was dark, and basement like and overall had the "slasher movie" feel to it. We graciously hosted visiting teams in a classroom for their locker room, so that they did not have to experience the dungeon!

"Catechisms"
In elementary we had these AMAZING things called catechisms. They were essentially a question/answer system to help us learn Biblical concepts. Ex. Question: Who made you? A. God made me. Question:What else did God make? A. God made me and all things. Question: Why did God make you and all things? A. God made me and all things for His glory.

We would learn and recite them over the course of the school year. They were great and many of them i still remember. I'm sure you ask any of my elementary alumni and they will MOST definitely remember having to say catechisms. We also learned Bible verses along with those catechisms and were quizzed on those verses as well.

"Chapel"
We went to chapel, every Wednesday, at 9am. Its like church. Complete with worship and a sermon. For the most part it was good, but sometimes it was GREAT! lol Especially when we would have a guest speaker, or vibrant pastor speak. Although most of the chapels i remember were me scoping out who sat next to who, watching people fidget or secretly hold hands, or looking for cool verses in my Bible... yeah i know, i didn't pay the attention i should have!

"Class sizes"
Christian schools are generally small, and mine was itty bitty. My graduating class was 24. I was student #23, thanks to a W starting last name, which thankfully Colty doesn't have to worry, he will be snuggled comfortably in the middle of the alphabet thanks to the L of our last name. Which small class sizes had its perks, you knew EVERYONE, but you also knew every ones business. Like who was dating who, and who was crushing on who, and who was asking who to the jr/sr. and who got detention... good christian juicy info like that.

"Jr/Sr."
When most schools had Prom, we had the Junior/Senior Banquet. Yeah that's right, no dancing folks (cause dancing = the devils movement or sex or something, obviously). Anyways, we got all dressed up, and went to dinner at someplace fancy, handed out some nice momentos to the Sr. class and oh yeah, did i mention we had a speaker (that's fancy christian speak, for a sermon) Oh and because our classes were so small and everyone knew everyone, we could do things like senior wills and senior memories, and pretty much everyone got mentioned or left something. Oh and did i mention we had after parties?!?! Yeah rockin right?! oh wait, they were at a parentally supervised home? with basement dancing? Yes that's right.

"Gym"
Carpeted Gym to be exact...Huh WHAT?! yeah that's right, our gym had carpet, and you can bet EVERYONE who came and played a sporting event there forever would remember that "oh yeah they have carpet in their gym" Which imagine playing volley ball and diving for a dig, and WHAM rug burns. Or basket ball and tripping or falling and hot dang, rug burn!! Not too pleasant. Oh and although i was not a fan of Gym class, we had great gym teachers who let us pick what kind of activity we wanted to do. Often we played soccer or basketball, or two hand touch football (not often chosen after "someone" who i will not mention, forgot the 2 hand touch policy and totally tackled someone...hilarious... but on occasion we could play with the scooters, or the GIANT parachute (i think i loved that until i graduated...) or even line tag (omg great memory of a classmate jumping over a bag of balls and completely wiping out) We never learned line dances, or tennis or some of the other mandated gym activities, but we sure had a great time!

my personal favorite...

"Cheerleading"
I was indeed on the cheerleading squad. It just so happened that it had been dormant for a few years and my freshman year, they brought it back (this was Christy's Senior year). Now, I'm sure you can imagine first what kind of outfits we wore.... Lets just say they were modest. We had 3 different uniforms while i cheered. We had the vests with skirts, then sweaters (yeah who cheers in thick sweaters, a christian school with a carpeted gym, that's who) with skirts, then sweaters with pants (yeah, from the 9.99 Stock room...remember that store??) and finally new vests with skirts. But a minor fly in the cheerleading ointment was that our skirts had to be FINGER TIP LENGTH. (That means when your arms are by your sides the hem of the skirt must come to the tip of your fingers) Now this wouldn't have been a problem except I had abnormally long arms, paired with very long fingers, so my skirt came to my knees. Talk about killing the "ooo I'm a cute cheerleader" spirit (not really, I'm pretty sure my bushman eye brows and orange hair did that.... ) But anyways, we wore what uniforms we had and rocked it.... Oh we even had a floor routine, which was oooohh sooo cool cause halfway through it said "OOOO you so funky and HOT" which we planned to premier at our HUGE basketball game against our rivals. Low and behold the day before the big game, we were told "funky" was NOT an OK word to put in our music and we had to either not do the routine OR cut that out of the song (we cut it out, but you can imagine the weep-fest a bunch of hormonal highschoolers had). So when we finally debuted our snazzy routine, it was sans "funky" and quickly followed by a much bigger, much better and much funkier floor routine by our rivals. Consider us schooled! Oh well, we had fun doing our X jumps and thigh mounts and i-tried-but-couldn't-quite-touch-my-toes-cause-ill-hurt-my-groin split jumps and threw in some cartwheels and maybe a somersault or two (OK, we boycotted the somersault idea). But it was fun and we didn't know we were as lame as we realize now.


But as I said before, I LOVED my christian school....the teachers, the students, the building. I was taught everything from a biblical christ centered perspective. I have great memories and many great friends, and overall i would not need to think twice about sending my children there. I would 100% do it. It was such a wonderful experience!