By Jane Kaufman
“Fascinating.” That was a word that Mary Krogness used frequently — often raising a single eyebrow — in describing her reaction to discoveries of her students.
In 1973-1974, I was fortunate to be part of her fourth grade class. There were 24 of us in room 9 at Boulevard School that year.
Dynamic and engaging in her out-of-the-box approach, she held high expectations for her students and encouraged us to cooperate, collaborate, and create alone and together. She introduced us to the concept of brainstorming as a class — writing our ideas on the blackboard, then encouraging us to choose as a group the best ones, which she circled. She also encouraged us to journal privately. She viewed any failure as the byproduct of an experiment — and an opportunity to learn.
She pushed social boundaries, eating her lunch with us on occasion and playing eraser tag with us in her classroom during recess on days it was too cold to go outside. She was a fiercely competitive player of a version of the game that required players to try to tag one another while balancing the fat, black chalkboard erasers, dusty with chalk, on top of their heads, temporarily graying a player’s hair.
I know that I’m not alone in feeling that every day was an adventure. We took a trip to the Shaker Lakes Nature Center and toted pond water back to school to examine under the microscope for amoebas — and then, after an introduction to literary terms, wrote poems inspired by the plants we identified on our walk. We picked apples and made applesauce in the faculty kitchen and pressed cider in our classroom. We studied Africa, culminating in the creation of an African meal.
I know that I’m not alone in feeling that every day was an adventure.
We explored each of the systems of the human body, most memorably perhaps the reproductive system, where we pushed our desks out of the way to join in a circle where Mrs. Krogness bravely answered our questions.
We lampooned national political figures, including then-President Richard Nixon, in political cartoons that she kept under lock and key once finished, fearing for her job; wrote the libretto, composed music, created costumes and sets in order to perform “The Flood That Saved the Day,” an original operetta that she directed with assistance from music teacher John Hall and art teacher Diane Kwiecien.
At my 40th Shaker Heights High School reunion last fall, one of my fourth-grade compatriots mentioned that another couldn’t attend. That observation led me to realize that I wanted to reunite our fourth grade.
I scoured Facebook. By November, I had critical mass. In January, 14 classmates, from Jerusalem to Portland, Maine, along with Mrs. Krogness in Cleveland (who now insisted we call her Mary) gathered virtually for an hour of online reminiscence.
Mary opened the meeting with a brief moment of appreciation for the event and for us. Then, each of us took about three minutes to speak about our most vivid memories of fourth grade and what about that year that we’ve carried with us 49 years later.
Seth Levy closed the event with an improvised piece on the piano. We’re already planning another virtual reunion, partly in the hopes of including a few more of us who weren’t able to be there, and partly to catch up more with one another. Mostly, though, we’ll meet again to marvel in what we shared in one fascinating year.
