Fourth grade was a blast but not for the reasons you think

If someone asked me which grade level I miss the most if I HAD to choose, it would be the fourth grade. But it had nothing to do with school, itself. 

I have fond memories of the fourth grade. We were the “seniors” of the school, since my old district divided everyone into four-year intervals. You went to grade school until fourth grade, middle school between grades five and eight, and high school between grades nine and twelve.

But in that old building that had seen better days, we had an annex portion. While the rest of the school melted during the warmer months and bundled up during the cooler months, we had our “senior perks,” sitting in a classroom with an air conditioner and heater. We also sat in one of just two rooms with carpet.

The other carpeted room? It was the other fourth-grade class. If you want to dive more into specifics, we were really in one classroom with a big ass curtain separating the area. Still, that classroom was paradise in a place that wasn’t as much of a hellhole as the middle school or high school, both of which were forgettable.

What made the fourth grade so memorable?

We never said the Pledge of Allegiance. Even then, before I knew a socialist wrote those words for that cloth worship ritual, I thought refusing to stand and recite it was great. So to have a teacher who bucked the trend way before it was fashionable to? Yeah, I’ll take it.

The “shoes must be worn at all times” rule also didn’t apply to us. Walking around a carpeted floor in my socks all day made the place feel somewhat like home, so that was another perk.

It was also a year when I lucked out, because so many parents of the brats Mom and Dad forced me to interact with outside of school loved “requesting” the spoiled pieces of muck they were raising get clumped up with one teacher so they could be in class together.

They requested the other teacher, who was a dictator built in the mold of the nasty old bat I had in first grade a few years before.

TC was reading textbooks for once

It was a year they gave us new reading books. A big deal since our school district loved force-feeding dated 1980s-esque garbage down our throats. But like I said: fourth grade had its perks. New texts added fuel to the burning flame.

The stories were so interesting that I wish I kept the damn thing. But I didn’t start stealing textbooks until middle school. I use the term “stealing” loosely here, because they use stolen funds to “provide” such texts. So I took back what was mine all along.

And would you believe it? To this day, I found the history class entertaining. One reason? Our fourth-grade curriculum had us studying Ohio’s history instead of the usual U.S. or world history propaganda. It carried a different vibe.

That said, fourth grade was the year I started reading books that I wanted to read, and not what I was supposed to be reading. The science books still sucked, you see.

This transformed into a perfected art in middle school, but one that started because I discovered Harry Potter and found J.K. Rowling’s work more entertaining than those science texts.

Speaking of Harry Potter…

In fourth grade, I decided Slytherin House was by far my favorite because it had a cool name and color scheme. Fast-forward to 2024, when I started writing The Arcane Prophecy, inspired thanks to a prompt from a Harry Potter-related question on Quora, asking readers why Lord Voldemort didn’t just adopt Harry?

It’s a question I took a deeper dive into with Arcane. The main character, Yote Diamondback, possesses more Slytherin qualities based on her upbringing. Yote’s a nice girl, but when you read between the lines, she’s attracted to elitism and goes all googly-eyed for the “bad boy” instead of the “nice guy.”

Meet Yote in the first three chapters of The Arcane Prophecy, and I’m sure you’ll find that Potter-like inspiration in that small sample size. And know that the roots and origins of Arcane started in the fourth grade when I took my first deep dive into what was then just another book series, not a multi-billion-dollar mega franchise.