I am a product of Saint Louis through and through, from grade school all the way to college. I owe a lot to this educational insitution. Of course, I was just as normal as anyone else. I'd pray that it would be signal number 2 when we hear the City Hall siren blare out its warning on stormy days, and I look forward to going home too. But I love the libraries.
Last Palm Sunday, my wife and I visited the campus because she was attending the BBCCCI (a cooperative) meeting and election. It felt good walking around my old high school grounds. It's no longer a high school facility, though. I believe it has been turned to the College of Education, and Boys High transferred to far-away Pacdal.
This is Saint Louis School Center as seen from the BBCCCI building along Assumption Road. See the red circle? That place is memorable to me because that's the place where I had my first ever nosebleed. I didn't even realize I was running blood through my nose. My classmates panicked when they saw it and I sat by the wall and held my head up high to stop the blood flow.
To the left of this circle are classrooms; those did not exist in my grade school days. It was one wide, shaded area.
And here's Saint Louis School Center as seen from the former Boy's High compound.
This is the facade of former Boy's High. During the first day of classes, papers would be posted in front of the school like those in the photo and then we would look for our names to see which section we are assigned in.
Unlike in other schools, we had two classrooms for the exceptional students for first year, which becomes one classroom in the succeeding years. These are the Science Sections. They always have one extra advanced subject, so they stay in school for an extra hour more than the regular classes. And then the rest of the student population is dispersed in the other classrooms. No regular classroom is better off than the other. In other schools, if you're at Section G which would most likely be the last letter assigned to the last classroom, you would belong to the "least likely to succeed." Those in Section A would be the most intelligent, followed by B, and so on. I think that is so discriminatory. I wonder if public schools there are still using this system.
This is the canteen. For a couple of weeks, I helped out along with Leo and other students to augment our allowance.
This narrow walkway divides the grounds between grade school and high school. In my grade school days, this was nonexistent was well. We could run about and have a real field day with our running games. Cars were very few then, and so these grounds were always wide and spacious.
This is the indoor basketball court. In our second year Physical Education class, we had an endurance run. We circled this court 40 times. I remember a classmate named Edgar who was so enthusiastic about this that he ran as fast as he can. Of course, he exhausted himself out by third lap or so and didn't finish the test.
The doors of the classrooms slide parallel to the wall, which I thought was cool.
This corridor was our favorite hang-out. To the left is the chapel, and the door at the right goes to the Guidance Office. And if my memory serves me right, the door at the end of this corridor leads to my grade six classroom. This was one of the wider classrooms, such that our teacher was having a difficult time having herself heard at the back. And so she had a sound system installed and she used a microphone to teach. Cool, huh? Whoa. Here name even came back to me just now. Mrs. Puzon was her name. Oh wait. I remember our classroom now. It was below this. We had a planting project and we left the plants outside the classroom, in the grounds where few students passed by. I was shocked to see my plant destroyed when I was going to get it for grading, and my teacher wouldn't believe that I did have my project ready because some of the students tried cheating by buying plants and repotting them in cans. I realized then that teachers were not as knowing as they are supposed to be, and are prone to errors as well. I also got my taste of injustice that day. Whoa. So aside from happy memories, I suddently remember these things. I'm babbling. Moving on...
The ascending stairs yonder goes to the library. Just below the library was my classroom in my first year. And below our classroom was our laboratory.
Visiting the school after so many years brought back a lot of memories. I had wanted to meet my batchmates in one of the reunions but haven't had the luck so far. But through this blog, I have talked to some of them again. Hmm... perhaps I will write some stories about my high school days in future articles.
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Saint Louis School Center
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Saturday, April 05, 2008
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9:51 PM
