st joe 2

OK.  the school had 3 floors and I described the first.  unbelievable as it seems, the second floor had four rooms: this was the grade school and the top floor had four roooms for the high school
  the grade school was broken up thus: first & secon grades in one room. third and forth in one room and so on.  The high school fared a little better:  freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior.  By the 9th grade class size dwindled with a lot of families sending their kids to the public schools.  They figured their kids got a strong dose of religion in grade school and the public schools covered a lot of towns and was cheaper.
Since my birthday is in December, I started grade school when I was five years old, now they would wait till I was seven.  Half the classroom was first grade and after the nun/teacher taught them for awhile, they got a reading or writing assignment and she walked over to the other side of the room and taught the second graders  This gave us time to goof off without her noticing us.  Being only five, the rest of my classmates looked physically  hug to me and the second graders(who always picked on us), seemed like giants.  You were a nobody in grade school till you reached the top: 8th grade.  Only to be at the bottom again next year.  Our "science lab" was an oversize microwave stand on wheels with a sink.  The only other rooms on each school floor was the bathrooms and the principal's office was in the middle with one principal for both the grade and high school.  I don't recall any fire escapes but every month we would all have to sit against the walls in the halls for a tornado drill-which was dumb as we didn't get tornadoes in the valley, just bad lightning storms. Or we would all have to go outside for a fire drill and the fire department was there to time our exit.  Anyway, that was the layout of the over stuffed school.  Side note: No A/c, naturally and the heat came off of huge steam radiators which if you had a window desk by one of them, half your body would roast.  And, of course, we didn't have PE.  I guess the padding's and weekly walks over to the church to go to confession was enough exercise!