My youngest son, now a PhD in materials engineering and a high ranking researcher in nuclear materials, almost “flunked” kindergaten over the word “cross”.
The teacher (must have been a preceeder of Common Core) asked the children to draw a “cross” on a pre-reading test. My son (good Catholic) drew a Roman cross. She wanted something akin to a Red Cross. So she didn’t recommend him for a regular 1st grade, but a “special”, all boy, first grade where the children would not be forced to learn to read. Books and papers would just be left around the room and they could teach themselves to read while they played games, if they felt like it.
Needless to say, I enrolled him in a Catholic school with a nun who taught phonics, and he was reading the San Francisco Chronicle classifieds by Christmas.
True story.
8<)
I got fouled up the other way coming out of St Thomas More in San Antonio after 1-8 there. Mom was enrolling us in the local high school, and the counselor asked if I had algebra yet while she wasn’t at the desk. I didn’t recognize the name “algebra” but I knew i couldn’t lie about anything.
So I asked, “What’s algebra?”
Ooopsie. They stuffed me back in the regular/catch-up classes, rather than the advanced science and math. Yep - I had all of Algebra I already, and a running start at geometry - but the nuns didn’t it “algebra.” Long story short, I did some substituting and fixing in the sophomore year, and got Algebra II, geometry, physics, chemistry caught up with the other AP classes so I could get to Trig, calculus,chemistry II, physics II in the senior year.
But mom learned her lesson too.
All 7 following brothers and sisters got registered “right properly” by HER rules each following year!
My son had an old school kindergarten teacher as well. Lots of tears and hurt feelings that year, but I survived... no wait, I meant him. I helped a lot that year in her classroom - and almost all of those kids were reading before Christmas, the highest level of booklets in her room were on a 3rd grade level and 7 children, including my son, reached that by May. Did I mention there were a lot of tears that year?