Ana alexander, 8

Hello, I’m Ana. I’m 10 years old and I was born in Marquette. I am in fourth grade at Father Marquette Catholic Academy. People who go there just say “FMCA.” It’s the only school I have ever gone to. My teacher is Ms. Wayland. She loves reading. My assistant teacher is Ms. B. She is just about to finish college and get her teaching degree and then she will be able to teach K-5. The class sizes in my school range from five to 20 kids. My class has 20 and that is why we have two teachers.

School technically starts at 7:45 a.m. I get up at 6:45 a.m. My alarm wakes me up and it is annoying. I get to eat a slow breakfast: pancakes are my favorite. Getting dressed is easy. We have uniforms and a few different options to choose from. We can choose a jumper, a skirt or pants and we also have shorts. We can wear a blue sweater or a blue sweater vest. The first Monday of each month we can wear what we want. I like to wear a purple shirt. The school colors are white, blue and yellow, but for shirts you are allowed to wear blue, white or green. My favorite thing to wear is the skirt.

Some kids take the bus, but I get driven to school by my dad on his way to work. Once I get to school we have morning work. Some days we have morning work options and some days we have a morning work assignment. After morning work, we go to announcements. One fourth-grader each week gets to talk into the microphone and say the announcements and we each have jobs that change each week: paper passers, secretary, etc. If it’s not a mass day, after that we usually recite a poem, which we get to choose and then read our scripture. Our teacher has an incorrect morning message, which is full of bad grammar and we have to find the mistakes and go up to the board to fix them. I find a lot of mistakes.

Next is a snack, and at snack the first-graders and kindergartners have a snack sale and we can get snacks for 50 cents, and by snacks, I mean candy basically. After snack, we go to the third grade class and the third-graders go to our classroom to do language arts and we do math. I like math. It’s my favorite subject. At 11:15 a.m. we head out to the gym, which is where our lunch is.

After lunch we head to recess and then we do Latin and the third-graders come over and learn it with us. We started learning Latin last year. It’s fun learning a new language. Then we have history and right now we are going into different kinds of governments: democracy, oligarchy and tyranny. After history every other day we switch to science. We are learning about force and motion and we got new books this year. After science, we switch back to our homeroom and then we do English and religion. In religion, we are learning about Advent. Then we fill out our planners and we have to get them signed by our teachers and then we go to a special: gym, music, art or library. My favorite special is gym. I like to play games. After specials, we go home at 2:30 p.m.

Fridays are different because we go to mass at 9 a.m. The fourth-graders have pre-k buddies and the third-graders have kindergarten buddies and the middle schoolers have the other kids. Two middle schoolers and one elementary kid serves and we have a middle schooler and one elementary kid canter the mass, which means they sing.

I like my school because we are the only private school in Marquette, almost everyone has a Chromebook and because the teachers are nice and school starts early and ends late.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ana Alexander is 8 years old and is in the fourth grade at Father Marquette Catholic Academy. She plays soccer and loves horses.