Griffin Avenue Elementary School

Great School so many memories ! Went here from 1^st grade to 5^th grade. Amazing teachers. Mrs Garibaldi, Mrs Ramos, Mr. Luna. Cant remember all but all were Great (are) Class of 2002 !

Class of 1988. I went here for 4^th, 5^th, 6^th grade. Ms Sally Wong or Sally Chin (after she got married) was my 4^th grade teacher at room 28. She was rough on me, but I miss her. All the kids loved her. She put marbles in a jar on your desk if you answered a question correctly and you can collect toys after you fill up your jar with marbles.
Ms Jew Mori for 5^th grade was cool. Mrs. Cranston for 6^th grade, how can I forget that sweet old lady. Not sure if she is still alive since her health wasn’t great when she was my teacher. God bless her. I miss my old teachers and old classmates dearly. I wish I bought some school photos back then.

Compared to Solano, sometimes I wonder how I ever survived Griffin where I went from third to sixth grades.
Third grade was a trying time for me. I learned all about how to NOT make a gingerbread house.
Fourth grade was a blur.
Fifth grade was actually pretty cool. I had two teachers who came in on different days of the week. The one who taught science and math was obsessed with her son’s then AP biology classes so we were dissecting frogs and reconstructing chicken skeletons (chickens were bought from Chinatown and boiled by the cafeteria to get all the meat off). The other teacher was all about reading and the arts so we read stories and drew on the walls. She gave me one of my favorite books, «My Side of the Mountain.»
My sixth grade teacher was obsessed with preparing us for junior high and wouldn’t let us put our books in the slot under our desk. We had to pretend to walk up to the bookshelves and fake dialing a locker code to get our stuff. Wacky teachers.
It was in sixth grade though that I decided I was going to be a writer. I won the LAUSD handmade books contest for my grade level that year. My story was about a princess named Pumpkinlina. My book was shaped like a pumpkin. How could it not win, I tell ya!
My principal was obsessed with making sure we knew the importance of college. We took field trips to the local community colleges, state colleges and a private university (it was also in sixth grade where I decided which college to go to).
Actually, now that I think about it, elementary school was pretty fun.