Ramsey County History – Spring 2006: “Growing Up in St. Paul: Stranger in a Strange Land: A Culture That for a Child Was Foreign and Alien”

Growing Up in St. Paul: Stranger in a Strange Land: A Culture That for a Child Was Foreign and Alien 
Author: Bernice M. Fisher

Bernice Fisher started kindergarten at Scheffer School in 1933. A later move to St. Adelbert’s School changed her in ways her parents had not anticipated. It was their child’s first introduction to Polish people, their church, culture, and language. Most of the Felician sisters who taught at the school were immigrants, and the students greeted them in Polish. The Polish language was a required subject, but students also studied English grammar and learned to write both languages in ink. Rote learning was the preferred teaching method at the school, all children wore uniforms, and their school days were highly regimented, with boys and girls separated in the classrooms and on the playground. The teaching was almost always done by the question and answer approach. The school and church also had a large number of Polish dinners and dances.
PDF of Fisher article