Seaview Elementary School - 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and HIstory

Seaview Elementary School. Photographed by
Michelle Goodrum, August 1997.

Seaview elementary was and is a kindergarten through sixth grade school and is where I attended for those grades. It was fairly new back then and probably had around 600 students.

The classrooms were organized around four bays with five classrooms opening into each common area. These common areas had a boys and girls bathroom and a large open area where the lunch carts would come every day. Each of the five classrooms was dismissed one at a time to get their lunches and you had a choice of hot lunch or the milk cart. We had 30 minutes for lunch and then a half hour recess afterward. The lower grades had both a morning and mid-afternoon recess of about 15 minutes. each. The upper grades just had one 15 minute recess and I can't remember if it was in the morning or afternoon. We had a playground and two covered “sheds” which got used a lot because of the constant rain in the Pacific Northwest.

In 1997, Seaview was modernized and remodeled. We wandered by before they had gotten too far into the project and were able to look into the windows of some of my former classrooms. My old second-grade classroom, Miss Poor was my teacher, still had the same blue countertops and probably the same blackboard. Yes, I said blackboard, complete with chalk. Did I mention the school needed to be modernized?

Another family and the construction manager were wandering around at the same time we were so we started talking. The construction manager told us all about the modernizations that were coming to the Seaview and then asked us if we had children who attended. I replied, no we didn't but I had attended Seaview Elementary from grades K through six. The other dad looked at me like I was an alien from another planet. Either I looked really young or he couldn't believe school was that old! Moving on…


It was really fun to wander up to my old school, before they had done too much remodeling, reminisce and learn about the changes that were coming which by the way are probably completely outdated by now!

Amy Coffin's series, 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History is a series of blogging prompts that "invite genealogists and others to record memories and insights about their own lives for future descendants."

© 2011, copyright Michelle Goodrum