Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life

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systems on top of each other where there’s a local school, 
uh, and then there’s also what they in Philly called 
mag-
net schools 
that pulled kids, uh, from all around to a 
diff erent program, uh. So in, up until like fourth grade 
or something, I had a school where I went to four days 
a week, and then there was a diff erent one that I went 
to that, I think that kept changing the name—it was 
ac—, you know, academically talented or gifted—they 
changed the name a number of times, but there was a 
diff erent building, a diff erent school you would go to 
the fi fth day a week, um. And it was, as a kid, one of the 
big things is that you don’t, you know, I took—well, they 
didn’t have school buses—so you took, I took city buses 
to school starting in probably 
third grade
, uh, and, I 
guess I had an older brother who would go with me, but, 
uh, somewhere in there he went off to a diff erent school, 
and I’m taking the bus to school at, you know, age, you 
know, nine or eight or something, which I don’t think 
they let kids do anymore. Uh, but you would, uh, that 
school—I always left each school one year before it was 
capped out. My elementary school went to 
fi fth
. I left 
after fourth grade and went to a diff erent school that 
did fi fth through eighth, uh, and then that school went 
actually through twelfth, but I left after eighth grade, 
after, uh, junior high, and that was a, uh, that school 
was called, uh, Masterman—it was somebody’s name: 
Julia Masterman, uh, Middle School. And that school 
was, that was a magnet school, so from my elementary 
school, I had to apply to get into that school, uh, and you 
had to have certain grades to get in, I mean, as a