Scout's first day of first grade is described in chapters two and three. Her teacher is Miss Caroline Fisher, who hails from North Alabama and doesn't know Maycomb or her students very well. Miss Caroline's ignorance is first noticed by Scout when the class hears a story about cats. Scout comments as follows:
Miss Caroline seemed unaware that the ragged, denim-shirted, floursack-skirted first grade, most of whom had chopped cotton and fed hogs from the time they were able to walk, were immune to imaginative literature (16-17).
Not only does Scout point out how unaware her teacher is, but she also describes her classmates in the above passage. These are kids who struggle under the Great Depression and the effects of an impoverished lifestyle. Specifically, the chapters chronicle the Cunninghams and the Ewells, as represented by Walter Cunningham Jr. and Burris Ewell.
Walter doesn't have any money for lunch, causing Miss Caroline to cross a line unknowingly by offering him a quarter and expecting him to pay it back. She then attempts to tell Burris to take a bath before coming back to school the next day, and he makes her cry by verbally disrespecting her in front of the class. He also scares her with how much lice he has crawling out of his head (which he then eats).
There are also students who have repeated the first grade a couple of times. Walter is one of them, which he explains to Atticus is because he hasn't been able to finish school each year because his family needs him on the farm. Scout's classroom is a mix of well-bred, middle-class kids and poorer, suffering kids. Most of the kids show up to the first day of first grade dirty, hungry, and illiterate. Scout, on the other hand, is privileged because she enters first grade already reading, with a full stomach, and wearing clean clothes.
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