As I reread “The Best Teacher” I realized there was much more to tell, especially about that type of school. Very few such schools remain today. I have read of a few in the upper midwest. But now they have the internet.
The building was already quite old by the time I started school in 1933. I had visited so it was not that new to me. However, I was quite excited to be a pupil-a first grader. As we entered through the outside door, we found ourselves in a hall. The first door which was almost immediaely to the right was the door into the classroom. On the right side of the wall beyond that door were hooks for our coats. On the left side there was another door. This opened into the woodshed where slabs had been stored for the coming winter. Most of the wood we used were the cuttings of bark and some wood from trees being prepared to saw into boards at the sawmill. Farther down also to the left were two narrow hallways, the first going to the boys indoor outhouse, and the other at the far end going to the girls. They were not heated. No one asked to “leave the room” in winter until it was necessry.
The classroom was large with a blackboard on the wall next to the hall. The teacher’s desk was in front of that and then the stove sat between the desk and the outer wall. There were a couple of windows in that wall. Along the back of the room were some shelves and a stand for the water jug. Since there was no running water, a couple of the older students went up to the Cottons, the nearest neighbor, to get a pail of water. This was poured into the water jug. Each student had a cup that was brought from home. I am not sure if that wall had a window. The other wall which faced the road and the Great Rock was nearly all windows. That was our source of light. Working could be difficult on very cloudy days, but we were used to it. There were individual desks with a little space on top for an ink well. That was a small glass container with a metal screw on top with a hole in which a pen could be dipped. Only the older students wrote with ink. The teacher made the ink with a black powder and water. The pens were tapered black sticks with a curved narrow opening on the big end in which the other end of a pen point could be pushed. A point did not last very long. Blots were also common.
School started at nine. The first day we were issued a ruler, a pair of scissors, an eraser, two pencils (two more at the beginning of each six weeks), a blotter to some, and the year’s text books Appropriate paper was issued with writing assignments. First graders sat in front with the older students in the back. Assignments were written on the board for the upper classes. There were usually five or six of the eight grades. The teacher spent time in turn with the different classes. She had the day well planned and the day moved ahead smoothly. We had a fifteen minute recess at 10:30, and a full hour for lunch at noon. We all brought our lunches from home. In winter the teacher used a kerosene stove and baked potatoes which we ate with butter, salt, and pepper. They tasted so good. At recess and after lunch we played baseball-scrub-with an old bat and a tennis ball or just ran around with tag games etc. (In scrub players rotated positions: batters (usually 2 I think), 1st base, fielders, pitcher, and catcher. If the batter hit the ball, he would run to first base and back home if he could. If he had to stop at first, the other batter was up. If he struck out or was thrown out, positions rotated. The actual positions depended on the number of players.) In winter we had snowball fights, slid down the rock on slabs, or the hill behind the schoolhouse with sleds we brought from home. We also played games like prisoner’s base in the snow. One year we built an igloo. On bad days we played indoor games. School let out at 3 or 3:15. First graders got out at 2:30.
Somehow the teacher managed to correct our papers and hand them back during the day. If we had a failing grade in arithmetic, we could do it over for a seventy. I was absolutely mortified the first day I had long division. I got a zero. I got it fixed when I realized what I had done wrong. We had a spelling test every Friday. If we did not get a hundred, we had to stay in at noon and keep taking the test until we did. That taught me to be a good speller.
Besides Christmas there were other special days or occasions. The teacher brought her victrola (windup) on Fridays and played many records, mostly classical music. In the spring we would have a sugar on snow day. The teacher brought some maple syrup, boiled it down until it was ready to sugar and then poured some on each pupil’s bowl or pan of snow. After it cooled a litle it was utterly delicious. The last day of school was an outing. The teacher and parents or older kids who were former students would load us up in several cars and we would go places, the Community Camp, Burns Pond where the teacher lived on the lake, the Tramway, the Old Man, and Glen Ellis Falls are the ones I remember.
The school building is gone. The school yard, except for the site of the building, has gone back to the properties from which it came. The Great Rock is still there. There are trees where it was open. I think erosion has changed the ledge where we sat eating our lunches on nice days. It will be there for a long, long time.
Questions, anyone?
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