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Many find the one-room schoolhouses nostalgic, reminders of
days gone by. However,
modern educators have begun to realize the important lessons these
quaint little buildings housing a handful of students can teach.
Fundamental methods developed to teach in smaller schools
(multi-age classrooms, peer tutoring, mentoring by older students,
students staying with teachers longer than, the now traditional, two
semesters) are being introduced into main stream school districts.
In an interview Professor Gulliford, author
of ‘America’s Country Schools’ (University of Colorado Press),
says one-room schools provided an ideal environment for students to
develop healthy
self esteems and learn to interact in groups.Generations of Americans learned to socialize in one-room schools,
where all children count. Many
kids in large modern schools get lost in the shuffle of hundreds, sometimes
thousands, of students.
In Montana, students from small schools, numbering forty or less,
scored higher on standardization tests in reading, math, language arts,
science and social studies than students from larger schools.
The executive director of the Montana School Boards Association,
Lance Melton, contributes the higher scores of small school students to, no
surprise, small class-to-teacher ratio and the individual instruction
youngsters receive.
Parents and teachers agree, one-room school students receive
instruction better tailored to their needs: advanced students move more
quickly forward in studies, and struggling children receive more
individualized attention.
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The New York Times correspondent, Jodi Wilgoren, goes on to
explain that as of 1996, approximately 380 one-room schools remain
operational in the United States, in comparison to 196,000 one-teacher
public schools in the year 1917.
Out of twenty-eight states, Nebraska has retained the most one-room
schools, 128. Montana brings up
second with 81.
Interestingly enough, after decades of declining numbers, one-room
schools may be realizing a resurgence, although in different forms.
The author cites additional growth of one-room schools in Amish and
Mennonite communities in Pennsylvania and surrounding states. However, while Midwest and Mountain state schools continue to
consolidate, California has realized a 22 percent growth in one-room schools
during the last five years.
This California phenomenon is attributed to the flexible work
schedules of parents and their ability to work in remote locations.The Internet and other telecommunicating arrangements with their
employers make this new ‘frontier’ living possible.
The quaint rural schools of the past,
continue their influence on education into the 21st century.
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My Mother,
The Teacher
by Walter Pettifor
My mother, Alberta (Long) Pettifor, taught in Michigan one-room schools
right up until they were all closed and consolidated with nearby town
and city schools. She was the last teacher in three of those country
schools—whenever they closed her school she looked for another that
needed a teacher.
She had dropped out of high school during the First World War
to deliver mail by horse and buggy on a Star route contracted for by
her father. Two years later she took the County Normal course at Lake
City, earning a temporary certificate, then taught three years
in Missaukee County. She earned $75 a month in a small school west of
Falmouth, paying $5 a week for room and board at the home of one of
her students. As teacher, she did the janitor work, including building
the fire in the cast iron box stove in the middle of the schoolroom.
The next year Alberta’s contract wasn't renewed, so the 1922-23 school year
found her at the Maple Hill School near her Lake City home. That
school then closed and the kids transferred to the Butterfield School;
and Miss Long went to Lucas where she taught the lower grades in a two
room, two-teacher school. That was a tough year and, with her
temporary certificate expiring, she decided she didn't want to teach
any more.
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So she moved to Belding and worked four years as a waitress in
a boarding house for young ladies who worked in the silk mill. The pay was only $35 per
month for six and a half day work weeks. But she had
enough free time between meals to take classes and finish high school.
Her mother encouraged her to go to Mount Pleasant where she completed
credits for an associate degree and lifetime certificate. In 1929 she
ran out of money with the summer term still left; her mother borrowed
$50, which Alberta repaid when she began teaching again.
After one year in a Wexford County school northwest of Manton
her career was put on hold. Her mother died and she went home for
three years to care for younger siblings, then married and gave birth
to four babies in the next five years.
During World War II, Mother taught second and third grade in
the four-room school at Elmira, and was my teacher then. She quit
after two years because teaching, home making and being the mother of
four small children proved too much.
It wasn't long until Rogers School in next-door Antrim County
needed a teacher. After it closed in l951 she taught the Sparr School
east of Gaylord until it consolidated with Gaylord in l955. What to do
then? After quite a search, a school was found in western Jackson
County, near Albion, that needed a teacher. My youngest sister had
just graduated from Gaylord and was headed for college at Spring
Arbor; so my parents were free to make the move, renting an old
farmhouse near the school.
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When that school folded two years later, Mother signed on with
Concord Public Schools' teaching fifth grade. She was fired mid-year
due to problems with discipline. That devastated her and we wondered
if she'd ever teach again, but she did. They moved back north to the
farm home, and she taught a little while in Boyne Falls, then finished
her career by teaching kindergarten at Frederic.
Mother wasn't always orthodox in her approach to school. In her
second year of teaching she had some seventh and eighth grade boys who
didn't care about studying; their main interest was the sport of
boxing. She put on the gloves with them at recess, out boxed them, and
soon had them on her team in the classroom. Imagine, a petite five-foot-two blue-eyed young lady slugging it
out with a thirteen-year-old Jack Dempsey wannabe?
That same year her students went into the woods and ate some
spring leeks during lunch recess, a scheme that had earned them an
afternoon off the year before. Miss Long got wind of the plot and took
a quiet girl aside, asking her to bring back one for the teacher.
School continued unabated the rest of the day.
She always expected the best, both from her students and from
her own children. I don't recall a time when she did not let me know
that I was expected to excel in school and to go to college. She was
especially good at rescuing students who were mired in academic
quicksand. A friend of mine, Jerry*, whom she taught only in second
and third grade, credits her with making his education possible by
teaching him to read. Reading came hard for him, and first grade had
only bewildered his young mind. As an adult Jerry became a community
leader, serving many years on the consolidated school board.
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Jack* was a big kid in the eighth grade and labeled
"couldn't learn'' and "never amount to anything" the
first year she taught his country school. A non-reader, he frequently
missed school to work on the farm; he was in danger of quitting
altogether without notice, and certainly would when he turned sixteen.
Needing to act quickly, Mother enlisted her husband's help. He had
already been an able assistant with special projects such as the
Christmas program, where the true meaning of Christmas was always
included. A slow reader himself with only an eighth grade education,
Dad was the patient tutor that Jack needed. Jack not only learned to
read, he went on through high school and eventually became a
successful real estate broker.
On teaching kindergarten, she said it required all she'd
learned through a lifetime, teaching and raising her own four
children, "and sometimes even that wasn't enough." Had
Michigan kept the one room school system, they'd have had a loyal
Alberta Pettifor in one of them right up until she retired.
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*Student names have been changed.
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