Near Distant Past

“A hundred years ago” in 1959, I graduated in the summer from Western State College (college, then; university, now).  My BA degree came with certification as an elementary school teacher and, fortunately, the teacher in the Sargents School was retiring that year.  I would have eight grades with about twenty-eight children.  Usually a class with that number of children would be considered “normal,” but twenty-eight students in eight grades were a complicating factor.  The three-member school board was really taking a risk by hiring a fresh-out-of-college teacher to teach that many students in that many grades.  Of course, because the school was very rural – isolated, even – and not connected with any other school where the teacher could get assistance, as needed, may have influenced their decision to hire anyone who would take the job.  And, that turned out to be me.

My school had three rooms – two classrooms and an all purpose room.  Of course, at that time, we didn’t call it an all purpose room.  And, the first year or so, there were no restrooms inside of the building.  An outdoor privy met those needs.  Water was carried in a bucket from a nearby house – really, it was!.  And, a single dipper served when the children needed a drink of water.  During the next summer, the men responsible for the school (the school board and whomever they could recruit) installed an indoor restroom making our winter months easier to handle.

I always felt incredibly fortunate to have, as my critic teacher during student teaching, Mrs. Doyle.  Her family, long ago, established Doyleville, a village halfway between Gunnison and Sargents.  “Tough Plus” could be applied to her.  She required her student teachers to prepare plans for Monday through Friday to be turned in on the Friday of each week.  Those plans were expected to include goals and objectives for each lesson, questions that would be asked specific and identified students, what answers they were expected to give … well, you get the picture.  Then, at close of school on Tuesday of the week for which the plans had been written, if the class was not at the expected place in the plans, those plans had to be rewritten for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of that week.  And, of course, next week’s plans were due on Friday.  All of this was designed to allow the student teacher to really understand where her students were academically.  Fortunate, indeed, I was to have Mrs. Doyle for my critic teacher.  With that training, I was able to teach eight grades with twenty-eight students my first year out of college.  The second year, we sent our junior high students to Gunnison.  That reduced my class load to twenty-six students in six grades.

Paper for the students to use, pencils, crayons, and other miscellaneous materials were available.  A big problem is that we had no copier to duplicate pages for student study or testing.  No copier.  No mimeograph machine.  If I wanted three children in the same class to work on a test that I created, I had to make three separate copies of the work.  I think it might be easier, now, with a copier.

The pay was $3,600 a year.  I don’t remember any benefits such as health insurance.  Maybe, PERA (the Colorado public employee retirement) was involved – maybe, not.  Lodging was often hard to find.  Sometimes, we lived in Gunnison.  Sometimes, we lived in a log cabin in Sargents with a wood cook stove.  In Gunnison, Clara took care of daughter #1 while I rode the bus to Sargents to teach.  Then, she worked at the local hospital in the evening.  After daughter #2 was born, the three of us lived in the second classroom in the school, and Larry lived in town with the family Dorzweiler in the basement with the chickens.  I’d always said that when he took the income tax class (tough class!), he couldn’t live with us.  And, as it turned out, that was the quarter he took income tax.

The most fun we had was the Christmas trip the students, Larry, and I took to Denver.  The buildings in Gunnison, our nearest city, were generally not more than two stories tall with never an escalator in sight.  In those days, we did things we never thought were wrong and would definitely not do today.  However, the children all piled into my Studebaker Lark station wagon at about six in the morning¸ and off we went to Denver.  This was long before seat belts were thought of, so the children sprawled in the back and sang and slept.  It seemed to shorten the trip to the ‘big city.”  We headed for downtown Denver to see the sights.  The children were excited to see the tall buildings, the gorgeous Christmas lights, AND the escalators.  I don’t remember how many times they went up and down on the escalators in the hotel.  The hotel lobby Christmas tree was three or four stories tall, and decorated with gold lights and balls.  It was the hit of the trip.  We arrived home in Sargents after dark, safely delivered the children to their homes, knowing we had given them an experience they would never forget.

I don’t know how many one-teacher schools there are left in Colorado or the United States.  Or, even if there are any.  We did good things in that school.  I was thirty years an educator, and I know I would be a better teacher today than I was then.  Even with the spectacular training I had with Mrs. Doyle.

Be safe and well.

The Cranky Crone

P.S.  The pictures of the flowers have nothing to do with this article.  They are, however, the results of Bryan’s work, last fall.  And, they are pretty.

If you have thoughtful feedback or questions, please let me know with a comment below.