ANOTHER OLD STORY

       Over my life I have had many experiences and adventures.

      I was a teacher for a while...37 years. Teaching was a challenge but a very satisfying experience.

     I entered teacher's college before my 18th birthday. This was a one year course that did a pretty good job of preparing people to teach. 

     I got a job in a one room country school. I started teaching before my 19th birthday. Most people would look at 19 year olds as if they were a joke in a classroom. 19 year olds would not be hired today. 

    I had nine students. The school building was old and in very poor condition. It was built using green lumber which shrunk so there were many cracks in the walls.. You could see daylight out of the northeast corner. There was no insulation. It was heated by a heater not a furnace. Sometimes we would sit around the heater to keep warm. Most mornings we sat around the heater until the building warmed up.

    I liked working with those nine kids. I particularly liked the grade ones. It was most satisfying to  see how much they had learned in one year.

    I enjoyed this year. The parents were most supportive. It was at a time when the rural population was in decline. Schools with this level of enrolment should have been closed but, school divisions could not purchase buses and there wasn't equipment to clean snow off the roads.

   I taught one year and resigned. The district wanted me to stay. They had a series of poor teachers before me so wanted me to stay. 

   The next  year the school was closed and the students bused to town. 

EDUCATION OF A PRAIRIE BOY PART 4

      Well, it's taken me awhile to get in a classroom for more or less formal education. 

     I will unfortunately be looking at this from under a few different hats. Some of it will be through the eyes of a little boy. Some of it will be from and adult and some of it from a teacher's point of view. We all think back to our school days and remember when we were children. Things change as we gradually grow older. Sometimes what my brother and I remember are very different. The adult point of view comes from us and our view of children. I taught for 37 years. That's enough to skew any memory. I also did some teacher supervision and evaluation. Did I mention that I had many student teachers over the years. That really changes what's under the hat.

    The typical one room school had students in each grade from one to eight or even nine and ten.  The highest enrolment in my school was 17. When I left there were only six kids left in the school. The school closed the next year.

     In the one room schools the teaching strategy was to tell each class what to do in that period of time. That may have taken two or three minutes.The kids would read a chapter of whatever it was and then answer some questions. Math lessons were very brief and then get to work and do a page or two of arithmetic questions. The good teachers would have activities that involved the whole school at one time. An example would be music. The teacher spent the most time with the younger students as they were not independent.

     The good teachers arranged things so that kids worked together. Kids are very good at teaching each other.

    I started school in 1945. We had two teachers that year. A  very quiet lady took us to Christmas break and then left to get married. I don't remember much about her except that she was very quiet. A young guy came after Christmas to finish the year. He had just finished high school. I remember having a lot of fun when he was there. However, I did learn to read well. It was the year that the Dick and Jane series was introduced to our school so we had the old reading series as well as Dick and Jane.

    For gr. two my brother started school. We had a very  quiet introverted lady for our teacher. Again , I don't remember much. We probably didn't do anything much. I remember we got into trouble a few times as we forgot we were in school and acted like brothers who fooled around.

   There were some major events that took place each year. One was the Christmas concert. Much of December was taken to practice putting together the program. There would be songs by the whole group and then music from smaller groups. REcitations were a favorite. Small skits were put on. And yes if the school was any good at all they had a rhythm band. One thing that I'll never forget is that I got kicked out of the rhythm band. I probably couldn't keep the rhythm but the problem was that I was playing sticks and my brother and I decided to hit each other. Needless to say, the battle got carried away 

    Now life out of school was still going on. What we learned in school helped us to learn more from our daily experience.

    So I did finish grade two. And I promise that my next post will take me to Gr. 3.

EDUCATION OF A PRAIRIE BOY PART III

     So at about 6 years of age I  began the institutional part of my education. Bur don't forget that alongside the institution life experience and learning went on.

      The system I was going into was very different from other systems because of the territory. The Canadian prairies are huge and were sparsely populated. The Canadian prairies were settled around 1900. There were few railroads . Travel and freighting were done with horses. So schools had to be planned so that kids didn't have to travel too far to get to school. The plan was that kids shouldn't have to travel more than 4 miles. I was lucky. I only had to travel one mile and most of the time I walked.

     The school building was built in 1908 and was called Hiawatha. Ever hear the name Hiawatha used somewhere?. It was not insulated and was built with green lumber. As a result the lumber shrunk and left spaces the wind could blow through. The prairies are a very windy place. I remember the wind moaning around and through some of the building. The building also moved slightly in the wind so you always heard the creaking of nails and wood. So some days you listened to the wind song all day. 

     For some reason or other the little kids who were going to start school in September attended school in May and June.  It was a bit like a kindergarten. 

    The good citizens of the prairies were always very proud of their schools. The schools acted as a community center. Many times churches used the schools. 

   So before I actually get to school let me tell you that the education they provided was somewhat limited. Supplies of materials like books were limited. There was an initial purchase of books and not much after that. Teachers had very limited training. Some had not completed high school. Sometimes the school was closed for a while because they could not hire a teacher. Some teachers were very good and some very inept.

   This is the only photo I have of the building. I'm the little fellow in the middle row first left.