The Good Old Days Part 2

In that first year of teaching I had an unconventional way of beginning our day. I began it with singing. I sang to the children " Good morning to you, good morning to you, good morning dear children, oh, how do you do". They would sing back to me. "Good morning to you, good morning to you, good morning dear teacher, oh how do you do." It was a signal that our school day was beginning.

We had some interesting things going on in our classroom for the two years I spent at that first school. We had been discussing animals and frogs so one of the boys brought in some frog eggs. I brought a fish bowl to school the next day. We put the eggs and water into the bowl. This was in the spring of the year. By and by we noticed a tad pole and eventually the frog emerged. We put a tree branch in the bowl and the frog found his way up on the branch. He was bright green with knobs on the ends of his feet which served as suction pads. We learned he was a tree frog. We returned him to the area where he was found but had the pleasure of observing his development.


At that time in the late 1940's we had a unit on pets. As part of the unit we decided to have a pet show and make some money for school supplies at the same time. So, on a designated day the children who had pets brought them to school and with the pets on their desks the entire school, room by room was invited to come in and vote for their favorite pet. A vote was one penny. We made about $20 and the winner was a hen named Betty. She was brought to school in a wire cage. I thought it was a fun time for the children and it is something we probably would not be allowed to do now.

These children were schooled in the ways of the woods as they were living everyday in the mountains. They appreciated the things we did in the classrooms. Remember there was no television to occupy their time. Most did not have newspapers, magazines or books in their homes. One of the great things about those mountain children was that I never had a discipline problem. They were so very well behaved.

I fell in love with one little boy who had lost both of his parents and had come to live with his grandparents. His name was Clyde and I saw so much potential in him. He was a very bright little boy, well mannered and well spoken. I wished that I could have adopted him. I never asked to as his grandparents loved him and he really belonged to them, but he touched my heart as no other child had done. After he was grown I met him in my home town and visited with him. He became a newspaper editor so my faith in him was well placed.

My second year there my niece was a student in my class. She had been to Kindergarten in Peoria, Ill. where her grandmother lived. She had spent the year before there with her, so she was much better prepared for school that the children who had not had that experience. Her best friend lived across the road from her. This best friend told my niece that when she grew up she was going to be a teacher but not like me. She was going to be a Christian teacher. She thought I was not since I wore nail polish. That kind of thinking was not uncommon at that time in that area.

I recall one little boy named Howard. He was very young and had not been away from his mother before coming to school. He cried a lot and that was not all. Each day he would jump out of the window and run home. One day I had an orange in my lunch. I offered it to him and he peeled it and ate it. It was like magic for he never ran away again and the crying stopped. I heard sad news about him about fifteen years later. He lost his life while riding a motorcycle.

In that state and at that time the superintendent of schools for the county was elected. Before an election the schools were dismissed early and all of the teachers were expected to go out to the various homes to campaign for the incumbent superintendent. We went in pairs and I went with a second grade teacher whose daughter was one of my students. At lunch time we went to her home and she made a sandwich for our lunch. I had never had anything like it before or since. It was cheese with brown sugar on it between two slices of white bread. Surprisingly, it tasted good.

If a teacher became ill there was no list from which to secure a substitute teacher. This did not happen often but it did a couple of times to me. My class was taken over by an eighth grader. Our principal was also the eighth grade teacher so he simply selected a good student to stand in for me. I do not recall there ever being a problem in my class due to my absence.

At the end of each month we had an attendance record to prepare. It could be a nightmare as we had to count half days. An accurate record of attendance was important because of the money that the state allotted for every child for each full day of attendance.

When I first entered college my plan was to major in Art. I had two years in which I took all the Art classes I could cram in. Then my oldest sister had a heart to heart with me and insisted that I change my major to a more practical outcome. I cried for three days but I had to obey and that is how I was steered into teaching. While at this first school, wanting to share my interests , I formed an after school Art club for the higher grade students. We would meet after school and take our drawing boards and paper and usually charcoal or dark pencils and find a spot overlooking the valley. We sketched what we saw in the landscape. It was a fun thing for me and I think for the older students also.

In spite of the antiquated building, materials available, books, furniture, transportation and general inconveniences, I look back on those early years of teaching with fondness. How could I do otherwise for the young children I worked with were so sweet, innocent and appreciative. It was not like work but more like play. I have been told that the school had burned and was replaced with a one story building below the hill I used to climb. No doubt this building has all of the amenities of any modern school . Perhaps each first grade classroom has its own bathroom. The school probably has a lunchroom and certainly a parking lot for the teachers cars. The playground must have playground equipment other than swings which is all we had. And if a teacher must be absent a qualified substitute will be called in and she will find detailed plans on the teacher's desk to guide her for the day. There will be teachers meetings, in service on a regular basis, a music teacher, gym teacher and maybe even a school counselor. Who knows maybe one of those teachers is a descendant of one of my first students. That is a happy thought for me.

The Good Old Days Part 1

Sometimes the way we remember the past is in selective memory mode. We think of the really good things or the really bad things. What I am thinking about today is my first few years of teaching in southeastern Kentucky.

The first school where I taught just happened to be the same school where I began my education. My oldest sister was my teacher then and the year was 1931. It was a very short school year for me. I was too young and after one day my sister decided I was not ready. She based this on me bursting into tears when we were playing a game. It was "Have You Seen My Little Rabbit". I was told to go by each child's desk with my hands folded as in prayer. I had to ask each child if he/she had seen my little rabbit. After four or five negative answers of "No, I have not seen your little rabbit" is when I began crying. The game was intended to emphasize the proper use of "seen", as the mountain children had the habit of saying "seed" instead of seen.

The next year I did complete the year and also the next under the tutelage of my oldest sister. After that my parents moved us into the county seat and I attended school there.

The year that I began teaching was also my first year of marriage. My husband and I had both just graduated from Eastern Ky. State Teachers College in Richmond, Ky. Being a new bride, a new teacher and a new homemaker all fell at the same time. The classroom I occupied was a lower corner room which proved to be very convenient. In this picture taken in Feb. of 1949 you can see my corner room and also a lot of the boys and girls in this school which was perched on the top of a mountain. It was not a huge mountain but it surely seemed that way as I had to climb it after I left the bus at the road below and follow a path carrying any and all teaching supplies. That was year round and being young and healthy I thought nothing of it. There was a road up to the school but I never was on it as the bus did not take that route.

The first year I was there 45 first graders came into my room. After one week I saw that five of those little mountain boys and girls were simply not ready for school. Most were the age I had been at 5 years when I was taken to school. I sent a note home to the mothers and asked them to come to the school to see me. I explained the reasons why their young children would be so much better off if they waited one year to enter school. They were all very cooperative as in those days, if the teacher said it, then it was true.

After my class was diminished by 5, I had 40 delightful little eager learners. They had never been to Kindergarten, had not had any beautiful books to read or have read to them so I set about to remedy that. Our school did not have a library. I went every other week to the public library in my town ten miles away, and checked out the maximum number of children's story books allowed. I then had a library table where the children could visit when their work was complered. This was a treat for them and a great incentive to finish their paper.

I had a duplicating machine which sounds impossible in this day and time. It consisted of a rectangular metal box filled with a glycerin coated sheet of gelatin. It was about 1/2 inch thick. I used a special pencil to print out the days work paper. It was purple. No other pencil would do for this purpose. The "hectograph" was the name of the box and the hectograph pencil was what I used. A special sponge was used to wet the surface, then the prepared lesson paper was placed on the surface with the purple pencil side down touching the gelatin surface. The paper was smoothed out and left for a very brief time so the print could soak into the surface, then it was removed. As many sheets as you wanted to print were put down and rubbed over then pulled up. The next day the pattern of your paper had filtered down to the bottom and another new prepared paper could be put down. At this pace you can see why I only used one work sheet in a day.

The building I was in did have two bathrooms, one for the entire school for boys and one for girls. Unfortunately most of the time they were out of order so we had an outhouse for all to use. That was probably the most regretful aspect of being there, but there were others.!!

Most of the children went home for lunch. There was no lunchroom in the building. We all brown bagged it, even me !! Since we had no running water in the room I improvised with a small metal pan, a jug of water and a bar of soap (no liquid soap then). Every child had to wash his hands before lunch. I stood there and held the jug of water to pour over the little hands until all were clean. After lunch was recess. The corner windows in my room provided a fine place for all of the teachers to congregate to watch their classes at play. I always had things to prepare for the afternoon reading lesson so as I worked they socialized and watched the playground.

Once my principal asked me if their presence disturbed me from my work. I told him no, that I just went ahead with what I needed to do. We did not have teacher/principal conferences. I did find a note of approval on my desk one day. It was written on an index card which he had found on my desk. It said "Your children are doing the best I have ever seen in a first year teacher". Since I was hired for the second year I suppose that was his approval !!