"Where Olmsted County News Comes First"

28

Should the Vikings be able to use the University of Minnesota’s TCF Bank Stadium?

 Yes

 No

 I don't care


View Results

Comments

In the fall of the year, after harvest, it was not uncommon for mice to look for warmer shelter for the winter. The colored leaves were falling and the days were growing shorter. Each month was passing toward the end of another year. But for me, I felt like it was a new beginning with my first teaching assignment. I would be teaching six grades of children in a one-room country school. Memories flood my mind and I would like to share them with you. It was in Otter Tail County, School District #1498 in the school year 1962-63. The school was located west of Wall Lake.

I was always at the school by 8am. A large yellow school bus picked up the children in the country and the grade school children were dropped off at “my” school and the older kids went on into the city for junior high and high school classes. I could not be late....not even once because I had the key and it would have been too cold for the small children to be locked out of the school in the morning. I don’t ever remember that school was closed due to winter storms. There was a big old furnace in the basement that kept us toasty.

School didn’t start until nine o’clock so I was like a daycare provider the first hour. Being a young and naive 19 year old, I just accepted it as part of my job. I grew to be very fond of those children who were ages six to twelve.

My biggest joy that year was teaching five beautiful little first grade girls how to read. There were no educational programs for children on TV. In fact, many homes were just purchasing their first television set. Phonics was my method of teaching. First they learned the alphabet, how to recognize and identify the letters (and print them) and then how to pronounce their individual sounds and finally put them together as words. Sometimes you had to just teach word recognition. For example, “the.” Ta Ha E does not pronounce “the.” The five were all very successful readers, which I felt was the most important skill learned in school. Those little girls would now be fifty-seven years old!

One day I thought about how each grade studied six different subjects and I taught six grades. I realized that I was teaching 36 different 10 minute classes a day, and don’t forget music, art and physical education. Art was every Friday and music and physical education was every day. (Remember recess??) The last three were done together as a group. Often the younger students needed help with their art project and the older ones finished it quickly and were good to help their younger brothers or sisters get theirs completed. The sixth grade class had two twelve-year-old girls who were very bright. When I was up front at the little table with little chairs teaching a class, the children at their desks knew they could raise their hand and one of the sixth grade girls would help them with their questions. They had been given my permission to help the younger students. I thought of them as my “mini” teachers.

Thinking back, I should never have quit piano lessons in seventh grade!! I had to practice the piano music before any school programs. Yes, I remember a Christmas Program and a play in the spring. The play was about the “Billy Goats Gruff.” The younger children played the goats and crawled up on the tiny chairs and over the tiny table (it was a bridge) on all fours. They each had a goat mask I had drawn. Of course there was someone assigned to be the bad “Troll” who lived under the bridge. He was a “bully” and also had a hand-drawn mask. The kids loved acting out things and the parents were proud of their “Johnny.”

One day I saw a mouse run from under the piano across the one room classroom and into a hole in the corner of the woodwork. The hole was the size of a #2 pencil. The mouse had no problem squeezing into the small hole. I would never have believed he crawled into that tiny hole, if I had not seen it with my own eyes! The war was on... the next day I brought two mouse traps and some cheese. The two fifth grade boys were delighted when I asked them to be in charge of setting the traps with cheese in the piano. (I didn’t know how.) Every morning for 15 school days they came to school and found a dead mouse in the piano. They were delighted hunters and I was the delighted teacher who had never set a mouse trap in my life. We were able to get rid of the “Mice in the Piano.”

Part of my job was to sweep the floor after school each day. During a particular day one of the girls brought a rhinestone (found on the floor) to my desk. I had asked her to place it on my desk which was next to the wastebasket we all used. I assumed it was from someone’s barrette for their hair. Just before the end of the school day my wedding ring (hooks that hold the diamond) caught on a piece of my clothing and I came to realize the rhinestone was actually the diamond from my wedding ring. In another half-hour it would have been pushed off the desk and into the wastebasket. Oh my, how lucky was I?

During the spring, a 3rd grade boy found a baby garter snake at home and brought it to school. (This was before “show and tell” was invented.) It was in a small jelly jar with a screw lid. After every student had looked at it and we had talked about it, it was set on my desk until school was over. All day long it just sent shivers up my spine as it kept slithering up the side of the jar looking to escape. I have never liked snakes and was so worried a child would let it escape into the classroom.

Years later I ran into one of the mothers at the local 5 & 10 cent store. I told her about her young daughter telling me at school how her dad had chased a mouse out of the baby’s crib the night before with a broom and he was in his underwear. Remember... what happens at home is told at school the very next day! My lips are sealed with other secrets.

Other memories were of the wonderful Christmas gift the children gave me that year. The parents had contacted my mother for ideas. Mother had purchased for me for Christmas a beautiful fancy, floral, china coffee pot with matching creamer and covered sugar bowl at the local Bible, Book & Gift Store. It was Lefton China in a pale brown background with gorgeous pink roses. The children gave me nine lunch plates with matching cups in this pattern. I love those dishes to this day and have used them for many luncheons and/or coffee parties in the past fifty-one years.

There was a big surprise for me when we were trying to finish up our studies at the end of the school year. I was told that the two children who would be first graders next year would be coming to school each day the last six weeks for Spring Primary. These were children who did not know their colors, numbers, letters or any other important information and it was hard to keep them occupied when I was teaching 36 other classes. They really needed more of my one-on-one attention than I could give due to my limited time with so much else to do.

You might wonder what such a demanding job was worth? I was paid $2,700 a year and drove to the treasurer’s farm home at the end of each month to pick up my check. I opted to have my pay spread out over twelve months, or $225 a month. I was in the money! I could afford to send my husband’s white shirts to the laundry each week (25 cents per shirt) and hamburger was two pounds for 89 cents at Spies Grocery.

I know now why the Teacher’s Edition of the school books has all the answers. It’s because the teachers never did know all the answers! Trust me...I’ve been there.