BACK-TO-SCHOOL TIME

For the first four years, I attended a one-room schoolhouse about a half a mile from home. For my siblings and me, those one-room school years were formative ones. Then our small school became part of a larger district, expanding our experiences and horizons.

The school I attended in Poughquag, NY consisted of six grades with 25 – 30 students. One teacher prepared lessons, taught and disciplined these students without aides, parent volunteers, or principal. The district superintendent visited occasionally.

Now that I have taught and done substitute teaching, I marvel at these teachers (Mrs. Reynolds for my first two years and Mrs. Burr for grades three and four). They worked with so many students of different ages and learning levels.

A One-Room School Heritage

The one-room school experience also constitutes part of my family heritage since my mother, grandmother, and Mother’s cousins all attended and then taught in these small buildings. My mother enjoyed her teaching days, although she didn’t do any after we children were born.

In those times, the 1930s, many school districts wouldn’t hire married teachers and definitely not those with children. Husbands were supposed to support their wives. Thus the jobs weren’t taken away from single women. Also, “society” considered that mothers should be at home raising their children.

So Mother had to resign from one school after she and my dad married. Fortunately the neighboring district needed a teacher and didn’t have that bias. I wonder though, if an unmarried teacher had applied, whether Mother would have received the position.

Pictures of Early Schools

I have pictures of my mother’s schools, also two of my grandmother and her students standing in front of her school. Mother enjoyed taking photos with her Brownie box camera so snapped shots of the children working and playing.

Since Mother married and remained in the community of her first school, some of her students still visited when she was in her 80’s. It seemed that those who gave the 19-year old teacher the most problems her first year of teaching thought the most of her in later years. Tony visited frequently, and they laughed over some of the escapades those boys tried to get away with.

Bag Lunches

We had no hot lunch program in the one-room school so brought our own everyday. As my sister and I grew older, ours was the job of making sandwiches and packing lunches for our brothers and us every evening.

Mother often made homemade cookies and cake for lunches. No packaged snacks were available or affordable.

Never Fail Chocolate Cake was a delicious snack cake, also one for lunch boxes. Mother often made it.

Place into a mixing bowl in the following order: 1 egg, ½ cup cocoa, ½ cup vegetable shortening, 1 ½ cup sifted flour, 1 teaspoon salt, ½ cup sour milk or buttermilk, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 cup sugar, ½ cup hot water.

Do not stir until the last ingredient has been added. Then beat together well. Bake at 350 degrees F. in layer pans or 9-inch square pan until tests done. Ice with favorite frosting. (You can bake it in a sheet pa instead of layer pans.)

(Mary Emma Allen researches and writes about family history from her New Hampshire home.)

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