School Marm

Boy, we must be thinking alike tonight! I'm up eating chocolate chips I stashed in the back of my cupboard (I never share them, and never use them for cookies) and drinking tea. My family came to visit this week, and after a whole lot of chaos and very little organization, I did manage to get my bills paid, my house cleaned up, one meal cooked, visited the Chamber of Commerce, took my kids on a field trip, and found my desk, which was buried under an assortment of books, toys, clothes, dishes, papers, notebooks, trash, and I think I found a pair of undies in there too....not mine....thank goodness.

What I really wanted to write about tonight is really interesting. I tried to memorize as many of these "rules" as I could so as to share them with you. We visited Mansion on the Hill today. I missed the tour last summer after we moved here, and it's only open during the summer, so today, for a whole 4.00 I took all the kids through the mansion. It was beautiful! My children were wonderful, behaved, listened to me and never touched anything they were not supposed to. Totally shocked me to see them behave this well, and not that I'm complaining!

The house was set up like the early 1900's. Years ago, my grandmother built a doll house and all the furniture to go in it to look like a turn of the century house. The kitchen in the mansion had the same "appliances" that my grandma had made for her doll house. It was a gorgeous, simple house! The kids noticed that outside the back door there was a small school house and it was open for a tour. Leading to it, we walked through a small garden, which Hannah exclaimed was beautiful. Once we got in there, I was in heaven, and do were my kids apparently. I think we spent 45 minutes in there playing.

It looked just like the Laura Ingalls school house. Same kind of bench desks, attached to each other. They had slates on the teacher's desk, along with quill pens and an ink well. They had the roll up maps, old dinosaur fossil bones, a rusty bird cage and a mini log cabin that I'm sure children from decades ago built. I read the books still on their shelves and felt a twinge of envy that I couldn't check them out. They even had an old recipe book from 1903 in there! They also had a stuffed teacher with a uniform of the day on. Simeon was fascinated with the wood burning stove in there. When we walked in, they all found a seat and my heart beat a little faster when they asked me to pretend to be their teacher, and they would be the students, and then each of them took turns being the teacher, and I the student. It was so fun! I got side tracked a little bit reading the display they had by the door about all the teachers that had served in the school, the rules for the teacher, and a history of the one room schoolhouse.

Actually, here in Nebraska they still had country schools in operation until this year when they closed down the last of them. It must be a sad day for them, I think. Just standing in that room for a little under an hour was really neat, and enjoyable, and none of us wanted to leave, so I can't imagine what those teachers are feeling this year. As I looked at the list of teachers for this school, the last one to teach in it was Evelyn Frosh in 1966. Evelyn is who we rent our house from. The kids know her and we almost trooped down to her office after the tour to ask her to tell us stories about her experience in the school. I think I still might do that next week.

So, from memory, I wanted to share with you the rules for the one room schoolhouse teacher in 1915. I love old fashion things, and especially this stuff, so I was just eating this up!

1. They may not socialize with men.
2. They may not loiter at the ice cream parlor.
3. They may not leave the city unless they were granted permission from the chairman of the board.
4. They must not smoke cigarettes.
5. They may not dye their hair.
6. They may not wear bold colors.
7. They must wear at least 2 petticoats.
8. They may not wear any skirts shorter than 2 inches above the ankles.
9. The fire must be started promptly at 7:00 so the schoolroom would be warm by 8:00.
10. Sweep the floor every day. Scrub the floors once a week. Clean and wash the blackboard every day. Keep the room tidy.
11. They are to be indoors from 8 pm to 6 am.

I noticed that with the exception of one woman who taught for two years, no one was there for more than one year at a time. In later years I saw that they were addressed as Mrs., so the no men allowed rule must have been lifted at some point. I saw in the teachers desk that most of the teachers had carved their names into the inside of one of the drawers. How daring that must have been.

I love teachers. I love teaching. I love the fact that I get to teach my own children! As we left the kids were begging to have a school room like that, and that just sent thrills through my heart. They love that stuff just as much as I do! To be honest, if we had the opportunity, I would love to set up a school room just like that (minus the wood burning heater...we have central heat now, thank goodness!). It was such a bright, beautiful, simple school room, yet it still got me excited to learn, to teach and to play!

So, cheers to the school marm! Whether you homeschool, teach in public school, tutor students or just love children, I commend you for your noble aspirations, your diligence, your attentiveness, your tolerance and love. May we all continue to make a difference in a child's life!