THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
Lard Pail
Lunches and Shared Knowledge
(or Life in a Country School -- part 3)
Through the past two columns, I
have shared
memories of attending and teaching my first year in the same country
school. I hope this journey back in time
brought to mind some good memories of your “grade school” years,
wherever you
attended. It is good to remember
foundations in life that helped to mold and make us into life-long
learners. I was fortunate to gain a good
education even under what may seem now a rather outdated system. To conclude this series on life in a country
school, I will pinpoint some memorable incidents that made a lasting
impression
on me.
We had in the corner of each of the
two classrooms at Choestoe School a wooden cabinet with doors. This
book
cabinet was the “library” for that particular classroom.
When we finished our assignments, we had
freedom to go to that cabinet, select a book from the shelf, take it to
our
desk and read it quietly. It was a great
achievement in first grade to have learned phonics and “sounding out”
words
well enough to become competent to select a book to read from our
“library”
resources. The teachers, to encourage
good reading habits, kept a chart with students’ names on the wall
beside the
book cabinet. A colored star was placed
beside the name of each student who successfully read and reported to
the
teacher on books from this cabinet.
These “star” awards seemed to work well as motivational devices
to
encourage reading. I often wondered how
the library was furnished with books.
That old classroom library was there in 1936, and it seemed to
grow more
books year by year—even before the days when Dr. M. D. Collins led
state
schools to have library resources and before the bookmobile from the
regional
public library began to make its regular monthly stop at Choestoe
School. The bookmobile was an innovation
by the time
I taught there in the 1948-1949 school year.
My life-time love for reading and books was encouraged by that
library
cabinet in a reading corner of Choestoe classroom long ago.
I recall a memorable field trip. When
I was a seventh grader in 1943 at
Choestoe School, and just prior to going to high school by riding the
bus the
next school year, we had our first-ever field trip.
Mrs. Florence Hunter was my teacher, and she
was known for getting things done. Her
husband, Mr. Joe Hunter, was a county school bus driver.
So Mrs. Florence and he made arrangements and
got permission to take the fourth-through-seventh graders to Atlanta on
a
Saturday. All who could go loaded on
that old bus early, early on a Saturday morning while it was still dark. We had a most memorable trip to visit the
State Capitol building, the Atlanta Zoo, and the Cyclorama. I had never been to Atlanta before that
notable trip, and that was probably true of the other children on that
bus
trip. Mrs. Florence managed to take
snacks and drinks, and we had been instructed to bring our own lunch as
we
would have a picnic at Grant Park. What
a notable building was our capitol where state government was conducted. How interesting to see all the strange animals
at the zoo, some we had only read about and seen pictures of in books
at
Choestoe School. Then the panorama and
story of the Civil War in Atlanta in the Cyclorama display was a
first-hand, up
close lesson in history.
We were a group of exhausted
young
children, sleeping on the long trip from Atlanta back to Choestoe after
a full
and exciting day. I’ve thought many
times about how meaningful that trip was for us children, and of the
sacrifice
in time, money and influence expended by Mr. and Mrs. Hunter. They were able to give us a first-hand view
of life beyond the confines of our mountain community.
And to look back now and realize that in 1943
when we made that field trip during World War II, there was gasoline
and tire
rationing. For Mr. Hunter to be able to
use some of his allotment of scarce items to take country school
children to
Atlanta was indeed a notable happening.
Graduation from that country school
was a memorable occasion. We had a
graduation program, not only with the two top graduates speaking with
valedictory and salutatory addresses, but we had a program in which
other
grades participated with music and recitations.
In fact, some of the programs we had for parents at that school
during my
seven years of learning there were so poignant that I can remember even
now
lines of poems I memorized to recite.
Even though our teachers had few resources, they managed to make
learning challenging and interesting.
They gave us opportunities such as “Parents’ Night” or “Parents’
Day”
when we could “show and tell” some of the things we had learned.
When I graduated from seventh grade
country school, my future career as a teacher was already in my mind. I knew I wanted to be a teacher.
In that way I could somehow repay Mrs. Mert
Shuler, my own sister, Louise Dyer, Miss Opal Sullivan, Mrs. Bonnie
Snow, and
Mrs. Florence Hunter who had been my able teachers in my seven years as
a
student at Choestoe School. And so it was that in 1948 I returned to
that same
school, armed with two years of college and a provisional Georgia
teacher’s
certificate, ready to teach. As I
greeted the twenty-five students in seven grades—for the school, by the
time I
returned to teach there—had a drop in student population and only one
teacher
could be hired for the seven grades.
Talk about a challenge—a first-year teacher and twenty-five
eager
students scattered in every grade from first through seventh! I conducted classes much as my own teachers
had done in the seven years when I was a student in that school. I had an excellent helper in a very brilliant
seventh grade student named Shirley.
Without neglecting her own instruction, I allowed her to help me
mentor
some of the younger students with their math, spelling and reading.
Looking back, I count that year
as a
teacher in country school as one of my happiest and best, although it
was hard,
with all the responsibilities falling to me. In that first year of my
thirty-year teaching career, I learned to be teacher and administrator,
how to
cultivate parental support, how to instruct with enthusiasm and how to
motivate
students to achieve. I had learned to
teach by having been taught myself by exemplary role models.
Education has gone through many
changes
since those days from 1936-1943 when I was a student in country school
and took
my lunch in a lard pail and had the privilege of shared knowledge
because
students learned from each other as well as from the teacher. And my
year of
teaching there, 1948-1949, was foundational to who I became as a
teacher. Have
we lost some significant aspects of education in these modern days? Then we had the privilege of learning from
and being challenged by upper classmen whose recitations we heard. We had concepts drilled into us until the
learning became second nature. There is
much to laud and praise for our heritage of “lard pail lunches and
shared
knowledge.” Then eager students gathered
at a country school under the auspices of ones called and dedicated to
the
important role of teacher.
[Ethelene Dyer
Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at
e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]
Back To Union County, GAGenWeb
Site