19th Century Teachers

Hello, everyone. Winnie Griggs here. It’s back-to-school season, and that always takes me back to the years when my four children were in school.

The elementary school they attended was a little unusual. It served children from kindergarten through fifth grade, but there were no walls separating the classrooms. Each class had its own teacher and designated space, but all those spaces occupied one large, open floor plan. Some were separated by low bookcases, some by large plants, and others had no physical boundary at all.

Imagine several teachers conducting lessons at the same time, with neighboring classes in full view—and definitely within hearing. But the teachers found ways to hold their students’ attention, and the children learned to concentrate on what was happening in their own area despite all the activity around them.

My kids are adults now, so I recently asked what they remembered about the experience. All four said that, looking back, the arrangement sounded as though it should have been distracting, but it really wasn’t. In fact, the hallways and closed-off classrooms of middle school felt a bit confining by comparison, at least at first.

When I began researching nineteenth-century schools for some of my books, I realized that my children’s open-concept school shared a few characteristics with the old one-room schoolhouse.

Of course, there was one very important difference. Each of my children’s classes had its own teacher. In a one-room schoolhouse, a single teacher might be responsible for everyone from young beginners to teenagers.

That teacher certainly had her hands full.

Rather than dividing students into grades according to age, teachers often grouped them by knowledge and ability. One group might be called forward to recite a reading lesson while the other children worked independently at their desks. Then another group would take its turn with arithmetic, spelling, geography, or grammar.

With so many lessons being conducted in the same room, students couldn’t help overhearing material meant for other groups. Younger children might pick up bits of what the older pupils were studying, while older students heard familiar lessons again and reinforced what they had already learned. More advanced pupils sometimes helped the younger ones as well.

The schoolroom itself was usually simple. It might contain rows of desks or benches, a teacher’s desk, a blackboard, pegs for coats and hats, and a stove to provide heat in cold weather. A water bucket and shared dipper were common fixtures. Compared to today’s brightly decorated classrooms, there were few visual aids or other teaching materials.

Students didn’t arrive carrying backpacks stuffed with spiral notebooks, colored markers, glue sticks, and folders. A child might bring a slate and slate pencil, along with a speller or another textbook—if the family owned one. Books were sometimes handed down through the family or shared among students.

Lunch could be carried in a tin pail, basket, or cloth bundle. Depending on what was available at home, it might include bread, biscuits, cheese, fruit, a hard-boiled egg, or a slice of cold meat.

In some communities, a child might also arrive carrying a piece of firewood or some kindling to help keep the schoolhouse warm.

Recitation and memorization were important parts of the learning process. Children were often expected to stand and repeat a lesson, spell words aloud, work a problem, or recite a memorized passage.

The school calendar could be quite different from the one we know today. Classes were sometimes arranged around the needs of the community. Planting and harvest seasons could affect both the school term and daily attendance because children were needed at home. Distance, bad weather, illness, and family responsibilities also played a part in whether a student made it to school on a given day.

Keeping so many ages occupied—and reasonably quiet—required organization, patience, and a firm set of rules. The teacher prepared lessons for every age and ability level, maintained order and discipline, settled disputes, tended the stove, and sometimes cleaned the schoolroom. She might also board with local families, moving from one household to another during the school term.

Her behavior could be closely watched both inside and outside the classroom. A teacher—particularly an unmarried woman—was often expected to serve as a model of proper conduct for the entire community.

The one-room schoolhouse wasn’t used only for lessons. In many small towns, it was one of the few public buildings large enough to hold a gathering. It might host church services, elections, community meetings, lectures, spelling bees, holiday programs, debates, and celebrations.

That aspect of the schoolhouse found its way into my newest release, The Heart of Honor.

My heroine, Mercy Owens, teaches the children of Hawthorn, Texas, in 1876. But her schoolhouse is more than her workplace. It also becomes the gathering place for the committee planning Hawthorn’s celebration of the nation’s Centennial—and the town’s own fiftieth anniversary.

Mercy is determined to make certain the sacrifices of Hawthorn’s citizens are properly remembered.

In many ways, the schoolhouse is at the heart of both Mercy’s life and her community, just as those simple buildings stood at the heart of so many nineteenth-century towns.

Available for purchase HERE

 

The elementary school my children attended was considered modern and innovative, yet its open design echoed a much older style of education. In both settings, children learned to concentrate amid the murmur of other lessons. Learning didn’t always stay neatly confined to one class or one age group.

Still, I can only imagine the skill—and stamina—it took for one teacher to manage an entire schoolroom by herself.

What about you? How do you think you would have fared in a one-room schoolhouse with several ages and lessons going on around you? Leave a comment to be entered in a giveaway for a signed copy of one of my books.