Honoring Nebraska’s rural educators
One September morning in 1947, a dark-haired girl opened the door of a country school in Kearney County and looked around:
One desk for her at the front, facing the smaller desks for her students – little kids in front, big kids in back.
One dictionary. One flag. One pendulum clock on the wall that she’d need to wind. One pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room that she’d need to feed in the winter, to keep the kids from freezing.
One room. One teacher.
Miss Mary Lou Martin.
It was the girl’s first day as teacher in District 54 – about 10 miles east of Minden, Neb. – and the first day of a long career as a teacher for that girl, who’s now Mary Lou Kristensen.
“I was 17 years old that first year, just three years older than my eighth-grader. But I was confident. I knew exactly what I was supposed to do.”
She laughs.
“Or at least I thought I did.”
Mary Lou taught in rural schools for two years, saved her money ($1,250 the first year, $400 more at her second school in Adams County) and then earned a teaching degree from Nebraska Teachers College, now UNK. She’s 82 years old now, and one of a dwindling number of one-room teachers who remember the days when those schools dotted the Nebraska countryside, when one-room teachers worked hard – and overcame many hardships – to educate generations of Nebraskans.
UNK wants people for generations to come to remember these teachers and their schools. That’s why it created a new scholarship program in their honor.
"One Room. One Teacher."
UNK will install plaques with the names of rural teachers and their schools on a wall of honor at the College of Education. Many of those teachers are alums like Mary Lou. But UNK wants to honor non-alums, too, so anyone who taught in a rural school in Nebraska is eligible for the honor.
Says UNK Chancellor Doug Kristensen: “We’ll be able to remember the heritage of where education began in this state and what really made it strong, and I think that there’s a number of people who will feel really good and have a passion about one of the strongest Nebraska traditions – that of the country school.”
Those one-room schools played a big role in the history of UNK, which opened its doors in 1905. It was called the Nebraska State Normal School back then. Its mission was to prepare teachers for rural Nebraska. In the century since, UNK has educated and prepared more than 20,000 teachers.
Mary Lou, who attended a one-room school herself as a student, is delighted to support the One room. One teacher effort.
“I think it’s terrific,” she says. “I just think those schools played a vital part in the history of our state.”
She lives in Minden. The town, not far south of Kearney, is the home of Pioneer Village, “Nebraska’s #1 Attraction,” according to the billboards along Interstate 80. She tells her stories of the old days as she sits in an actual one-room schoolhouse in Pioneer Village. This school was moved here from a few miles southeast of town and is actually the same one-room schoolhouse her husband attended as a boy.
You can still see his brother’s initials carved on a desk.
Her husband had blonde curls. Mary Lou opens an old album to a page with a photo of him, standing outside the school with his brother and other classmates. They’re dressed as knights and are holding up paper castles for the camera – an art project that had something to do with being a good citizen.
She’s researched the one-room schools of Kearney County. She can tell you that Kearney County alone used to have 69 one-room schools, spread evenly across the land so that most students didn’t have to walk or ride their horse more than three miles to reach one. Few of those buildings remain, she says, except for the ones people have turned into garages or sheds or quaint country homes.
The one-room school she attended as a kid sat on a corner of her family’s farm near Kenesaw. Like other rural schools, it also served as a gathering spot for neighborhood potlucks and Christmas parties. The kerosene lamps on the walls would dim on those winter nights when people packed inside, sucking up oxygen. Having attended such a school helped make her so confident that first day as a teacher in 1947. She knew her duties well:
Fetch water from the well … ring the hand bell at 9 to call the students inside … lead them in “The Pledge of Allegiance” as portraits of Abe Lincoln and George Washington watch from the walls (every rural school in Kearney County, she says, had those same two portraits) … conduct the health inspection. Fingernails clean? Teeth brushed? Hair combed? … lead them in exercises beside their desks … play the piano as they sing … teach them reading, writing, arithmetic and good manners … answer their questions and requests.
One finger in the air meant you wanted to talk to another student. Two fingers meant you wanted to get a drink of water or sharpen your pencil. Three fingers meant you wanted to go to the outhouse.
One outhouse for the girls. One for the boys.
“Often you got a ‘no’ on that,” Mary Lou says, “because you were supposed to take care of that at recess.”
She was not only the school’s only teacher. She also was its only nurse and its only janitor. She swept and scrubbed. She banked the fire each cold night to keep it going so the school would be warm in the morning. Most nights, she didn’t get home until 7, and then she had a stack of papers to correct.
“They were your kids,” she says. “You took care of them. Sometimes with the first-graders and the second-graders, their attention span wasn’t too long. So I’d send them out maybe 10 minutes early for recess, and you’d see them peeking in from outside the window.”
Another goal of UNK’s One Room, One Teacher effort is to preserve the stories from those teachers like Mary Lou. And like this story from UNK alum Doris Murray of Axtell, Neb., who turned 90 this year:
“We had this basement, and it had windows. I’d be outside with the kids at recess and I’d look down through the window. And you know how the sun would shine in and there’d be a big old bull snake lying in the sun. And then I had to go down the stairs and he’d be gone. He must have heard me coming and he’d hide. I loved having him there because he ate mice. I didn’t have any mice. He ate them all.”
Doris taught in one-room schools for 17 years in Phelps and Buffalo counties. She also attended a one-room school as a kid. One day when she was one of the little kids, lightning struck the school’s chimney and came down the pipe of the stove, right in front of her desk.
“I saw a basketball-size of fire right in front of me,” Doris says. “We children all screamed and ran out of the school and ran a half mile down to a lady’s house, and the poor teacher stayed in the schoolhouse. She didn’t want to leave!”
Mary Lou Kristensen told stories of the old days to her own kids, who attended schools in town. One son grew up to become an educator himself – Doug Kristensen, chancellor of UNK.
She smiles.
“My son keeps telling me, ‘Oh, my gosh. Whoever learned anything? You didn’t know what you were doing right out of high school – you had no training.’
“I tell him, ‘Well, you knew what needed to be done and you just did it.’”
To honor the one-room or country school teacher in your life, give online to UNK’s “One Room. One Teacher” Scholarship Fund or call the foundation’s Tracy Lungrin, 308-698-5278.
Comments
Dorothy Keller; Tribune Sentinel, Grant, NE
The following interesting account, of teaching in Perkins County in the early 1900's was sent us by Mrs. A. W. (Bertha Keller) Bell:
In the summer of 1907, my father decided he would like for me to teach school. So he let me have enough money, to go to North Platte summer school, a six weeks term. Six girls from Grant and Ogallala did light housekeeping there. They were Cora and Emma Richmond, Grace Cannon, Geanie Gould, Helen Sprague, and myself. It cost each of us $2.50 per week for rooms and board. When we had completed the six weeks course, I took examinations for a third grade certificate. We studied 10 subjects, reading, penmanship, orthography, physiology, mental arithmetic, history, grammar, English composition, geography, and arithmetic. One had to to have an average of 75 in each subject and the certificate was good for only one year.
Then in order to teach another year, one had to pass exams for an additional five subjects. They were theory, drawing, civics, bookkeeping, and agriculture. This certificate was good for two years teaching. In order to obtain a second grade certificate one had to attend eight weeks of normal school with credits.
I began teaching when I was only 17, (in 1907) in what was known as the Valley school, District 47, I believe. I had 18 pupils and taught all 8 grades. We had no kindergarten back then. The school was a small one room building about 18 by 20 feet. We had no hall to hang our wraps in, but hung them on hooks in the back of the school room. There were two rows of double seats, one row on each side of the room. In the middle of the room we had a coal burning heater. In the back corner was a small table which held the water pail for our drinking water and a few dinner pails. The other lunch pails had to set on the floor underneath the table.
The teacher did all the janitor work, carried in the fuel, and kept the fire going. Someone always had to bring the water to school for the day's use. My first; year's wages were $25.00 per month, and I paid $10.00 of this for board and room.
In those days a teacher would call a class, then the pupils marched to the front of the room and sat on a long recitation bench. There they answered the questions the teacher asked about the day's lesson. If a child was unruly, whispered or was tardy, he was punished by missing his recess period; or kept after school. Other methods punishment were to stand in the corner of the school room, or
Some time the teacher would make a chalk mark high on the blackboard and the child would have to stand on his tiptoes and put a finger on the chalk mark for a little while. Sometimes they were punished for not having their lessons well prepared.
Usually on a Friday afternoon after the last recess, we would have a short period for ciphering, spell downs, or even debates. We always had special day Our shcjool entertainments, and invited all the parents and people of the school district.
and many folks had to stand for the programs. We had no organ or piano but would sing songs to some old familiar tunes, the programs were recitations, singing and plays. We used sheets strung on wires across the room for stage curtains.
Christmas was always a very special program. For a Christmas tree we often went out to some tree claim or. Where we could find a small dead tree or branch, and then wrapped it with cotton. For the tree trims the children made chains of colored paper, and cut-outs of stars and bells. Sometimes they strung popcorn and hung it on the tree from branch to branch. Some times the teacher hung popcorn balls or oranges or bags of candy on the tree for each child.
At recess the teacher always went outside to supervise the games. For, games we played tag or wood tag, or pom-pom pull-away, blind man’s or bluff, drop the handkerchief, New-Orleans, or skip-to-my-lou. In winter, when there was snow on the ground the children usually played fox and goose.
I taught in the Perkins County rural schools for eight terms. Some schools had from three to eight months of school. The town school always had nine months. I was paid $35.00 per month my second term of school, and paid $15.00 for board and room. I taught school after I was married and my baby was four years old. We drove a horse and buggy four miles and took two of the neighbors children and my own two. My last term was taught in 1924 when I received $135.00 per month.
My sister, Mary, taught school at the age of 15. Since there was shoratage of teachers, she was issued a permit tot teach. She toaught three pupils in a school room which was in a sod house home. The school room was also the family’s parlor and my sister’s bedroom. Her term was three months of school. This was in Perkins County in 1910.
Up until 2006 when our so wise Legislature closed "country schools" I was blessed to be a one room school teacher. If you had told me way back in 1971 when I graduated from the University with an elementary teacher degree, that I would find what I was born to be in a country school out on the prairie, I would have thought you needed to be committed to a mental institution. I taught first in Spalding Public, and three years in Lincoln. I raised my family and then started looking for a position. A lady who I still remember in my prayers suggested a small country school which was looking for a teacher. And the next sixteen years I was in teacher heaven. I admit, I never worked so hard in my life, even with up to 30 children a day in Lincoln, but I spent my days teaching and learning from my students and their wonderful parents .Disipline was never a problem.Laughter and learning were always present.
" Country schoolteachers can make a valuable lesson out of something like a rock from the playground." I was told once. It is perfectly true, and match the lesson to the state standards, too. There was nothing like it and there never will be again. That, for our state, the education community, and most importantly, for our children, is a great shame.
It was September 1947. My parents, who were farmers, had just moved to a different set of buildings and I moved from "town school" to Hall County District Number 5, a one room school near Wood River, Nebraska. I was in third grade and Miss Leota Owens was our teacher. She was a recent graduate of Shelton High School, but probably enrolled in classes at "Kearney" that summer so she would qualify for a teaching certificate after taking Normal Training in high school.
Miss Owens had 27 students in all eight grades---no kindergarten in those days. The school photo I still have reveals the larger boys were as tall as the teacher and they were only five years younger. She called each class to the front of the room for recitation on each subject. The rest of us remained in our desks, studying quietly as I recall.
She began the school year by announcing every day would begin with morning exercises. She said she would lead the exercises, and began by putting her right foot back and touching the back of her head on her heel. None of the twenty-seven students could match her feat. Some of the older boys fell over trying. We were all left in awe of this teacher.
As I glance at the picture I know the stories of some of the fellow students. I know at least one of us became a doctor, some became nurses, there were also engineers, and some of us became educators. As could be expected, others remained on the farm and were successful farmer businessmen or business women.
Miss Owens was also the janitor and the person who made sure we all took our turns at the various chores, such as bringing in water from the hand pump outside the front door. The water bucket had a long handled dipper, and horror of horrors, I think we all drank out of the same dipper. I do recall we were restricted to using the outdoor privies only during recess or the lunch hour.
I now recognize Miss Owens was a remarkable teacher considering her age, her lack of experience, and the daunting task of preparing lessons in all eight grades for her twenty-seven students.
Imagine my surprise to read your article on one room country schools and see Mrs. Doris Murray's name. I went to the country school Hoosier Valley #25 where Mrs. Murray taught most of the years I was there. She was a wonderful, caring teacher!! I still don't know how she managed to teach nine grades, but she did a great job! I always loved to go to school because she made everything interesting.
How do I know she did a great job? I attended the University of Nebraska on a Regent's Scholarship and graduated with honors. I give her all the credit. She made learning fun.
If you see this, Mrs. Murray, thank you so much!
Judy Emert
My mother, Inez Boeckenhauer, and several of my aunts were one-room school teachers. My mother taught schools in Brown County in the early 1940's, one year riding her horse to the school to teach. Later she taught in Wayne County and later in her career she took the Big Step and taught in the Wayne Public Schools.
Like may of her colleagues, she started with a one or two year college degree, taught to earn money to go back to finish a 4 year degree in Education. All of her college work was done at Wayne State College.