Carlisle Pennsylvania is a small city thirty miles west of the state capital of Harrisburg. Mostly known for Dickenson College, the U.S. Army War College, and car shows that attract thousands of automotive enthusiasts from around the northeast, Carlisle is not usually considered an urban hotbed or a transformational city. In 2000, at the age of thirty two, I was hired as an elementary principal by the Carlisle School Board. While organizing my office during a hot summer day before the start of school, I came across an invitation to attend a one room school house reunion.
I had a slight idea that one room school houses where part of the region in the not too distant past. As kids my friends and I often passed an abandon one room school house on our way to a creek that held vast crayfish reservoirs. The school house had no signs of habitation; it was boarded up and abandoned. Across the road was a school built in the early 1960’s to accommodate the prodigious amount of school age children who came of age during the WWII baby boom. The contrast was remarkable. The one room school house was brick, small, and seemed like – well, a home. The glass laden modern school building had a flat roof, two functional rectangular box hallways. It resembled a government office or a small factory. It was a school built almost simultaneously when the elementary school I attended was built.
My wife attended the school across from the one room school house; I attended the similar school about five miles away. Children of the 70’s and 80’s, we missed the baby boom years. In our lifetime, we have seen an interesting phenomenon where the contrasting school styles have morphed. A school built to replace my elementary alma mater, has a stylized arched façade which resembles a house. Behind the façade are two long rectangular hallways, churning out education.
It’s not uncommon to see old one room school houses throughout the central Pennsylvania region converted to homes, businesses, or just left to sit and provide a curious monument to school days gone by. But the idea of a reunion of actual students and teachers who experienced a one room school house was intriguing. Would teachers be there…what would students have to say? I marked the date down and RSVP’ed.
The reunion was held in a small fire hall on the outskirts of Carlisle. A lunch buffet was spread across two tables and included western Pennsylvania staples, macaroni salad and gelatin molds. I was impressed with the turn out. About seventy people filled the hall and included some young children interspersed among a majority of attendees who were over fifty five or sixty. Using a black sharpie, I wrote my name and title on a generic nametag and stuck it on my shirt.
A small wooden stage became the center of attention mid-way through the lunch. An elderly man stood in front of the stage and began the ceremony. He recognized the one room school house pupils who were in attendance. Each pupil stood, stated their name, the school they attended and their current occupation. The majority were either retired or looking forward to retiring soon. After recognizing twenty or so students, the master of ceremony then recognized three teachers in attendance.
All three were women and looked over seventy. The first two stood and thanked everyone for the hospitality, made some general remarks, and then returned to their seats. The third teacher stood and was about to repeat the same progression, when a bit of whimsy seemed to envelope her face. Grinning a bit, she began to tell a story that has always stuck with me. Her story has consistently given me pause over the years when I consider the enormity of our educational system and all the divergent interests that push and pull the policy of our nation’s schools.
Steadying herself by leaning on a metal folding chair, the teacher began recounting a story about how her one room school house caught fire during a cloudy winter afternoon. Her mention of the fire brought chuckles and smiles of familiarity in the audience, but I sat entranced, never considering how emergencies would be handled in a remote school, without the advantage of monthly fire drills and reams of state codes.
She suspected the fire started when a bright ember exiting the chimney and found purchase in a tinder filled crack in the roof. The students noticed bubbling smoke in the rafters. The teacher quickly gathered the children and their coats and exited the school. The younger children stood clear but the older students, between twelve and fourteen years of age, hoisted a ladder, formed a bucket brigade and dosed the fire. The damage left a void about the size of a manhole cover in the roof.
The teacher assured the rapt audience that no student was seriously injured. A few scrapes and bruises from the bucket brigade were the only physical ailments sustained. She continued to tell how the students then worked together to temporarily repair the roof. Neighbors had come quickly to the scene and found the fire out, and the students actively involved in solving the critical problem of how to temporarily patch the roof before night fall. Working together, the younger students gathered pine branches while the older students fashioned a lattice of scrap wood and dried oak branches from the nearby woods. After an hour or so of work, the roof was successfully patched. The superintendent of schools was notified and carpenters from Carlisle were scheduled to make the permanent fix a few days later.
Before the official repair team arrived, the teacher capitalized on the unique situation and created a memorable lesson. The students drafted a plan and cost estimate for the roof repair. Shifting her weight on the folding chair, the teacher related how students took measurements, drew plans, and tallied material costs for the fix. Younger students worked with older students, doing basic addition or helping with the measurements.
Knowing the carpenters were scheduled to visit, the students worked feverishly so their planning would be complete when they arrived. Two days later, the carpenters arrived and the students proudly shared their drawings and measurements. Lifting her hand from the chair, the teacher smiled and said, “After reviewing the plans, the carpenters gathered the children together and explained how they would use the plans to complete the repair. It was a practical lesson the students didn’t soon forget.”
Hers was a story I would not soon forget either. As an educational administrator whose tenure has spanned the years before and after the 2001 No Child Left Behind legislation, I have sat in many meetings focused on school improvement. Often the meetings were about the latest policy, program, or company that would miraculously improve schools. Sometimes I would drift during the meetings and think about the one room school house reunion, the story of the winter fire, and how a simple school structure provided a rich learning experience for students.
I also frequently considered what could be learned from the story and how it could relate to the much larger world of improving schools; a world that encompasses a wide range of different schools, from rural schools struggling with budgetary constraints to schools in urban areas trying to sort through a myriad of interventions being prophesized as cure all fixes. Oddly enough, an answer came after years of research and experience. An answer that encompassed a concept that Carlisle is widely known for - the concept of a car.
http://prezi.com/tmeknoeupdpm/august-28th-pd/
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