A final-year student teacher from the University of Southern Queensland (Australia) describes her student teaching experiences at Gunpowder State School, an isolated one-room school in central Queensland, focusing on techniques for managing the multiage classroom and teacher-community relationships. (SV)

Rural school district reorganization and school consolidation are put into perspective by reviewing the large population increases that fueled small-school growth in the Great Plains, 1870-1930. Since the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, population losses, improvements in transportation, and arguments advocating economies of scale and increased…

Discusses the origins, lifestyle, and education of the Amish and introduces three papers concerning Amish educational practices. The first article presents observations of a newly appointed Amish teacher. The two remaining articles discuss educationally relevant insights involving the challenges that health-care personnel face in relating to the…

In this video, former students and teachers recall their experiences in rural one-room schools in various regions. Just getting to school involved some hardship; anecdotes include experiences of walking, riding horses, driving snowmobiles or all-terrain vehicles, and canoeing to school. Students, teachers, and community members developed a…

Presents the views of a concerned citizen on reshaping U.S. schools in a peaceful, grass-roots revolution. Emphasis is on the neighborhood school, with parent participation, and a system that keeps students with the same teacher for multiple years. The human and technological resources that the approach requires are discussed. (SLD)

A 5-year study of one-teacher schools was conducted by a single researcher in the remote North West Region of New South Wales, Australia. A personal narrative discusses problems of longitudinal research, peculiarities of gathering data in the chosen region, the close relationship of these isolated schools and their communities, and problems and…

Describes one-room country schools in South Dakota--importance of patrons; self-sufficiency and varied skills of teachers; administrators who deal with each school individually; advantages of the students (having several grades taught in one room, small teacher-student ratios, student interdependency, opportunity for creativity, close parental…

Country schools in eastern and central Kansas are explored from six different aspects: country schools as historic sites; teachers (their roles, rules, and restrictions); reading, writing, arithmetic, and recitation (a day in a rural school); country schools and the Americanization of ethnic groups; country schools as community centers; and…

Critiques views of the one-room country school experience in the Midwest states. Describes advances an alternative interpretation grounded in the social, political, and economic circumstances that impinged on local institutions, arguing that these schools may not have been the "laboratories of democracy" that conventional wisdom calls…

The first official trustee of the Northland School Division details the history of the corporation from its founding in 1960. The anecdotal narrative describes achievements and failures, operating procedures, and difficulties of providing education in isolated areas. An editors' response following the paper points out the author's unique…

This book describes the experiences of 26 retired rural school teachers from western Wisconsin. The book was inspired by the community solidarity of the Cloverdale Community Club (Wisconsin) in maintaining the old Cloverdale School building. Cloverdale School was a typical one-room rural school, built in 1857 and closed by the consolidation…