The one-room school house was synonymous with education in Nebraska for over a century. In 1901, most of the state's 6,773 schools were identified as one-room schools. While the national movement away from the one-room school house was also occurring in Nebraska, its 385 one-room schools were the most of any state in 1986 (McKee, 2013). The…

This article presents an interview with Lyn Huston, who teaches in a one-room schoolhouse--Duckwater School--in Duckwater, Nevada. The school, which has a class of only 15 students, is set on a plot of land between alfalfa farms, an Indian reservation, and a 20,500-acre wilderness area. Huston discusses the challenges that exist when teaching in a…

Harney School in western North Dakota had just one student left during its final year. Harney School is one of the rural schools across the Great Plains that have withered away over the decades as entire communities have faltered. In the 1920s, more than 4,700 one-room schoolhouses dotted North Dakota's countryside, often no more than a few miles…

An Old Order Mennonite one-room school in Pennsylvania was selected for this case study, which describes the building, curriculum, methods of instruction in reading, students and teacher. The study conducted interviews of school and community members together with modification of Flander's (1974) interaction analysis to collect quantitative verbal…

Describes the author's experiences as a student in a one-room school accommodating grades one through eight. The lone teacher employed a style that maintained excellent discipline, fostered self-confidence in the students, drew significant lessons from everyday experience, and developed the whole person. (PGD)

This article describes techniques for organizing curriculum in a one-teacher rural elementary school. Flexibility in grouping and teaching strategies, thematic approaches, and independent learning activities are emphasized. (SJL)

Presents an interview with two volunteers who set up and ran a school from scratch located in the mountains of Guatemala. Notes that after three months, the government was convinced to send at least one teacher. (RS)

Time and modern education caught up with the nine pupils of Daniel's Creek Elementary School, one of the last remaining one-room schoolhouses in Kentucky. The school was closed at the end of the 1986-87 school year by the county school board, after much opposition from a citizen's group. (JMM)

This article is a first person's account of working in a rural district affected by drought, economic recession and poor levels of services. It is a facto-fictional narrative describing a typical working day in the life of Peggy, the acting CEO of quality teaching, in what is locally referred to as an NIDA district (where everyone is acting).…

This essay discusses singing as a method of learning cultural values and the types of songs sung in a midwestern one-room country school in the 1930s. Singing and memorized poetry were major mediums for education in values. School children learned many songs with themes of patriotism and citizenship, such as "The Star Spangled Banner,""America the…

This report documents the archaeological investigations conducted at the former site of the Altaville Schoolhouse in Calaveras County, California. These investigations were carried out through the cooperative efforts of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the Calaveras County Historical Society, and the local community. The…

This presentation examines the history of women teachers in the rural United States. The earliest classrooms in America were a male environment modeled after European schools. But in the mid-19th century, the Civil War and westward expansion depleted the number of male teachers and brought rural women teachers to the helm of American education.…

A former teacher reminisces about her teaching experiences during the 1920s in a rural school along the Aroostook River in Wade, Maine. Each year, when the boat carrying the cook for loggers upriver arrived, she and her students went aboard and received a special treat of warm molasses cake. (LP)

A former student at a one-room school in rural Monongalia County, West Virginia, in the 1920s describes educational practices, social life, discipline, extracurricular activities, subject matter, teacher responsibilities, and the importance of the school to the community. (TD)

Schoolhouse planning is becoming specialized. In a few of the larger centers of population there are architects who desire no other work except the planning of school buildings. This is bringing about in the larger cities schoolhouses that are peculiarly adapted to the educational program. They are sanitary, well lighted, and properly ventilated.…