Three retired teachers reflect on their teaching careers, which began in one-room schools in Wisconsin, and discuss their reactions to changes involving the educational level and credentials of teachers, curriculum and technology, teacher expectations of students, and community expectations of teachers. Their positive attitudes challenge…

This textbook was written in 1938 to acquaint beginning teachers with practices related to teaching in one-room schools and with the values and expectations of rural communities. The book points out the differences between the work of rural teachers and that of teachers in a town school. For example, teachers in one-room schools are required to…

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…

This book includes materials by and about rural women who taught school from the colonial period to the early 1940s when consolidation closed many one-room schools. Chapter 1 discusses the motivation for searching and compiling a book of resources related to rural women teachers. Chapter 2 explains the origins of the term…

Written in 1910, this book was intended to enlighten rural school teachers, superintendents, and school board members as to the changing role of schools in meeting the needs of rural society and the demands of modern life. The contention was that rural schools should not prepare students for life in town, but rather prepare students for rural…

This book depicts the lives of women who taught school in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on the prairies and plains of Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. The book is based on the narratives, letters, and diaries of 96 schoolwomen and on interviews with living pioneers, memoirs, school reports, photographs, and other documents. Part 1 includes…