This book describes the teaching experiences of Helen Hussman Morris, who taught in a one-room school in rural Oklahoma during the early 1930s. Her story calls attention to some of the educational issues that were present in the 1930s and that are still being addressed at the local, state, and national levels, including curriculum, facilities,…

Alex Lord, a pioneer inspector of rural British Columbia (Canada) schools, shares in these recollections of his experiences in a province barely out of the stagecoach era. Traveling through vast northern territory, using unreliable transportation, and enduring climate extremes, Lord became familiar with the aspirations of remote communities and…

This book describes the teaching experiences of Stella Gipson Polk, who taught in one-room schools in rural Texas. She was 16 at the time she took her first teaching job in 1918. After high school graduation, she had intended to enter a 4-year college or university. However, World War I left numerous schools without teachers as many were called…

This book is a memoir of one-room school life in 1929. In his day, Cratis D. Williams (1911-85) was America's foremost scholar on the Appalachian experience. This book is the story of his first teaching assignment at age 18 in a one-room K-8 school on Caines Creek in Lawrence County, Kentucky. Williams details his classroom practices and…

This book describes the experience of a young and inexperienced teacher during 1926 in rural Marengo County, Alabama. Susie Powers Tompkins accepted her first teaching assignment to earn money to continue college after her freshman year at Alabama College. However, for Tompkins the rewards of teaching went far beyond just earning money. She found…

During the mid-1930s, the main line of the Newfoundland (Canada) Railway stretched 547 miles from St. John's to Port aux Basques, and railway workers and their families lived along the line in small isolated settlements. The provincial department of education, the Newfoundland Railway, and the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company devised an…

This book examines Gallia County (Ohio) one-room schools through the oral life histories of 14 retired female teachers. Interviews with the teachers focused on conditions and practices in one-room schoolhouses in the early to mid-20th century in rural southeastern Ohio, and on the common characteristics of one-room school teachers who became rural…

This book presents the oral histories of one male and seven female retired teachers who began their careers during the 1920s and 1930s in one-room schools in the Texas hill country. These teachers continued to teach until after the desegregation of public schools in the 1960s. The married black couple included began teaching in rural Texas in 1931…

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…

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…