What's old is new again

July 9, 2013

She didn’t think he was all that special, back in Fairmount, Indiana, in the 1940’s.  Pauline Miller wasn’t impressed with James Dean - or Jimmy, as she remembers him.  But perhaps that is because he was younger than she was.  No, going to school with a future heartthrob isn’t what she remembers most about her school days.  Instead, it is grade school.

You see, my mother-in-law actually attended a one-room schoolhouse until she was old enough to catch the bus on State Road 9 to Fairmount High School. Last week, she snared me with her net of reminiscences. 

Every day, Pauline explained, the teacher  in her one-room schoolhouse gathered the children from one grade, all two or three of them, and taught them their lessons.  The other students quietly worked on their assignments and waited their turn for lessons with the teacher.

They all knew the rules.  For example, gaining permission to go to the outhouse involved holding up one finger or two, perhaps so the teacher might predict how long a student would be away from her desk.  Talking to others was not allowed.

There was rarely any disruption.  Pauline remembered only once when all the students had their hands smacked with a ruler for some infraction.

Listening to Pauline’s stories, I marveled at the skill it took to work with every student in grades 1 through 8, in several subjects, all day long, and also keep control of the students.  Could I have done that exhausting work?

Then it hit me:  Good teachers today really are like the teachers in those long abandoned one-room schoolhouses.   Excellent educators today are meeting the needs of a range of students, even those in the same class.  They are differentiating for readiness.  Or ability. Or interest.  And often all in one class period with thirty students, before doing it all again with another thirty.  And then another thirty. And so on, all day long.  Just as their predecessors did years ago.

Thankfully, today’s teachers have resources and technology to ease the burden. 

One that I am eager to use is a free website called Forallrubrics.  Using this site, teachers can create rubrics to evaluate student performance, track a class’s accomplishment of standards, and even link scores to an electronic gradebook via a tablet or iphone.

I wonder what Pauline’s teacher would think of how far education has come… or not.