Reading/Writing, 'Rithmetic

 

It has been 54 years since I first started school.  I was 6 years old and attended a one room school house on the Canadian Praries. 

On that first day my hand had to stretch to get a good grip on  my 4 small lined notebooks along with my wooden pencil box, which I had recently received as a 6th birthday gift, and new tin lunch kit  resting on my knees while riding in the car with Mother at the wheel traveling over 2 1/2 miles of mostly dirt and gravel roads to the most mysterious and exciting place I could imagine. 

 I did not know what reading was,except for the fact that my sister read Thorton Burgess stories to me occasionaly. I really didn't know what school was except for going to see a couple of Christmas concerts, along with  whist drives and box socials that  our  family had attended.

Inside there was the following:

Fourteen students. Grades 1 to 9.
Two students in Grade One. 
Twenty books in the library. 
Blackboards truly black.
Painted wooden floors. 
Cream Can with 'fresh' water.
One teacher.
Several bicycles along the side of the school.
A barn on the far side of the playground.

I can clearly remember the teacher, a 19 year old, asking everyone in the school to come up and introduce themselves to the class. My sister, who was in Grade 7, commented to Mom when we got home that she was so embarrassed because I had talked so loud and so long. 

Although it didn't happen on the very first day, I do remember going to the board and being taught how to write my own name, learning the number  1-- (THAT was a cinch), and being allowed to use the biggest thickest red lead pencil I had ever seen. 

Then I was handed this book...

                   

...and after about three weeks of school I was handed this book...

            I remember being just a little bit suspicious of that 'Dick type' guy with the water hose.

 

 

   LOOK!

 

        I had learned to read!

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teachers that taught me some things somewhere sometime along the way:


Mr.  C. Datchko-  Grades 1 and 2
Miss Doreen Haggard -Grade 3
Mrs.  C. Kenyon- Grade 4 (until Thanksgiving--she was also my Dad's teacher at one time).
Mr. Irvin Krug-  Grades 4, 5, and 6.
Mr. Bing Runquist -Grade 7
Mr. John Brown- Grade 8
Mrs. Darlene McCall- Grade 9
Mrs. Louise Heuchert- Grade 10
Mr. Baines- Grade 11
Mr. Brian Clarke- Grade 12
Mr. Clay, Mr. Dosange, Mrs. Engle , Mr. Lavigne, Mrs. Krause, Mr. Pugh.