(This is a repost of a story from February 14, 2022. A few of you may have read it then, but when I saw it today I just couldn’t resist sharing it. I wrote it with my grandkids in mind.)
Ruth Lowry, 1930, 18 years old
Growing up, I had heard my mother share stories about her experiences being assigned to a rural one-room school for the 1932-33 school year. She had graduated from High School in 1930 and went on to get a teaching certificate. It was definitely culture shock for her. She grew up in “town” with the many conveniences of the times…like indoor plumbing and central heating (probably coal).
Besides having to live with a nearby family, she had to walk a distance to the school, start a fire in the stove, do general maintenance for the school building and get the classroom ready for 23 students from grades 1-8. The living experience by itself was new; then she had the challenges of her first year of teaching! She was a small, shy woman…barely 5’4” tall. The older students (boys especially) were tough farm kids who often didn’t want to be there. Learning to teach a class of mixed ages was a challenge in the first place. Over the years she would share little tidbits of experiences that wore her down by the end of the year. She taught only one year!
One room school house, stock photo by Wendy White
From my memory of her stories, the whole year was a traumatic experience for her. Recently, I was going through a small photo album of hers from that time and saw a photo of that class. Her note on the picture says it all!
I also came across a box of valentines she had saved from that year…very interesting collection! Most of the valentines were signed politely on the back with, “To Miss Lowry” and signed with a full name, most in neat cursive writing! Maybe by February 1933 things had settled down in her classroom!
I thought you might like to see how clever some of the valentines were:
#1 Front
#1 Inside
#1 Back
#2 This one came flat…
#2…and opened to be three-dimensional!
#3 This is signed by Gertrude Lee. She was Ruth’s best friend all through high school.
#3 Back
#4 Front
#4 Back. Maybe this one came from my dad who was teaching at a different one-room school in the area??
#5 Front
#5 Inside. No signature.
#6 and #7 Front
#6 and #7 Inside
#6 and #7 Back
It’s been a long time since I bought a box of valentines for a whole class, but I suspect none of them have such poetic ways to say, “Be My Valentine!” I wonder if kids today could write poems like these? What a treasured memory of my mother! Enjoy!
Oh thank you!!! I loved this article and am reminded to get out my own valentine’s from the family. I think it was you and not grandma, who made the little cookbook for me and each one of the kids, each with one of grandma’s valentine’s on the front. How precious!
So glad you still have that little cookbook with the valentine. I put that together right after she passed away. Hard to believe it’s been 36 years since then!
Hello, Aunt Mary. It was great to see you and the rest of the family in Philadelphia last month, and it inspired me to become a subscriber to your Blog! (Previously I didn’t realize I could subscribe and receive new postings.) This post caught my attention, and especially the photo of Grandma Ruth’s class of 1933, and her inscription “My Night Mare!!” Did you ever hear any stories from her about what that environment or that schoolhouse was like, or perhaps how those kids behaved, etc., that would have caused it to be so bad for her? I think it would be very interesting to gain some first-hand insight from her stories about what it was like to teach in a one-room schoolhouse in those days!
Hi Paul! You must have figured out how to download the pdf of my whole list of posts. I heard many stories about her experiences teaching in a one room school…she was totally unprepared to handle a country school in the first place. Grandpa Paul did much better with his experiences growing up on the farm. She was a “city” girl, lived with a family close to the school. She hardly knew how to get the stove going in the winter and haul the firewood. Then she had a group of students from first grade through 8th…all in one room. I think she did well with the younger students but the older boys that didn’t want to be there were her discipline nightmare! Glad you’re joining me on my blog adventure! Mary