I was among the last generation of Tennessee children to attend a two-room schoolhouse. I attended the Pleasant Valley Elementary School in Overton County, Tennessee from 1973 until the school was officially closed in 1977. If you aren't familiar with a two-room schoolhouse, you may think that it is a schoolhouse with literally only two rooms.
What "two room" actually means, however, is that the school had only two classrooms, the big room and the little room. There were other rooms in the school too: a lunchroom, an office, a gymnasium, and two restrooms. The little room contained the first through fourth grades. My school didn't officially have a kindergarten, although one of my friends was so anxious to start school that she often tagged along with her older brother and sister when she was only four or five. She was allowed to just hang out in some sort of unofficial kindergarten. Our teacher told us stories about her coming to school wearing big, black sunglasses, leaning back in her chair, and putting her feet right up on the desk like she owned the place!
I started school when I was six, the official first-grade age. I was so excited to be starting school. Everything seemed so big. The hallways were lined with pictures of previous classes. I particularly liked to look at my aunt's picture up on the wall. It was so funny to see her as a young girl. There was a long, hardwood hallway through the school, with classrooms and the front entrance on one side and the lunchroom, bathrooms, and office on the other side. A water fountain and a trophy case separated the girls' room (restroom) and the boys' room. At one end of the hallway was the gymnasium; the other end of the hallway opened to a field that was our playground.
The little room was a large room with windows along one side and chalkboards on the opposite side. Another wall contained the teacher's desk and a bulletin board. I remember being really intimidated by the kids from the big room. That room was where the fifth through eighth grades were taught great mysteries like compound sentences, multiplication, and civics. Those kids knew so much!
There was a large closet in the little room, called "the coatroom." We started a club, some of us little girls. We held meetings in the coatroom at recess, played, and ate orange slices. There was a huge pile of old clothes at one end, a desk in the middle (where you were sent for punishment), and a large window at the other end. We would put on those old clothes, look out the window, and eat oranges. I still have no idea why the clothes were in there. They were big clothes, old, and smelly. Rumor had it that, a year or two before I started school, a bunch of the kids sneaked down to a pond that was in the corner of the school property, got into a huge mud fight, and had to wear those old clothes home. By the time I started to school, the pond was strictly off limits. The closest I ever got was picking cattails blooming along the edge of it.
School was different back then. With four grades in one room, the teacher certainly had her hands full. Although I remember certain things about our lessons, like reading See Spot Run aloud around a big, red wooden table with benches, playing payday (where the teacher gave us pretend money and we had to go around to all the pretend stores and offices and pay bills and buy groceries), and having lots and lots of spelling tests, my more vivid memories are of things that took place outside the classroom.
We had an egg-decorating contest at Easter one year. My egg was a pretty pastel blue with a little flower applique around the middle and flowers on the ends. There was an older kid, always considered very smart, who brought an egg died solid red. Even in my little six-year old mind, I recognized it for what it was: a strong statement of boldness and simplicity. I just knew that he was going to win. But I guess boldness and simplicity were out of fashion that year, and pastel blue with flowers was in. I won! I was so proud of winning that contest. It was the first thing I ever won.
We sure had some good times in our little two room schoolhouse. We did things that larger schools never could pull off. One time, we made a huge strawberry shortcake outside. It was heavenly. I remember one of the older boys complementing me on the fine cake that we "women" had made. I was tickled pink to be considered a good cook at such a tender age.
Another thing we used to do is sort of hard to describe, but it sure was fun. Our school sat in a field that was probably five to ten acres. After it was mowed, we would scrap up the grass, form it into rows, and make the outline of houses with it. Some of us would make very elaborate little houses with several rooms, doors, and porches. Another thing we would do was to take the cloverleaves and twine them together to make jewelry. After recess, we'd all return with our necklaces, bracelets, and rings. It was sad to see them wilt as the day went by. Sometimes in the spring, we'd go down to the fence row and pick honeysuckle and lick off that tiny little drop of honey that forms inside. Ymm.
Of course, there were some bad times at the old schoolhouse, too. One time, I managed to get the entire second grade (all four of us) spanked for playing cards (Crazy 8's) at our desks. Another time, our teacher had heard a particular tasteless rhyme one time too many. Before rendering punishment, she asked one kid (the red-egg kid) to stand up and say the rhyme one last time so that there would be no misunderstandings about what we were not to say, ever again. Very somberly, so somberly that not even WE thought it was funny anymore, he said, "Schools out, schools out, teachers let the monkeys out." One time when we'd been especially bad, the teacher told us at the end of the day that we were going to get spanked the next day. What a terrible night we had, dreading that. I can't remember if she actually went through with it or not. A lot of the kids had it pretty rough at home. Times were lean in the mountains then. Many kids worked on farms after school, hoeing tobacco, cutting wood, and so forth.
I still remember the lunchroom, how you could smell it all the way down the hall. The cook, a neighbor of ours, really knew how to make soup. To this day, I still eat mine with a peanut butter sandwich, just like she fixed it. I also remember sausage and biscuits, cherry pie, chili with cheese sandwiches. Hot rolls, creamed potatoes, this wonderful cake with a tangy-sweet sauce drizzled over it. At lunchtime, the lunchroom was a very busy and alive place, with steam rising up from behind the counter, kids talking, silverware clanking together. Sometimes in the early morning, I would wander down there on a detour from the girls' room. It was so different then. Quiet and almost lonesome with anticipation.
In the warmer months, we would take field trips, a short hike up the mountain across from the school, out across the field beside it, or down the dirt road that ran behind it. We'd look for arrowheads, pretty leaves, or anything else interesting. We weren't really supposed to, but some of the older kids would sometimes walk down the road to a country store and buys soft drinks and potato chips. I didn't go, but I sent money with them sometimes for potato chips. Barbecued Golden Flake potato chips were like manna from heaven to a grade-schooler.
My best friend came from a large family. At one time, all of the kids except one were at Pleasant Valley. The girls practically made up the basketball team. One time, her brother threw a stick one time and almost hit me in the eye. No reason, just felt like throwing a stick. My friend told me that he got a "real lecture" from his daddy over that. I didn't know what a lecture was, but I sure hoped it was bad.
Such fun we had outdoors on the monkey bars. So many different tricks and positions to aspire to. In my day, I was a monkey bar expert. Once, another kid asked me to show him how to do a particular flip off of one of the long sidebars. The bell had rung and it was only he and I left outside. I knew we should be heading back inside, but I showed him anyway. He fell and broke his arm! And the worst thing was, later, he later fell off of a horse and broke the other arm. So there he was in two casts. A pitiful sight.
My first trips to the dentist took place in a mobile dentist office that visited the school several times a year. From the outside, it looked like an ordinary motor home but, inside, it was a dentist's office. We all looked forward to our time in the chair - anything different was exciting at that age. The dentist examined our teeth, taught us how to brush properly, and gave us these little tablets to chew up after brushing. If the color from the tablet showed up in your mouth, then you had not brushed correctly and still had plague.
Music education was still part of public school curriculum in those days. We had a music teacher that came to the school every week or so. She went around to all of the schools in the county. She had a sweet, high voice and played an unusual instrument (I think it was a harpsichord). She taught us to sing things like "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and "This Land is My Land." Those were fun times.
After we learned to write complete sentences, our teacher arranged for us to exchange letters with another class of schoolchildren in Texas. We each had an assigned pen pal. At first, we only wrote through the school, with the teachers sending the letters back and forth for us. When the school year ended, my pen pal and I exchanged home addresses and continued our correspondence. I wrote to my pen pal for many years and greatly enjoyed the experience. We stopped exchanging letters sometime in high school. I still think about her and wonder what happened to her when she grew up.
Our little school had a basketball team. The girls wore blue shorts that came almost to their knees, white tube socks with blue stripes, and white converse sneakers that squeaked on the shiny hardwood gymnasium floor. You had to be at least a third-grader to be on the team. I was never on the basketball team, but I was a self-elected cheerleader. My mother made me a royal blue, circle-tailed skirt that I wore to the games. I'd stand on the sidelines and just yell my little heart out. I only knew one cheer, so I mostly just hollered "Go Eagles" a lot. We lost most of our games, but it really didn't matter. We knew that it was hard for a team with third-graders on it to compete with teams made up solely of seventh and eighth graders.
When it was too cold or rainy for the monkey bars, we'd sometimes play dodge ball or shoot hoops in the gym. Other days, we'd do folk dances or calisthenics. We had a softball field, but no official team. The older kids would let us little ones play sometimes, in sort of a reverse game. The little kid hitter would stand still, and the big kid pitcher would throw the ball so as to try to hit our bat. If the ball actually made contact (a rarity, as you can imagine), off we'd go, like we had just hit a home run in Yankee stadium.
The school was tended by an older couple that lived just across the street. They opened and closed the school, kept it clean, and fixed things that broke. I had the same teacher for the first three years, but then she was transferred to another school. We had a different principal each year.
The school was heated by a furnace in the basement. There was a long set of stairs from the back of the school that led down into the basement into the furnace. I was absolutely terrified of what lay beyond the door at the end of the stairs. To me, the very fires of hell were in that basement. I don't remember why I was so afraid, but I'm sure there must have been a lot of scary stories swapped by the kids, probably started by the teachers and custodians in an attempt to keep us out of a place we had no business being. It certainly worked for me!
My first love and my first kiss were at Pleasant Valley. My first love was a boy a year younger than me, with soft blond hair and big brown eyes. His older sister was a second-grader like me and we'd all walk around the school in the mornings together before school. I was so sweet on him! My first kiss was not from him, unfortunately, but from another kid who I did not particularly like. He came up to me one morning as I walked into school, grabbed my little hand, and planted a big kiss on it before I could say a word. I cried and told the teacher on him.
Our teacher had a friend in Nashville, an older lady. I don't think she had any kids of her own. We were sort of like surrogate nieces and nephews to her. She sent the teacher money to buy Christmas presents for some of the kids. One year, she bought Bibles for all of us. I misplaced mine during our last move, but I hope to run across it again someday. The cover is torn off and it's ragged, but I still hold it dear.
Holidays were always fun at the old school. At Halloween, we'd dress up in our costumes, go through the haunted house that the big kids put on for the little kids, and then bob for apples. We would get little wax mustaches for prizes. At Christmas, we had a real cedar tree, which we decorated with ropes made out of construction paper and garland that we strung together out of popcorn and cranberries.
The state closed the school during the middle of my fourth grade year. We were divided into two groups and sent to larger schools. Although I've lost contact with most of my classmates, I still keep in touch with my best friend from those days. She still lives in the area. I also try to send a Christmas card to my former teacher and let her know what is going on in my life, if not every year at least every few years.
It's too bad that there aren't any more two-room schoolhouses around. Although modern educators might criticize the methods and the curriculum used back then, the school provided a strong foundation. Many of us went on to graduate from college and graduate school. The wonderful freedom, the close friendships, and the pure fun of it all more than made up for any gaps in the educational program. My only regret is that I never made it the big room. My friends and I could have ruled the world in there, I just know it.
What "two room" actually means, however, is that the school had only two classrooms, the big room and the little room. There were other rooms in the school too: a lunchroom, an office, a gymnasium, and two restrooms. The little room contained the first through fourth grades. My school didn't officially have a kindergarten, although one of my friends was so anxious to start school that she often tagged along with her older brother and sister when she was only four or five. She was allowed to just hang out in some sort of unofficial kindergarten. Our teacher told us stories about her coming to school wearing big, black sunglasses, leaning back in her chair, and putting her feet right up on the desk like she owned the place!
I started school when I was six, the official first-grade age. I was so excited to be starting school. Everything seemed so big. The hallways were lined with pictures of previous classes. I particularly liked to look at my aunt's picture up on the wall. It was so funny to see her as a young girl. There was a long, hardwood hallway through the school, with classrooms and the front entrance on one side and the lunchroom, bathrooms, and office on the other side. A water fountain and a trophy case separated the girls' room (restroom) and the boys' room. At one end of the hallway was the gymnasium; the other end of the hallway opened to a field that was our playground.
The little room was a large room with windows along one side and chalkboards on the opposite side. Another wall contained the teacher's desk and a bulletin board. I remember being really intimidated by the kids from the big room. That room was where the fifth through eighth grades were taught great mysteries like compound sentences, multiplication, and civics. Those kids knew so much!
There was a large closet in the little room, called "the coatroom." We started a club, some of us little girls. We held meetings in the coatroom at recess, played, and ate orange slices. There was a huge pile of old clothes at one end, a desk in the middle (where you were sent for punishment), and a large window at the other end. We would put on those old clothes, look out the window, and eat oranges. I still have no idea why the clothes were in there. They were big clothes, old, and smelly. Rumor had it that, a year or two before I started school, a bunch of the kids sneaked down to a pond that was in the corner of the school property, got into a huge mud fight, and had to wear those old clothes home. By the time I started to school, the pond was strictly off limits. The closest I ever got was picking cattails blooming along the edge of it.
School was different back then. With four grades in one room, the teacher certainly had her hands full. Although I remember certain things about our lessons, like reading See Spot Run aloud around a big, red wooden table with benches, playing payday (where the teacher gave us pretend money and we had to go around to all the pretend stores and offices and pay bills and buy groceries), and having lots and lots of spelling tests, my more vivid memories are of things that took place outside the classroom.
We had an egg-decorating contest at Easter one year. My egg was a pretty pastel blue with a little flower applique around the middle and flowers on the ends. There was an older kid, always considered very smart, who brought an egg died solid red. Even in my little six-year old mind, I recognized it for what it was: a strong statement of boldness and simplicity. I just knew that he was going to win. But I guess boldness and simplicity were out of fashion that year, and pastel blue with flowers was in. I won! I was so proud of winning that contest. It was the first thing I ever won.
We sure had some good times in our little two room schoolhouse. We did things that larger schools never could pull off. One time, we made a huge strawberry shortcake outside. It was heavenly. I remember one of the older boys complementing me on the fine cake that we "women" had made. I was tickled pink to be considered a good cook at such a tender age.
Another thing we used to do is sort of hard to describe, but it sure was fun. Our school sat in a field that was probably five to ten acres. After it was mowed, we would scrap up the grass, form it into rows, and make the outline of houses with it. Some of us would make very elaborate little houses with several rooms, doors, and porches. Another thing we would do was to take the cloverleaves and twine them together to make jewelry. After recess, we'd all return with our necklaces, bracelets, and rings. It was sad to see them wilt as the day went by. Sometimes in the spring, we'd go down to the fence row and pick honeysuckle and lick off that tiny little drop of honey that forms inside. Ymm.
Of course, there were some bad times at the old schoolhouse, too. One time, I managed to get the entire second grade (all four of us) spanked for playing cards (Crazy 8's) at our desks. Another time, our teacher had heard a particular tasteless rhyme one time too many. Before rendering punishment, she asked one kid (the red-egg kid) to stand up and say the rhyme one last time so that there would be no misunderstandings about what we were not to say, ever again. Very somberly, so somberly that not even WE thought it was funny anymore, he said, "Schools out, schools out, teachers let the monkeys out." One time when we'd been especially bad, the teacher told us at the end of the day that we were going to get spanked the next day. What a terrible night we had, dreading that. I can't remember if she actually went through with it or not. A lot of the kids had it pretty rough at home. Times were lean in the mountains then. Many kids worked on farms after school, hoeing tobacco, cutting wood, and so forth.
I still remember the lunchroom, how you could smell it all the way down the hall. The cook, a neighbor of ours, really knew how to make soup. To this day, I still eat mine with a peanut butter sandwich, just like she fixed it. I also remember sausage and biscuits, cherry pie, chili with cheese sandwiches. Hot rolls, creamed potatoes, this wonderful cake with a tangy-sweet sauce drizzled over it. At lunchtime, the lunchroom was a very busy and alive place, with steam rising up from behind the counter, kids talking, silverware clanking together. Sometimes in the early morning, I would wander down there on a detour from the girls' room. It was so different then. Quiet and almost lonesome with anticipation.
In the warmer months, we would take field trips, a short hike up the mountain across from the school, out across the field beside it, or down the dirt road that ran behind it. We'd look for arrowheads, pretty leaves, or anything else interesting. We weren't really supposed to, but some of the older kids would sometimes walk down the road to a country store and buys soft drinks and potato chips. I didn't go, but I sent money with them sometimes for potato chips. Barbecued Golden Flake potato chips were like manna from heaven to a grade-schooler.
My best friend came from a large family. At one time, all of the kids except one were at Pleasant Valley. The girls practically made up the basketball team. One time, her brother threw a stick one time and almost hit me in the eye. No reason, just felt like throwing a stick. My friend told me that he got a "real lecture" from his daddy over that. I didn't know what a lecture was, but I sure hoped it was bad.
Such fun we had outdoors on the monkey bars. So many different tricks and positions to aspire to. In my day, I was a monkey bar expert. Once, another kid asked me to show him how to do a particular flip off of one of the long sidebars. The bell had rung and it was only he and I left outside. I knew we should be heading back inside, but I showed him anyway. He fell and broke his arm! And the worst thing was, later, he later fell off of a horse and broke the other arm. So there he was in two casts. A pitiful sight.
My first trips to the dentist took place in a mobile dentist office that visited the school several times a year. From the outside, it looked like an ordinary motor home but, inside, it was a dentist's office. We all looked forward to our time in the chair - anything different was exciting at that age. The dentist examined our teeth, taught us how to brush properly, and gave us these little tablets to chew up after brushing. If the color from the tablet showed up in your mouth, then you had not brushed correctly and still had plague.
Music education was still part of public school curriculum in those days. We had a music teacher that came to the school every week or so. She went around to all of the schools in the county. She had a sweet, high voice and played an unusual instrument (I think it was a harpsichord). She taught us to sing things like "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and "This Land is My Land." Those were fun times.
After we learned to write complete sentences, our teacher arranged for us to exchange letters with another class of schoolchildren in Texas. We each had an assigned pen pal. At first, we only wrote through the school, with the teachers sending the letters back and forth for us. When the school year ended, my pen pal and I exchanged home addresses and continued our correspondence. I wrote to my pen pal for many years and greatly enjoyed the experience. We stopped exchanging letters sometime in high school. I still think about her and wonder what happened to her when she grew up.
Our little school had a basketball team. The girls wore blue shorts that came almost to their knees, white tube socks with blue stripes, and white converse sneakers that squeaked on the shiny hardwood gymnasium floor. You had to be at least a third-grader to be on the team. I was never on the basketball team, but I was a self-elected cheerleader. My mother made me a royal blue, circle-tailed skirt that I wore to the games. I'd stand on the sidelines and just yell my little heart out. I only knew one cheer, so I mostly just hollered "Go Eagles" a lot. We lost most of our games, but it really didn't matter. We knew that it was hard for a team with third-graders on it to compete with teams made up solely of seventh and eighth graders.
When it was too cold or rainy for the monkey bars, we'd sometimes play dodge ball or shoot hoops in the gym. Other days, we'd do folk dances or calisthenics. We had a softball field, but no official team. The older kids would let us little ones play sometimes, in sort of a reverse game. The little kid hitter would stand still, and the big kid pitcher would throw the ball so as to try to hit our bat. If the ball actually made contact (a rarity, as you can imagine), off we'd go, like we had just hit a home run in Yankee stadium.
The school was tended by an older couple that lived just across the street. They opened and closed the school, kept it clean, and fixed things that broke. I had the same teacher for the first three years, but then she was transferred to another school. We had a different principal each year.
The school was heated by a furnace in the basement. There was a long set of stairs from the back of the school that led down into the basement into the furnace. I was absolutely terrified of what lay beyond the door at the end of the stairs. To me, the very fires of hell were in that basement. I don't remember why I was so afraid, but I'm sure there must have been a lot of scary stories swapped by the kids, probably started by the teachers and custodians in an attempt to keep us out of a place we had no business being. It certainly worked for me!
My first love and my first kiss were at Pleasant Valley. My first love was a boy a year younger than me, with soft blond hair and big brown eyes. His older sister was a second-grader like me and we'd all walk around the school in the mornings together before school. I was so sweet on him! My first kiss was not from him, unfortunately, but from another kid who I did not particularly like. He came up to me one morning as I walked into school, grabbed my little hand, and planted a big kiss on it before I could say a word. I cried and told the teacher on him.
Our teacher had a friend in Nashville, an older lady. I don't think she had any kids of her own. We were sort of like surrogate nieces and nephews to her. She sent the teacher money to buy Christmas presents for some of the kids. One year, she bought Bibles for all of us. I misplaced mine during our last move, but I hope to run across it again someday. The cover is torn off and it's ragged, but I still hold it dear.
Holidays were always fun at the old school. At Halloween, we'd dress up in our costumes, go through the haunted house that the big kids put on for the little kids, and then bob for apples. We would get little wax mustaches for prizes. At Christmas, we had a real cedar tree, which we decorated with ropes made out of construction paper and garland that we strung together out of popcorn and cranberries.
The state closed the school during the middle of my fourth grade year. We were divided into two groups and sent to larger schools. Although I've lost contact with most of my classmates, I still keep in touch with my best friend from those days. She still lives in the area. I also try to send a Christmas card to my former teacher and let her know what is going on in my life, if not every year at least every few years.
It's too bad that there aren't any more two-room schoolhouses around. Although modern educators might criticize the methods and the curriculum used back then, the school provided a strong foundation. Many of us went on to graduate from college and graduate school. The wonderful freedom, the close friendships, and the pure fun of it all more than made up for any gaps in the educational program. My only regret is that I never made it the big room. My friends and I could have ruled the world in there, I just know it.
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