The school year is in full swing now and children everywhere are creating memories that will likely stay with them for a 
lifetime. Are you taking time to preserve artifacts from their school years? What memories do you have of your time in school? Was there a teacher who helped change your life? Pull out an old yearbook and take a stroll down memory lane. Our formative school years are a big part of our life, and down the road, your recorded memories will help your family get to know you better.
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My mother was great on IDing pictures so when I brought home the annual school picture I had to write the names of the students. I still have these for all the 7th grade and then of coure I have annuals for high school, junior and senior college. I deplore the failure today to take pictures of the whole class. Mother also kept all report cards and lots of clippings, papers, etc. from my school days. Wayne Woodward
I went my first seven years of elementary school in a 1-room schoolhouse, where eight grades were taught by one teacher. It had its advantages in that if one didn’t quite understand math, English grammar, etc., one got a chance to hear it explained every year for eight years. We had a coal stove for heat, we all used a single bucket of fresh water each day from the well. There were two privys–one for boys and one for girls. We had REAL slate blackboards and we used them daily. Fridays, after the last recess, we had “fun time.” We did one of three things. We had spelling bees and spelled “railroad fashion,” which meant that the first person spelled a word, then the next person started his/her word with the last letter of the preceding person’s word. We worked hard to spell as many words as we could, which ended in “x.” Another fun thing we did was “geography matches.” We would agree on a certain continent and the person, who found the city, state, river, mountain first got to pick out the next mystery location. The clues were the first and last letters with as many dashes between the letters as there were letters between the first and last letters of the name. The third activity we did was the ciphering match. Children from the first through the fourth grades usually wanted to make marks. That meant the person from each side would make as many short, straight marks as they could in 60 seconds on the blackboard. These were then counted by making a cross mark on each mark as it was counted. The winner then played the next person on the opposing team. The older children got to choose what type of math problems they wanted to do. I really liked math and would always choose such things as “longitude and time, ratio and proportion, square root, etc.”
I attended school during the Depression and life was much simpler back then. No one had any money in our area and no one had electricity, running water or any other amenities of life, which children today take for granted.
NO FEMALES wore such things as jeans or slacks andwe “wouldn’t have been caught dead” in a pair of shorts. Our long legged bloomers usually matched the dresses we wore. The boys wore blue chambry shirts and overalls. In winter, all of us wore long underwear and long stockings. All of us wore heavy coats, stocking caps, heavy mittens, four, five or six buckle overshoes and always a muffler around the neck.
I lived through the worst of times, but they were also the best of times, for we all worked together as families and communities and life revolved around family, school and church.
This past weekend was my 50th high school reunion. Your Weekly Planner really hit home. In visiting with my old classmates, many long-forgotten events or incidences were remembered; now I will write them down to be enjoyed by my children at a later date. My mother missed her 50th reunion because she was taking care of my children while I was hospitalized with hepatitis, so I never heard any newly remembered stories of her school days.