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Country School Days: True Tales of a Wisconsin One-Room School (Narrated Presentation from the 2021 CSAA Virtual Conference) CSAA member Larry Scheckel attended the one-room Oak Grove District#15 School from 1948-1956. Oak Grove sat on a slight knoll in rural Seneca Township, Crawford County, in southwestern Wisconsin and educated farm kids from 1897 to 1962. Follow Larry as he trudges the one-mile gravel road with four siblings, the neighbor children, and a farm dog or two. He describes the interior: stove, library, drinking fountain, piano, hectograph machine, Ranger Mac corner, and radio. Larry will talk about the recitation period, visits by the County Nurse and the Supervising Teacher, softball games, playground and indoor games, Annie-Over, snowball fights, the outdoor privies, school discipline, the curriculum, the Basket Social, the Christmas program, and the end-of-the-year picnic. Larry delves into teacher training, contracts, teacher expectations, and how teachers managed 28 students grades one to eight. Larry also explores the bitter consolidation controversy and the closing of all 115 Crawford County one-room schools. This presentation was a prelude to his book, Country School Days: True Tales of a Wisconsin One-Room School, published in 2022. It is a comprehensive and delightful look at the 115 one-room schools in Crawford County, with emphasis on Oak Grove School.  Larry Scheckel grew up on a family farm in the hill country of southwestern Wisconsin, one of nine children. He attended eight years of a one room country school, four years of high school, off to the military for a spell, trained in electronics as a TV broadcast engineer, married, college, and started a teaching career. That career stretched over thirty-eight years teaching physics and aerospace science at Tomah, Wisconsin. Larry Scheckel has been named Tomah Teacher of the Year and Presidential Awardee. He is the recipient of numerous teaching awards. Larry and his wife, Ann, are both retired teachers and live in Tomah, Wisconsin. Larry and Ann have published eight books, including Seneca Seasons: A Farm Boy Remembers, Ask A Science Teacher, and countless educational articles. For more about Larry Scheckel and his other fascinating books visit: larryscheckel.com
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 ACCESS PDF HERE Classic Books with a Schoolhouse Theme Are you looking for children's books or series related to one-room country schools? Anyone who has attended all 20 CSAA annual conferences can attest that the resources we collect are exactly what we need to improve our programming or expand our resources on country schools. It escapes this writer which conference supplied the following reprint, but author Gwenyth Swain, penned an article called "Revisiting the One-Room School," suggesting a number of classics books on one-room schools well suited to young readers. It was printed in the ALA magazine called Book Links in 2005, but still very helpful today.  LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE - CLICK ON THE PHOTO FOR MORE INFORMATION A Complex with MUCH to Offer! Sometimes you get more than you bargained for, in a GOOD WAY! Here I invoke the memory of CSAA's Bill Sherman, who until 2023, organized the Preservation Iowa Country School Conferences each fall in many of his beloved 99 counties. He gathered grateful schoolhouse enthusiasts from across the country to experience preserved one-room schools and treated us to other fascinating historic sites along the way. His many conferences are where I fell for the state of Iowa, second only to my devotion to New England. Bill always had a gift for centering us in places that revealed the very best of Iowa—places where we learned through visits to cultural centers, historic villages, and museums to honor the hardy pioneers who settled the state. One such place where we gathered with Bill was Cedar Falls, aptly situated along the Cedar River. Because The Report Card has featured other historic “villages” with schoolhouses, this is an ideal opportunity to highlight a Cedar Falls complex that includes an absolutely beautiful Little Red Schoolhouse. In addition to the Little Red Schoolhouse, Cedar Falls Historical Society curates the Behrens-Rapp Gasoline Station, the Ice House Museum, and Sturgis Park...all in one place. Call it a village if you wish. All are models of perfection in preservation and restoration! The schoolhouse transports visitors into the past of public education while the ice house is a monument to the days before refrigeration when Iowans relied on river ice harvesting. The gas station served motorists from 1925-1990!  CLICK ON THE PHOTO FOR MORE INFORMATION  ICE HOUSE MUSEUM - CLICK ON THE PHOTO FOR MORE INFORMATION |
