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Question: How many of us knew what a QR Code was before COVID hit and restaurants refused to hand out hand-held menus? That's when we were required to drag out our cell phones, center a QR code, and scroll through tiny little pages to decide what we could order for dinner! It was a learning curve for many of us but at least now we're comfortable with the utility of these strange little blocks of magic that lead us to relevant websites with the tap of a finger. Want to learn more? How fortunate we are that CSAA member Kristen Tyson of the West Bay Common School Museum in League City, Texas offered a presentation on how to create and use QR codes to enhance the museum experience for our visitors. Her program at the CSAA annual conference in Toledo was the shot in the arm we needed to learn how our own schoolhouse programs could benefit from their creative uses. Kristen's slide show will tell you why they are a terrific tool, explain their many uses, help you experiment with them, and show you how to create them. What a bonus! We thank Kristen Tyson for her creative graphics and her kind offer to share this program with our readers. A Quick Response for Your Museum Visitors! by Kristen Tyson As the next generation visits One Room Schoolhouses, it is vital to find ways to engage them and leave them with a better understanding of the value of schoolhouse museums. Quick Response Codes (QR) are a tool that can connect visitors with valuable information to expand their learning experience. A QR Code is a distinct image that is generated via a website and connects a web address to the code. When a visitor opens their smartphone camera, they simply let the camera “read” the image and it provides a link directly to the website. QR Codes have been used by marketing firms for years, but educators are realizing the value to continue the lesson and even expand on information not easily explained in person. At our schoolhouse (West Bay Common School), we are using QR Codes to provide information about our artifacts. This tool offers a cost-effective alternative to having a guided tour with limited staff, and it allows for additional immersive experiences with audio and video aids. Note: Photos are sample pages of Kristen's lessons.
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 Happy 4th of July- 248 Years! Quote by Educator John Orville Taylor in his book, The District School, 1834 “Schools are the depositories of liberty. He who founds a school of instruction establishes the liberty of his country, and he who educates the people makes them free. He who wishes his country to take a high standing among the nations of the earth, he who wishes for the growing improvement of his countrymen, and he who wishes the perpetuity of THIS glorious example of liberty and self-government will desire to do all in his power to educate the people.” And so it should be in 2024. Is it? Are we inculcating the ideals of patriotism and love of country in our public schools as we did in the common school era? Our public schools were founded on the ideals of producing a literate, united, and patriotic citizenry. Love of country pervades the histories of our one-room schools. Daily readings, the Pledge of Allegiance in various forms, national hymns and songs, poetry, and stories of our nation's heroes are all evident as we find lesson plans and journals in schoolhouse records or read memoirs of those who attended our country schools. Lucky for me, a copy of "The Patriotic Reader for Seventh and Eight Grades" (Houghton Mifflin Co. 1917) fell into my grateful hands a while back, a gift from a dear friend. It is one glimpse into the aspirations of our earlier public schools to teach children pride in the United States of America. Yet that practice started long before any book company created compilations. Fostering patriotism was a standard set by communities and teachers from the very beginning of our country schools. Categories in the Patriotic Reader's Table of Contents include: The Origin of Our Country, How We Became a Nation, The Glory of Our History, Our Greatest Leaders Washington and Lincoln. Amalgamation of Races in America, Our Country's Ideals, Our Flag, National Hymns and Songs, and Quotations and Short Selections. EACH category includes countless readings of prose and poetry, speeches, and reflections by famous people. Generations of school children were inspired by stories similar to these. My copy is characteristically well-worn and obviously well-loved. Maybe one of our presenters at a future CSAA conference would tackle the broader topic of country school patriotism...Hmmm.....Any takers?  Post Conference Outreach By Jackie Freeman, CSAA Member, Author Meeting the CSAA members at the 23rd Annual Country School Conference at the University of Toledo in June was a delight. The event was rich with knowledge, and the networking opportunities were exceptional. Though we may only meet in person once or twice a year, the connections we make are invaluable and lasting. After attending workshops or conferences, I make a conscious effort to maintain these bonds. Here’s how I do it: SOCIAL MEDIA: Many of the contacts we make are active on Facebook and Instagram or have websites where we can connect, like, and comment. This not only encourages each other but also boosts our visibility and connectivity. EMAILS OR BLOGS: I keep a list of conference attendees’ email addresses next to my calendar and try to stay updated on events happening in their areas. Staying connected and supporting each other helps us learn more about our new friends. I have attached the latest newsletter from the Wooden Old Stone Schoolhouse to let you know what we have been up to. Let’s keep the spirit of the CSAA 23rd Annual Conference alive by staying in touch. I look forward to seeing everyone at the 24th Annual Country School Conference in Huntington, West Virginia. On behalf of the Wooden Old Stone Schoolhouse Association, I would like to thank you all for your comments and accolades during your bus tour. (Check out the Wooden Old Stone Schoolhouse newsletter attached, Facebook links. We celebrate our 175th Anniversary in 2025, so please stop by if you are in our area. We’d love to see you. Jackie Freeman is one of our newest members of CSAA. She serves as a docent for the Wooden Old Stone Schoolhouse, and as you can see from the photos, she enjoys sharing the history of the one-room schoolhouse just down the road from her farm. She enjoys writing, reading, gardening, pickleball, and spending time with her family. She is the author of eight books, and her next children's picture book is about a little girl who attended the Wooden Schoolhouse. You can learn more at her website: www.jackiefreemanauthor.com. Note: We appreciate member input to The Report Card and hope you will consider sending your own post of interest to our readers. Thanks to Jackie Freeman (in pink below) for her kind thoughts on the benefits of our annual conference. We totally agree and look forward to meeting again next year in West Virginia!  Is There an Electric Salad Bowl in Your Schoolhouse Museum Collection? Opening excerpt by Sarah Uthoff (see full article at bottom) What’s an electric salad bowl, you ask? In the old Gil Gerard version of “Buck Rogers,” there was a scene when he was first shown his new apartment decorated by a historian of the 20th century. Did Buck point out to his friends everything this historian got right? No, he cocked an eyebrow and informed his friends that he didn’t have the heart to tell the historian that the lamp on the table wasn’t an "electric salad bowl." The reasons behind the misidentification were well thought out and made sense, but nothing could get around the fact (to those who really knew) that it just wasn’t an electric salad bowl. It’s easy to laugh, but there just might be some electric salad bowls (things wrongly identified, from a different time period, poor conservation practices) in your collection, too. (CLICK ON THE BLACK BUTTON BELOW FOR FULL ARTICLE- by Sarah Uthoff) Some of our readers will recognize this post! A thought provoking article from a past CSAA newsletter was written many years ago by CSAA member Sarah Uthoff, but it still resonates today. The clever title is intriguing and her questions and observations will have you checking your museum for items/artifacts that simply don't fit. Our schoolhouses that serve up living history to visitors are nostalgic recreations of country schools and we all try our best to offer lessons and activities that are time and materials appropriate. But, some of us might bend the rules a bit if our artifacts have been used at some time during the school's life. For example, many schoolhouses have desks from various eras collected from generous donors and we make do with variety. Exact time periods matched with the exact materials are often a difficult thing to pin down if records don't exist for our school. Globes on display should reflect the era of the schoolhouse, but political boundaries change as we speak. A kind donor dropped off an antique glass butter churner at our schoolhouse...did schoolchildren churn butter in school? As to authenticity, CSAA member Bill Sherman would specifically like to see dunce caps eliminated from our country schools contending that they are more myth than reality. While they appear in European art quite frequently, actual use in America requires more research. Young visitors still think they're a hoot! There are so many things to consider before chucking artifacts from our collections...#1 being we're attached to them and we love them! Nevertheless, have another go at Sarah's article to see if we might want to fine tune things about our collections and our practices.  Evident in many pictures featuring schoolmarms, aprons play a noticeable role in both real life and re-enactment. Checking the web for information on such a common household garment one thoughtful commentary crops up again and again appropriately called,"The History of Aprons." The copy I came across was on a Facebook site called Memory Lane Moments (with no attribution), but in researching found that the original poem was written by Tina Trivett in honor of her own grandmother. Enjoy her tribute to aprons below... "The History of Aprons" By Tina Trivett "I don't think most kids today know what an apron is. The principal use of Mom's or Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath because she only had a few. It was also because it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and aprons used less material. But along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven. It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears. From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven. When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids.. And when the weather was cold, she wrapped it around her arms. Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove. Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron. From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls. In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees. When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds. When dinner was ready, she walked out onto the porch, and waved her apron, and the men folk knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner. It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that 'old-time apron' that served so many purposes. Send this to those who would know (and love) the story about aprons. REMEMBER: Mom's and Grandma's used to set hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw. They would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on that apron. I don't think I ever caught anything from an apron - but love." |
