Meet Taylor #4

Does Your Schoolhouse Have a Virtual Visit Video?
In 2021, when our CSAA members were homebound and fighting off COVID 19, we opted to hold an on-line  conference in lieu of our annual in-person event. The 22 presentations proved to be a huge success, and in place of the annual "COACH TOUR OF AREA SCHOOLS" we were treated to an "EASY CHAIR TOUR" of some our participants' schoolhouses. By way of these virtual video tours, we were able to hear the stories of their history, preservation, restoration and programming. It was a way of stepping inside the very schools we might never get to experience.

Our videos might be homespun or created professionally, but all are informative and entertaining. As different as they are, they will spark ideas about how to make your own one-room school virtual visit, promotional video, or slide show.

                          Taylor #4, Marshalltown, Iowa
This month we will highlight Taylor #4 in Marshalltown, Iowa produced and narrated by CSAA member Julie Lontz Lang. Julie was an early savior of the schoolhouse  and has successfully re-created the year 1913 in this wonderful museum school. Turn your clocks back to 1913 and spend a day with your schoolmarm at Taylor #4. The school is furnished with fixtures and equipment from Marshall County schools and depicts a typical Iowa educational experience of the era. Beautifully restored and maintained, this is an authentic school day where students experience all subjects taught straight from the 1913 Taylor register. To their great delight every child in Marshall County, Iowa has experienced this free program for the past 17 years. You will no doubt use many of these ideas for your own living history program.  Enjoy your tour! 
Video production by Julie Jontz Lang and Rita Smith.
Taylor #4, 60 N. Second Ave., Marshalltown, IA
Our Email: [email protected] 
Our Website:www.marshallhistory.org

Julie Lang loved teaching fourth grade, in Marshalltown, IA, for 34 years (BA and MA in Education). For 28 years, she's been a volunteer housewife at the 1900 farm at Living History Farms in Des Moines and has been active in her local historical society for many years. In 2005-2006, Julie became the volunteer director of Taylor #4,  a 1913 one-room school, and restored it back to its original appearance. After much research, Julie wrote the reenactment curriculum and started the free, full-day, authentic 1913 living history program. Rita Smith, who also leads re-enactments, and Julie Lang are proud to have had every fourth grader in their county (plus home-schoolers) participate at the schoolhouse for the last fourteen years. Unfortunately, year fifteen was pre-empted by tornado damage repairs and COVID 19.  

​Rita Smith, after 18 years of teaching second and fifth grade and many years of subbing, was happy to teach the Taylor #4 re-enactments (BA and MA in Education). Loving history and teaching children makes this a perfect fit for Julie and Rita who truly make schoolhouse history come alive.  Their program proves it!