Clara of Clara's Corner has suggested for us all to share a childhood memory on Mondays...I plan to participate when I think of it and can pick a memory I want to share.I think I have shared this before...but some may not have read it so bear with the part that is a repeat. The above is the Arthur Elementary School I attended for eight years....it had four rooms plus the entryway. There were four teachers, each one teaching two grades. Each of the four rooms had a stove in it...not a pretty coal burning stove, but just one of the plainer ones. I think starting in the 3rd grade, the teachers would pick a couple students to go bring in a bucket of coal...everyone volunteered. Maybe they did it in 1st and 2nd grade, but if they did I don't remember it.
Notice all the windows....again I don't think we did it in first and second grades, but from about 3rd grade on up, the kids washed the windows. At least the bottom three rows of window panes...maybe we did the fourth, but I for sure don't think we went any higher. I only remember girls being chosen to do that job...but again all of us volunteered. The teacher would choose two of us...one for the inside and one for the outside.
And then there was the chalk boards...again students took care of them. And we loved going outside to clean the erasers. There was a pump house that was tacked on to the actual school, and we would beat the erasers on the walls of it...sometimes we would stand back and throw them at it. Again, the teacher chose two....again everyone volunteered.
And then there was the outhouses...all the students volunteered to clean them also! All we had was cold water and a broom...and I suppose soap cause seems like I remember carrying buckets of water to rinse after we had scrubbed the outhouse. Again two kids were the lucky ones chosen for the job.
I don't know if the teachers chose two because they knew we would enjoy doing the jobs more that way and volunteer more readily, or if they thought the jobs actually needed two people...and with all these jobs, remember the class size...there was 5-6 girls in my class most of those years, and not many in the class above or below our grade either. And there were even fewer boys in our class.
But all this is not really the memory I was planning to share. The memory is about library books. We didn't really have a library in the school...I know in the 5th and 6th grade room, there were a couple shelves with old, old books on them. I don't even remember looking at them. I have no idea if there was anything worth reading or not.
I don't remember if I was in 3rd or 4th or 5th grade, maybe even 6th grade when a car started coming and bringing children's books to school. I think they were brought from another school, but I am not sure. The hallway or entry way had a long bench in it and they would spread the books out there...you just cannot imagine the thrill of getting to go pick out books with shiny dust covers....it was a wonderful thing for us when they started doing that.
