Back to school, back in the day - Glimpses of the Past with Karen Webster

For readers who attended a one-room schoolhouse, perhaps their memories are similar to mine. I attended SS#1 school at Port Albert. It was so named because it was the first school in Ashfield Township. Apparently, a log building, erected near the lake, served as the first school and church. SS#1 was built on what is now called London Road as a frame building in 1873 and had a cement veneer applied in 1910. This was the same school that my grandmother and father, as well as countless other relatives, attended.

 

The school building was entered from a door on the east side that led into a tiny room, which then gave way to a larger room. There was a wood lathe in this room on which a former teacher had instructed the older boys how to make baseball bats, but it was never used when I was there. On the right was the girls’ cloakroom and toilet and on the south side the same for the boys. Each day, the custodian had to put a pail of water down each toilet and I think there was some kind of chemical was used as well.
My first memory is that of sitting in the first desk on the north side of the building. As we progressed through the grades, we moved further south each year until we reached the wall with all the windows. I was in front of the piano and on top was a globe that wobbled a bit when anyone walked around. I was afraid the whole world would come crashing down on me. 

 

Word by word, we learned to read by copying them from the blackboard in our very best printing. It was an exciting day when we learned a long word like “something”. The Dick and Jane books were our guides and later we progressed through a series of compilations until we reached the High Flight volume.

 

The classroom had one door in the centre of the back wall. To the right of the door were a sink and a crockery water dispenser with a push button tap at the bottom. There was no running water, so a pail of fresh water from the well was brought in each day. On a shelf above the sink was a radio from which CBC school broadcasts were sometimes tuned to.

 

A small hotplate was located in this area and, in the cold winter months, either soup or hot chocolate was made by the senior students to supplement the peanut butter and jam or egg salad sandwiches that we brought in our little tin lunch boxes. There was a work table along the back of the classroom on which the hectograph pad sat. This was a gelatin pad that was used to make copies of worksheets. A special purple pencil was used to make the master copy. The hectograph pad was dampened and the master sheet was rubbed firmly onto the pad, thus leaving the image in reverse on the pad. Several copies of this could be made by firmly rubbing paper onto the damp gelatin pad until the image became too faint to be seen. Then the process would start once more.
 

Another way that copies were made, especially of maps, was to hold the original image up to the south window with a plain piece of paper over it. It took dexterity and determination to trace a good copy.

 

To the left of the door was a painted cupboard that housed the library. Once a month, the Huron County Library truck came around and the senior students were allowed to choose books to be used until they were rotated a month later. One Friday afternoon a month, a Red Cross program was held with students reading prepared stories or poems and then a collection was taken up to be sent to a part of the world that needed our assistance. 

 

Up at the front of the room was the teacher’s desk, bookshelves and a piano. Blackboards covered the west and north walls, above which were a photo of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, as well as cursive and printed alphabet cards.

 

In the centre of the classroom sat a large wood burning stove, with a metal shield around it. On very cold days, desks were edged closer to the heat. Our desks were mounted on two long boards in groups of two or three and moving these desks required some muscle. Somewhere along the line, a partial basement was dug and an oil furnace was installed.

 

Each afternoon, once school was let out, a couple of students, who were the custodians, sprinkled the floor with a red oily, sawdust-like compound and then they swept it. 

 

The teacher was a busy person who wrote the work for the day for all the grades on the blackboards. Students were expected to work independently and to quietly read if they finished their lessons early. When students reached Grade 3, if they had completed their assignments, they were allowed to listen to the younger grades when they were reading and to correct some workbooks. The teacher used recess and noon time to prepare for the next subjects. The children were free to use the playground unsupervised, but with the teacher keeping an ear open.

 

Along with the perennial ballgames was another activity called “Ante-I-Over the Coal Shed”. Sides were chosen and teams lined up on the north and south sides of the outbuilding. A ball was thrown over and a form of tag followed in an attempt to capture players from the opposing team. A similar game was “Kings and Crowns” that spanned the width of the playing field. But the best memory of all didn’t take place on the school ground, but instead in the fields that surrounded it. 

 

In wintertime, these fields were covered with ice. Recess times were stitched to a longer noon hour and many happy days were spent playing hockey and skating around. Each spring, an Arbour day was held to plant trees, attend to a flowerbed and to whitewash the stones along the front of the building. Once the work was completed, the teacher took the students on a hike to a nearby bush as a reward for their efforts.

 

To the west of the school was a reforestation plot filled with all kinds of evergreens. There were trails around it and all sorts of forts and clubhouses were there and, in June, the wild strawberries were an added attraction.

 

The school was a kind of community centre and, in the winter, there were euchre parties held there. Each December, the students performed in a Christmas concert. The basement of the Anglican Church, just down the road from the school, was used for this purpose.

 

In my eight years there, there were five different teachers, all good people who encouraged us to do our best and thus prepared us for success in life.

 

SS#1 still stands, not as a school but as a lovely home.