I am one of the few remaining people who briefly attended a one-room school. There were two within a few miles of our old farmhouse in Glenwood. School 15 was near the corner of Crump and Pratham Roads in northwest Sardinia, and School 5 was on Route 240 in Glenwood, about a mile north of what is now Kissing Bridge Ski Resort. My sister Ethel and I attended School 5.
Bill Miess of East Amherst remembers an almost extinct institution.
Our teacher was Miss Fisher. She often picked us up on the way to school for the last leg of our journey. I don’t remember what she looked like, only that she was pretty. Perhaps it was her kindness that made her pretty in my youthful eyes, but that’s how I remember her.
She taught grades one through six, and the desks were set up so that the classes were a little bit apart. My sister was in first grade, and for some reason I was allowed to go to school with her, even though I wasn’t actually old enough to be a student. The nice thing about single-grade schools is that there was cross-class instruction, especially for the more gifted children. We could hear what the older children were being taught, and some of it gave us a head start.
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Everyone had their lunch with them. After eating, we had time to visit the small playground behind the school, where there was a slide, a swing and a seesaw.
I loved school and the long walk every day with my sister. It created a special lifelong bond between us. We still fondly remember those days almost 80 years ago. It would be unthinkable today to let small children walk that distance and it wasn’t the best then either, but life left us no other choice. Other children walked too, so we weren’t completely alone.
The wife of a neighboring farmer was a teacher at School 15. I worked on her farm as a teenager and was later given the bell she used to call the students after recess.
After our first year, the district discontinued the one-room schools. Both were sold and are now private homes. My father bought a maypole from the playground of School 15. It is still a little nostalgic at my brother’s farm on Crump Road in the town of Colden. The sound of the handles banging against the pole on windy nights brings back memories of a bygone era. Maybe, as my mother once joked, they are the ghosts of those who once played here and come back for another round.
The following year, we took the bus to Griffith Institute & Central School on Academy Street in Springville. However, we still had to walk a bit along our seldom-used dirt road to the bus stop on the main road.
To my 5-year-old eyes, the Griffith Institute had an impressive facade with large Roman numerals above the grand entrance. I was impressed and amazed as I walked through this prestigious entrance.
It was difficult to fit in with the crowd of children who all knew each other and were more socially developed than me. I never got over my shyness, but I made friends with some of the students and had some favorite teachers who guided me along the way. The one-room school was a gentle introduction to my education, but the central school opened my eyes and prepared me for the world.
Both live on in my memory.
