A Teacher's Reflections

I am the schoolmarm for third graders at the end of the school year, in the old New England schoolhouse in town.  The year I bring to life for children is 1833.  I ring the bell to welcome ‘scholars’ as students were called back then.  I show objects and artifacts, including the outhouse, and talk about life in Groton in 1833.

Children went to school in winter and summer.  They had to work on the farm in spring and fall, so no school.  All children were in one room, the teacher had to teach all grades.  There was no electricity.  A wood burning stove kept the school warm in the winter.  Children had jobs at school, like gathering the wood to keep the stove going.

After talking about Groton in 1833, I talked about America in 1833.  That made history come alive.

• The Brooklyn Bridge was finished, but no one believed it was safe to cross.  A suspension bridge with cables?  It was the Barnum and Bailey Circus to prove the bridge was safe.  Their elephants were the first to cross the bridge.
• The Statue of Liberty was almost finished.
• In the East, there was an amazing man who invented many things, including the light bulb.  His name was Thomas Edison.
• In the West, there were cowboys and outlaws like Jesse James.

The room was silent and wide-eyed.  They ‘got it’.

First we had to officially start school.

We stood to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and then we were ready to sing the National Anthem.  I said to children:

Wait…there was no National Anthem in 1833.  “The Star-Spangled Banner” was not our National Anthem until 1931.  I called my mother to ask her if this was true.

“Yes, Jennie, it’s true”, she said.  “So, when you were a little girl, what did you sing?”  Mother told me everyone sang “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”

All the third graders stood and sang.  They were loud and respectful.  They understood they were in 1833.

We began school with arithmetic – first a word problem.  I pretended to collect and carry wood for the wood stove, dropping pieces and going back for more.  I grunted and groaned, yet made sure I told children how many pieces of wood I collected and dropped on my multiple trips.  How many pieces of wood did I finally collect?  Children wrote answers on slate.  That was cool.

Reading and reciting were important.  We recited poetry together, and then we read a true story of a bear at school from this popular reader:

Interestingly, in this children’s reader, paragraphs are numbered.  Brilliant!  I read the first part of the story, then children took turns reading aloud the rest of the paragraphs.  They loved it.

History includes music.  I told children my grandmother was born the same year as Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter, Rose.  They share the same name, too.  My grandmother learned a song from the late 1800’s from  her mother, “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain”, and she taught it to me when I was a little girl.  I taught the song to the third graders, and we all sang together.

Teaching history is a joy.  Making it come alive and meaningful for children is important.

Jennie

P.S. Stay tuned for Part 2, books that make history come alive.