Pleasant Valley was a country school with eight grades. One top floor room had first and second grade. The other big room had fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade. There was a big stage in the front of that room. The basement had third and forth grades.
Black chalk boards lined the big kids room. There were pieces of chalk and erasers in the trays at each board. The four grades had the same teacher, Mrs. Guthrie. She was a real old maid stickler. She always wore dresses and hose and carried herself in a maternally manner. As I remember, her hair was mousy grey and she rolled it up in some kind of roll of curls bobby pinned tightly around her head in a circle. She was nice enough and cared a lot about the kids learning something.
She would line us up at the chalk boards, one grade at a time, while the other grades worked on their homework quietly at their desks. She would give us math problems until our hands were fully of chalk. We would right down the problem, then she would say go and be would busily work through the answers. It was always a challenge to see who could finish first with the right answer. I don’t remember being first, but don’t remember being last either. No computers for us as they weren’t even invented yet. I must have learned something this Mrs. Guthrie as I was pretty good at math, algebra, calculus in later years.
Mrs. Guthrie loved to teach us geography. We learned through constant drilling and memorization all the states and capitols, countries and capital cities all over the world, mountain ranges, rivers, oceans, facts about continents, climates and longitude and latitude information. She filled our heads until they almost burst.
Science was kind a skimpy subject for Mrs. Guthrie. It would have been hard to imagine being an astronaut as it information about space travel was limited in the early 1950’s. When I was older and went with a school group on a train to Washington DC by way of Chicago we stopped at the Air and Science Museum. I was enamored with all the information and science displays that we saw. Of course, this was still a time when traveling to places by air was limited. Our family would go down to the Greeley airport just a few miles from our country home just to watch the small aircraft take off and land. What a treat. When traveling from the big Stapleton Airport in Denver, every one dress up in their Sunday best as it was a big deal to be flying in such an elegant way.
At the end of the day at school, Mrs. Guthrie would assign a couple of kids to pick up the erasers and go outside the back porch of the school and slap them together in a great cloud of chalk dust to clean them. It was an enjoyable chore to have a few minutes away from the school time drills.
Music was limited in this school. Once a week or so a traveling music teacher would come around and we would sing some songs. She would play the piano that was upfront in the room and we would sing along. I still can remember some of those simple, friendly songs. Some were patriotic and start something like this; My Country Tis of Thee, Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies, Mine Eyes have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord. Others were local favorite tunes such as Cielito Lindo, Carry me Back to Ole Virginny, My old Kentucky Home, Clementine and many rounds. Christmas songs came next. There was not much separation of church and state in the 1950’s.
The music teacher would split us up and teach us three or four part harmony. Rounds were always fun and would sound really great. My brother was really good at harmony and still today sings with a barbershop quarter.
Mrs. Guthrie drilled us on spelling words daily. She would line up all the four grades on the edge of the stage. Starting from the left side she would read a word. The student would repeat the word and spell it. If they were incorrect, she would go to the next person until someone could spell it right. That person would move up to where the word was misspelled. My friend Lois Goldsmith and I were always tied for last place. This practice set us up for the national spelling bee. I don’t think that any of Mrs. Guthrie’s’ students went to the spelling bee, but she did have her share of pretty smart kids.
I’m not a great speller as I really never learned phonics like some of the students and couldn’t hear the subtle differences of the words. Good thing there is spell check now with computers. My sister was a whiz at spelling and most other subjects as was my brother. It was hard to follow in their footsteps in the same school as the teacher has such high expectations of you that maybe you can’t live up to what your siblings did.
Art was a limited subject at Pleasant Valley mostly confined to drawing with a pencil on a piece of manila colored construction paper. We could use color crayons or cut out colored construction paper and glue it with mucilage to another piece of paper. One summer I went to town to school a College High, now Northern Colorado University. I guess my parents thought I should catch up. I was probably about second or third grade. I was so excited to find out that these kids had interesting art classes that used tempura paints to paint on newsprint. We would put on little smocks to keep out clothes clean and go to town with the paints. I would probably be more artsy today if I had more experience when I was in the country school.
At summer school there was an in door Olympic sized swimming pool. All the girls had to wear a swim cap. Mine was a rubber thing in light turquoise that had extra molded part at the top like a top knot. I tried to learn to swim as best I could, but really only progressed to the back stroke and face forward floating. I still can’t swim very well, but don’t really drown when I’m in the water.
An interesting experience during that summer has stuck with me. There were kids from all over the country taking summer school. Many were kids of parents who were teachers going to the College to update their teaching credentials. One of these kids was a little black kid. I had never really seen a black kid before. Most of the community was white folks or Hispanic folks. This kid mixed right in and did all the activities that that rest of us did with one exception. The first day of swim class he stood over to the side of the pool and wouldn’t come in the water. As he was one of our friends by now we all urged him to come in with us thinking he was afraid of the water. He still stood over to the side. The teacher worked with him for a while and discovered it wasn’t the water he was afraid of, but his background teachings. He was from the south and had learned at an early age that black didn’t swim in the same pool as whites. Though much coaxing and discussions with his parents he finally joined us the pool as this wasn’t the same issue in Colorado that it was in Alabama.