When I attended a one room country school in the 1930’s, our teacher taught school for all eight grades. Sometimes, as many as thirty students attended school at one time.

We younger students learned more by listening to the grade above us recite than just what we learned in our class. The next year was easier for us because of this too. The older students could also pick up what they failed to learn or forgot from us younger students too.

The most pressure on teachers back then, was to get to the school on time by driving on dirt roads in bad weather conditions. They had to chance getting stuck in the loose dirt, snow, ice or mud. They were also concerned about getting there on time and before the students arrived to open the school door and to start a fire to warm the building in the winter time. Their job also included preparing lessons for eight different grades not just one. They had to serve as a nurse, doctor, counselor, and mother. Nowadays, the teacher has to have permission to even give a feverish child an aspirin. Back then, the teacher made a bed out of chairs for the sick child and took care for them at school until school was dismissed. There were no phones at a country school for the teacher to call a parent.

They taught all courses from English, Health, Penmanship, History, Math, Arithmetic, Music, Sports and others. They had their share of pressures, but not the same pressures as teachers have today. I really do not know how they did it all.