First and second grade classroom. The rooms was left exactly as it was in 1969, complete with word and color walls. During this tour I began to wonder if there really is such a thing as a new idea in education. All the desks were bolted to floor in nice neat rows, but the room was also very large with humongous windows. There was lots of room along the window wall for group work. Also the teacher's desk was about a third of the size of mine... I wonder if there is one hiding in my school's basement. You can't have clutter if there's no where to put it!
My cousin and nephew show off the 8-12 classroom. The room was huge! It was probably only used from humanities classes as there was separate science room and a closet functioning as the "business class" (read - typing). It was also the school's auditorium and stage. I wonder if the parents had to sit at the desks during school presentations? Programs from the school were on display, lovingly saved by parents or students. Not only did the school put on plays, they also held spelling bees, speech competitions, fancy dress balls and dances (complete with dance cards!) and fund raisers.
The room also featured 3 walls of nearly floor to ceiling windows. My guess is that there was a lot of daydreaming going on... but the large windows also reduced the amount of electricity needed to light the room (especially during the long, cold winter months). This is the view from the front windows. The dark spots in the center-left are old homestead cabins. It's all grazing land now. The trees in background are acrossed (that's northeaster Washington speak for 'across.' Some day I'll have to do a post on the state's burgeoning regional dialect) the border.
For such a small school, the science room was well stocked! All the rooms had 15 foot ceilings, and the science room had shelves and cabinets from floor to ceiling full of equipment and chemicals. I'm guessing that this also functioned as the math classroom as well.
There were no desks in this room, and given the nature of science classrooms, I'm guessing that students stood or sat around tables. The textbooks in the room focused heavily on the science of agriculture, but you can pretty much hit all the sciences using agriculture as a base.
At the end of our tour, we stopped in the little cafe (Kindergarten room!) and had homemade cake. For nine people, the bill came to $7! And the museum tour was free too!
Right outside the cafe door was this quilt. In 1930's, this autograph quilt was made for a school fundraiser. Community members paid 10 cents to sign their name on a square, which was later embroidered in redwork. Then raffle tickets for the quilt were sold. On autographs alone, the quilt probably garnered $50! A huge sum of money during the depression.
I think this would make a great fundraiser for a graduating class! The only time consuming part would be the embroidery, as the rest of the quilt can simply be sewn and tied together. With embroidery and embelishments so popular on clothing these days, a lot of students could be taught how to do it on the squares.
Finally, a classic homestead "cabin." This house meansures roughly 10 feet by 18 feet.... about the same size as small studio in NYC. However, a family of 6 lived in it. I'm guessing that they didn't have all the furniture pictured. Probably just the table, chairs and bed in the background. There's also a wood cook stove just outside of the photo. Not a lot of privacy, but warm enough on winter nights to make it all worth while. Can you imagine a family today with that much closeness? Most bedrooms are bigger than this entire cabin!
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