The Coleman School in Carroll County, located on the Blue Ridge Parkway was a little white building with grades one to four. When students were older, they would attend a school which was farther away, containing grades one through 12. There was a bell on top of the school that was rung to signal the start of the school day. Inside the school there was a pot-bellied stove for heat, and I especially remember the oiled wooden floors. The teacher took care of the stove and the building. There was a blackboard at the front of the room. Students sat in old desks made for two students. The desks had a hole for the ink-well, but it was no longer used for ink.
In the third grade, I went to another one-room school, but I do not remember why. We moved back to the Coleman school the following year. The For that year, I attended Goodson School in Grayson County. We lived on the county line of Grayson and Carroll County.
The boys in the school carried the water from the spring nearby, and everybody drank from the same bucket. Sometimes the students made drinking cups out of notebook paper. There was no electricity because of the distance to the nearest large city.
The teacher was the same teacher that my father had in elementary school. She was married and lived in the community. One year another teacher boarded with my family, and my mother kept the teacher's small son while she taught. I do not remember why the teacher boarded with us, unless this was the only place the teacher could get a job. Her husband visited on weekends.
There was a small playground outside, and children played together at recess. For lunch, I brought biscuits with jelly or with butter and sugar. I drank water from the spring with my lunch.
We had most of the same subjects that schools have now. My sister and I were in the same grade, so we shared books. We bought the books and then sold them the next year or handed them down. We used the Dick and Jane reading series. The students memorized many poems from the reading book. I also remember the little state history book for third grade, The Story of Virginia. I would love to have a copy of this book now. We studied basic math. I do not remember studying much science until high school.
Originally there were only 11 grades, but they added another grade while I was in the seventh grade. For one year there was no one in the eighth grade, because they moved grades 8-11 up to be 9-12.
Spanking was the method of discipline. Sometimes the teacher used a paddle and other times a switch. I do not remember any bad discipline problems. They were probably sent home if they were too bad.
Students with learning disabilities were held back in lower grades. I remember a couple of boys who remained in second grade until they were 16 years old. One is now a foreman at a large furniture factory.
My family lived on a farm, but we did not leave the school to work on the farm. The school year was not shortened because of farm work. My mother made many of our clothes, for me and for my four sisters and three brothers.
One time the teacher closed school so she could take care of her sick mother. The teacher gave us ice cream to come to school on Saturday to make up for the lost time. This was a real treat, because we seldom got ice cream.