Interviews were conducted in Bristol, Buchannan County, Carroll County, Emory, Lee County, and Russell County. Planning and coordination of the project was conducted in the classroom at the Bristol campus of ETSU. Contributors to the project include all members of the class, the generous narrators, friends and other professional educators who helped us to locate people to interview, and Professors Russ West and Ron Lindahl, whose suggestions at all stages of the project contributed much to its success.
Also included in the narrative and interviews are excerpts from the Appalachian Oral History Project begun in 1970. This project began as a cooperative effort between Alice Lloyd and Lees Junior College in Eastern Kentucky and later expanded to include Emory & Henry College in Emory, Virginia, and Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. This project is extensively catalogued and housed in the various colleges. Its broader scope may be of interest to some readers. The collection includes over three thousand audio cassette tapes, one fourth of them transcribed. It has resulted in the publication of Our Appalachia based on interviews from the project, microfische of the transcripts by Microfilm Corporation of America, encouragement of oral history activities throughout Central Appalachia, and the completion of an annotated catalogue. (Appalachian Oral History Project union catalog, 1977) Original tapes survive, but many are in poor condition. Funding is being sought for re-mastering of the tapes to make them once again available for listening.
Early in our class project, Kelly Library at Emory & Henry College agreed to provide an Internet Webpage for posting information and progress. The planned (required) product of our research was a compilation of transcripts, brief narrative, and an oral presentation. The project was completed on June 23, 1997, with a presentation at the Hicks School, operated and maintained by the Sullivan County Museum of Education, and located on the campus of Sullivan East High School in Sullivan County, Tennessee. The Hicks School was in operation from 1838 to 1946 as a one-room school, and was restored in 1986 by the students in the Sullivan East Zone as their homecoming project. Their brochure notes that a third grade curriculum has been developed to be used by students who visit the school. Visiting students participate in "a learning experience using materials and lessons covering the three R's, music, and recess characteristic of education one hundred years ago." Presentation of our project in the Hicks School was an honor, and we believe the location added much to the project in both spirit and substance. We will include pictures of the school and our group as soon as we have them developed.
We hope that the one-room school project will continue. Persons wishing to contribute information or interviews relating personal experience in one-room and small (2-4 rooms) schoolhouses are invited to contact any member of the class listed below or visit the Webpage at http://www.kallixti.com/sw/school/index.html and send e-mail to Sarah at ThirdLayer.org. One directory item we hope to accumulate is a roll-call of teachers who taught in one-room schoolhouses and the three- and four-room schoolhouses of mining communities in Southwest Virginia. If you wish to contribute a name to this list, please include the teacher's name, the name of the school, the name of the location, and the dates during which the teacher taught at that school. Dates may be approximate.
Class members and friends of the project are listed below
Class members: and photographs of the original presentation.