Technology and science have grown up around us, rooms and facilities have multiplied, we have added a grade or two, and politicians pay more attention to our funding. Politicians also pay more attention to our perceived successes and failures, and they even propose goals and objectives for us. We are often led to think of schools ourselves in these technological and political ways, to define school in terms of initiatives, issues, and finance. Our experience with this oral history project has redirected our attention most frequently and powerfully to the ways in which we are like those who came before us as teachers. We are led by teachers and students who look back upon their time in the one-room schools to look reflectively at our own experience in the classroom and to consider what was and is important and enduring. Successful teachers then as now worked hard, used whatever resources they could gather, studied and reflected upon the art of teaching, and held the student's welfare in highest regard.
The humor, hardship, commitment, and caring of the teachers who served in the one-room schoolhouses is revealed in their own comments and in the memories of their students. We invite your attention to the interviews that we have posted here and those that will be added to them over time. Please visit the site often, and we will try to post new items regularly.