The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Photo courtesy of the Niton Historical Society

The country schoolhouse where I learned to put
A phrase together, and to rhyme two words
Now shelters hay for cows; the loft is but
A sweet asylum for the winter birds.
—the poet Edsel Ford (1928–1970)

This profile is not about a particular person; rather, it’s about many people—those intrepid young men and women who in the first half of the 1900s taught in one-room schoolhouses across the province. You can still see many of these old school buildings—now mostly decrepit, they dot the prairies like so many desiccated flowers. If you happen to be out on a country road and spot one, get out of your car and approach, peek in the windows and try to imagine life for young teachers 100 years ago. Often not much more teenagers themselves and usually with only a few months of teacher education under their belt, they were charged with teaching the 3 Rs to children aged five to fifteen. But their job did not end there—teachers did things like tend the fire of the pot-bellied stove that heated the room, and cleaned the schoolhouse. Drinking water often had to be carried to the school from a neighbouring farm. There was no indoor plumbing, and people took care of their personal needs outside the schoolhouse, regardless of weather. Books and other teaching resources were often inadequate or nonexistent. All this for an average annual salary of about $600 (in 1905).

The following excerpts from Memories of Entrance, written by Maureen O’Reilly Hanson Gouveia, who taught in the one-room schoolhouse at Entrance, Alberta, in the 1950s, shed light on the daily life of a teacher in a typical one-room schoolhouse.

I had ten pupils in all. Six were in Grade 1, two in Grade 2, one in Grade 5, one in Grade 6. Lena Plante was in Grade 9 and taking it by correspondence so my job was to supervise her lessons and help if she had any problems.
…
I decided that everybody needed a toilet break, but the outhouses still weren’t standing up. I decided to send the girls to one side of the school into some brush and the boys to the other side of the schoolyard, which was quite hilly. The only playground equipment was a broken swing on a tree at the bottom of one of those hills. We didn’t stay out too long because the mosquitoes were so bad.
…
Master copies were written out with a special purple pencil then laid face down onto the dampened hectograph (French gelatin melted into a cookie sheet and cooked). The writing transferred to the jelly and then you could put sheets of paper over the writing for extra copies. The cookie sheet at the school was very rusty. I had bought some sheets of carbon paper in Edson and made copies of tests and seatwork that way. It was painstaking but I could do it in the evenings.

Because the propane stove at the school never worked properly, the children and I were often cold, and having to wear a skirt caused a problem for me. My feet got very cold because the floor was cold, and there was no insulation around the school. I went to Watt’s store and bought myself a pair of moccasins that laced up to my knees. …

One of the worst tasks at the end of the year was getting the school register to balance. It was the attendance record for the year and an official document. … Unfortunately for me I couldn’t get the register to balance. I had had a few students move in and move out, and that made it more complicated. Mrs. Munro tried to help me but she couldn’t find the mistake either. I spent a very late night after school closed and finally found my mistake. It was important that I did this because I wouldn’t get my paycheque until the register balanced.

The one-room schoolhouse in Entrance was one of the last—by 1959 the number of one-room schoolhouses in the province fell to 275. The era of the one-room schoolhouse was clearly ending and so was a way of life.

Let’s spare a moment, then, to imagine and mentally pay tribute to the dedication, stamina and determination of Alberta’s earliest teachers. Without them we wouldn’t have become the province we are today. Under circumstances that would be completely intolerable today, they prepared young people for their future and were true builders of society.

References

Chalmers, J. W. 1968. Schools of the Foothills Province: The Story of Public Education in Alberta. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Niton Historical Society. 2010. Memories of Entrance. Edmonton, Alta.: Niton Historical Society.