By Donna Marie Pocius, ’79, M.A. ’93

From rural Ottawa, Illinois, to the southwest side of Chicago, alumni—with NIU as their touchstone—keep lessons and values of one-room schoolhouses alive in education today.

Take, for instance, Helen Thomas, ’67, M.S. ’70, who dons an ankle-length prairie-style dress before heading out to teach this fall at Bundy School, a vintage 1851 one-room schoolhouse in Ottawa, about 45 miles south of DeKalb. A graduate of NIU’s College of Education, Thomas supplements her retirement by teaching lessons in reading, writing and arithmetic to students who travel from the town’s modern elementary school for a field trip of sorts at the schoolhouse, preserved by the Ottawa School District. In a two-hour program, she gives children a hands-on introduction to what education was like in their community in the middle to late 1800s.

It’s a job Thomas performs with help from her visits to NIU’s Blackwell History of Education Museum and theuniversity’s own one-room schoolhouse— Milan Township District No. 83 School, which sits on the campus in a wooded grove near the intersection of Annie Glidden and Stadium Drive West. About 70 miles east, alumnus Carlos Azcoitia, Ed.D. ’89, introduces a “comprehensive community school” concept to Chicago southwest side students this fall. He left his post as deputy chief of education for Chicago Public Schools to become principal at Community Links Academy and John Spry Community School. The school is the first in Chicago to include pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students in one building with two names. High school students of the academy tutor the elementary grade kids of Spry.

DeKalb residents, alumni, students and staff celebrated the move of Milan Township School No. 83, a one-room schoolhouse, from a farm to campus during a Sept. 12, 1999, dedication ceremony coinciding with NIU's 100th anniversary.

Azcoitia intends to deepen family involvement with the school, offering classes specially geared to parents. And he wants the school to become the focal point of the community—a place foreducation as well as health services and meetings for civic groups and senior citizens.The alumni believe aspects of their work are reminiscent of education in one-room schoolhouses which thrived in Midwest rural areas from the late 1800s through the middle 1900s. “The one-room schoolhouse involved the family. It stressed helping one another. There was a sense of belonging to one place, and this is our place.With what I am going to do, I see a lot of connection,” Azcoitia says.

Schoolhouse learning style—then and now

Lovingly restored through the generosity of the DeKalb area community (see related sidebar story), Milan Township School pays tribute to NIU’s roots while serving as a campus site for classes andcommunity meetings—just as the school did during its heyday from 1900 through 1942.

Constructed by farmers at a cost of $850, the original one-room schoolhouse was 24 feet by 36 feet. It remained open until 1942 when the low enrollment caused consolidation of school districts and busing of children to larger schools. After finding the shuttered-down building on his farm at Perry and Tower Roads, about 13 miles southwest of DeKalb,Wayne McIlrath, retired dean of the Graduate School and biological sciences professor, donated the schoolhouse to NIU in 1995. Area supporters coordinated a fund-raising drive, making possible the schoolhouse’s move and restoration. Their efforts culminated in the schoolhouse’s Sept. 12, 1999, dedication, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of NIU’s beginning as a Normal School or State Teachers College.

“NIU began as a Normal School whose role was to prepare teachers to teach in a one-room school—a two-year program. That is where NIU is grounded. The one-room schoolhouse is partly a realization of where we come from,” says Chris Sorensen, dean, College of Education.

These first NIU graduates each taught a schoolhouse roomful of about 20 students, ranging in age from five to 14 and in grade level from first to eighth. Siblings attended school together. And by tutoring the youngsters, the big kids helped themselves progress and aided their busy teacher who also had to keep the schoolhouse clean and warm.

“The idea of older people helping the younger was very prevalent in the oneroom schools. I attended a one-room school myself, and remember as an older kid helping another with a lesson. Both profit from it, because to explain it you have to understand it yourself. There are many things about the one-room schools we can recreate today,” said Jim Johnson, retired NIU education professor and volunteer at the Blackwell Museum, which he helped to establish.

Azcoitia is creating a year-round educational calendar and widely promoting in Chicago media his expectation that high school students will graduate after three years of attendance instead of four and continue with a postsecondary education. The morning tutoring sessions connect 34 high school teenagers with 950 elementary school students and introduce them to work this fall. Eventually, enrollment in the high school academy will grow to 100. “They (high school pupils) will work as teachers’ assistants in the morning before their classes. The school will be open to 7 p.m., and their work experience will be in the school,” Azcoitia explains. The school’s evening hours accommodate family members who Azcoitia invites over for classes such as English as a second language and computer training. “We will have everyone together. The objective here is to have a program knowing family has a great impact on the student. The family will be learning, and the school becomes the focus of the community.”

Similarly, the one-room schoolhouse served as a center of rural town activities, a place where parents gathered. “Learning was not isolated, but a part of the little community then. Parental involvement was very prevalent. They would come and have all sorts of events there—boxed lunches, socials,” Johnson explains. Lessons emphasized the basics—reading, writing and arithmetic, love of country, helping others and family values.

“Some people are convinced schools don’t do that enough today. To the extent we can, we may learn from the (one-room) schools to improve in that area. But it was a different time then,” Johnson acknowledges. “We have a lot more content to expose them to; we expect more of kids, and parents have much greater aspirations for kids. It puts a great deal of pressure on young folks today,” he said. In her two-hour class at Bundy School, Thomas uses vintage methods to teach the basics while keeping the chores and the lessons on the light side. “They have various jobs—shaking out cloths we use for erasers, passing out materials for lessons,” Thomas says. Students improve reading skills with yesteryear’s recitation bench and blab school techniques. Thomas explains: “There are different grade levels, so one child is called to recite to the teacher, and everyone else reads out loud. It’s called the blab school technique, because all arereading at once. The place is like a jumble of sounds.”

Handwriting is practiced with the help of slates—portable blackboards, customary for penmanship and arithmetic lessons in one-room schools, where cost of paper was prohibitive.

A math relay game taps into a contemporary concept of mental math. The older kids use the slates again—this time each student adds or subtracts from a given number on the slate of his/her neighbor. The youngsters learn addition and subtraction by counting twigs. Butacknowlone of the most valuable lessons from the past helps students improve their memory —a worthy assignment, the teacher believes. “We do a lot of memorizing. Memory is poor—we don’t do enough of that today. We memorize poems, and practice and practice them. Some can learn better that way—through rote memory or reciting,” Thomas explains.

One-of-a-kind Blackwell Museum

From its no frills, basement locale, the Blackwell houses rare books including a 1516 Latin dictionary, quaint learning tools, artifacts such as pencil holders and inkwells and samplers—18th and 19th century needlework handmade by children. The museum started in 1968, when Johnson, who began teaching that year, unearthed a collection from the late Edward C. Page, an NIU history professor, and later befriended the late Ruth Blackwell. “Our first great piece of luck was when we discovered the remnants of the Page collection.We found things boxed up and stored—old slates, books, pens.We probably inherited 100 items. Well, that gave our collection a boost, and then we really got lucky,” he reminisces. “We read about a family named Blackwell. Ruth had taught her whole life and grew interested in artifacts, andturned her home into a museum.We got hold of her, and she eventually gave us all of her collection. She had no one to leave it to.”

Blackwell, who resided in Lake Zurich, Illinois, and taught in one-room schools in South Dakota during the 1930s and 1940s, left abundant textbooks and learning tools called hornbooks and battledores to NIU. Under lock and key, the Blackwell’s collection of 50 hornbooks tells a story of schoolhouse lessons at a time when paper books were luxury articles. Hornbooks, named for the horn of a cow from which they were made, often hung around children’s necks and included the alphabet for reading lessons, numbers and sometimes the Lord’s Prayer. Johnson calls a battledore, a “crude” book form. “It was hornbook-like.Someone had a way of taking heavy cardboard, folding it, and putting something on it,” he explains.

Other books—about 11,000 in NIU’s growing collection—include textbooks like an 1879 edition of the McGuffey’s Fifth Eclectic Reader, a vintage 1901 Palmer Method of Handwriting and an 1863 A New Complete Arithmetic by E. E. White. Audiovisual artifacts, stored in the lower level of the schoolhouse while display cases are being prepared to show them off throughout campus, include a magic lantern—an 1820s projector that shined light through glass slides, actually hand painted by teachers for social studies and science lessons.

Since Blackwell’s donation, the collection has grown from other private donationsdonations and now contains more than 14,000 different items. Experts call it the largest of its kind worldwide. “If there is something else like it, I don’t know where it is. We have sponsored a number of conferences that bring museum curators and educators here, and they tell us it is unique,” Johnson touts. NIU-sponsored national symposiums welcome educators and curators interested in the history of education and preservation of one-room schoolhouses. The next conference is June 10 to 12, 2004, with the theme, “Technology in Education: past, present and future.”

A good place to be

And the Blackwell Museum and Milan Township School, a holding of the museum, welcome community residents, alumni and students of all ages for special events and meetings. Diane Smith and Sharon Williams, teachers from Waterman Elementary School,Waterman, Illinois, brought their classes to NIU’s Milan Township School earlier this spring. The students enjoyed the school’s separate entrances for boys and girls, pulling the old-fashioned bell and experiencing lessons from the past. “What a great hands-on and historical experience we all had together. I am glad NIU is helping to preserve American history for future generations,” says Smith.

The schoolhouse serves as a meeting site for the Circle of Gold—alumni who earned education credentials at least 50 years ago—and community groups. It’s a place for them and others to reminisce. As Johnson put it, “It is amazing how emotional and attached people are— especially the elderly. They love their attachment to the schools. Seventy years from now, I wonder if people will feel the same way about their schools. That is the lesson the country school teaches—the contributions of the rural country.”

Donna Marie Pocius, a freelance writer, holds degrees in journalism from NIU and received a journalism scholarship from the university.

Ivan Williams can move one-room schoolhouses and move people toward a goal. Williams and his wife, Mavis, ’44, long-time DeKalb residents, co-chaired a committee making the Milan Township School No. 83 possible on campus. After Wayne McIlrath, retired dean of the Graduate School, donated in 1995 the schoolhouse—found on his farm 13 miles southwest of DeKalb—the committee planned to move structurally sound portions of the building and rebuild other sections on the NIU campus at Annie Glidden Road. About 30 percent of the schoolhouse is original, while the remaining portion replicates the vintage 1900 schoolhouse.

Mavis and Ivan Williams of DeKalb tapped into their community connections to help raise $150,000, making the one-room schoolhouse possible on the NIU campus near the intersection of Annie Glidden Road and Stadium Drive West.

“It was in a very dilapidated condition, and a piece of history to be saved. There were a lot of rewards left over from that era,” explains Williams.

But before the move and construction could take place, the committee, comprised of DeKalb County residents, needed $150,000 covering the cost of the schoolhouse’s transport and rebuilding. And eighty-one-year-old Williams, who has lived in DeKalb his entire life, knew he was probably the best person for such a fund-raising job. “It’s not easy to collect that kind of money,” admits Williams. “But when you live in a community 80 years, you get to know people. The majority of people
come around, and the further along we got, it became easier. People could see it is really going to happen.”

Working with a dream of preserving a piece of Americana,Williams convinced contractors to donate services and materials valued at $20,000. Ten donors each made a donation ranging from $5,000 to $15,000, and committee members gave at least $1,000 each. After reaching the goal, the schoolhouse supporters welcomed thousands to the dedication ceremony Sept. 12, 1999, also the 100th anniversary of NIU’s inception as a Normal School or State Teachers College. “Most stayed out in the rain, and watched the dedication,”Williams recalls. “It was all contributed by local people, and that is important. And we open the schoolhouse to the community. That is the way it is meant to be.”

Make a gift, or stop by and visit

The NIU one-room schoolhouse is open for community meetings and visits by school groups, NIU alumni and students.

Like the College of Education endowments that support deserving students, distinguished faculty, school-university partnerships and technology enhancements, an endowment fund supports the upkeep and programs of the schoolhouse, as well as the Blackwell Museum.

To arrange for a visit or to make a gift, contact Richard Casey at rcasey@niu.edu, (815) 753-8360, or send mail in care of the Blackwell Museum, The Learning Center, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115. Make checks payable to the NIU Foundation—One Room School Endowment.

You can also visit NIU’s one-room schoolhouse and Blackwell Museum on the Web at www.niu.edu. Go to College of Education and Major Initiatives.

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