no more uppity teachers ... or students?

We were supposed to go on a field trip to the Cuba Block Barn today but Hurricane Debby is working her way up the eastern coast. Rain date in September. When I got to the Alfred Station SDB Church parking lot where we were supposed to combine for shared rides to Cuba, Sharon Burdick arrived and she had copies of a fact sheet on the Bedford Corners School House. The schoolhouse was the added bonus for our trip to Cuba, being on the road between the Block Barn and lunch at Sprague's in Portville.

The schoolhouse is now the home of the Portville Historical and Preservation Society. The main room had double desks to hold two students and was large enough that multiple grades could be taught. The teacher was seated on a platform in the front of the room. Later, it was mandated that teachers should not be on a different level than the students and the arrangement of the room was flipped with the teacher platform at the back.

When I was in first-third grades in New Auburn, Wisconsin, the school house was for all the grades, no kindergarten but all twelve numbered grades met in one building with shared rooms for first and second and for third to fifth. That meant that my older sister and I were in the same classroom when she was in fifth grade and I in third. One day, Roberta's class was discussing the polar regions and nosy me butted in to say that we had been to the North Pole. Roberta had to correct my story to say that it was Santa's North Pole in the Adirondacks.

The "we" of the field trip were members of the Bakers Bridge Historical Association and other interested folks.