Is everyone ready for some fall weather?  Looks like we may be getting something more closely resembling September weather  soon.  I'm glad to have the humidity out of here, but I'm not quite ready for fall.  Today I took in some house plants I've had hanging out in the grape arbor all summer.  The low was 42 degrees last night and I think I heard tonight will be colder, so I decided rather than take a chance I'd bring in the plants.  One is the palm - I'm not sure what variety - I put out this spring and left too long in the sun.  It got badly burned and will probably never look good again.  However, I haven't had the heart to dump it, so it's downstairs by my sewing machine, safe from sun and frost after being in the shade of the grape vines all summer.  It's looking better than it did, but still not pretty like before.  

I was interested in a piece on CBS Sunday Morning show about one-room schools.  It seems the experts, whoever that might be, are now thinking there are definite advantages for both students and teachers in one-room schools and the cost per student is just about the same as for students attending large schools.  They cited individual attention, students helping students, more independence, better study habits and specialized teaching plans that allow students to learn at their individual pace, etc., as being just some of the benefits for students; teachers get to know their students better, even when there are 25-30 in various grades because they often remain in the same school for longer periods and can see kids through from pre-k to graduating 8th grade.  Teachers interviewed liked the "family" type situation of a one-room school.  Children also had to be responsible for keeping the school clean and learned to respect the property and became more resourceful.  The students they interviewed had a bit of trouble adapting to the large high school environment after graduating from a one-room school, but most said that wasn't a big problem and they adapted quickly.  They also had better study habits and their grades were generally better than average.

This made me wonder if in the not too distant future the pendulum will swing back to more localized schools.  Wouldn't that be something?  After closing all the one-room schools back in the 1940's and 50's, towns might be building energy-efficient small one-room schools instead of transporting kids to the big centralized impersonal one-size-fits-all schools of today.  They'd save time, money and it would be better for the kids and the environment!  It would likely be considered "a break-through in education."

I loved going to a one-room school. This was my school, about 1938.  We had great teachers, and although teachers only stayed two or three years at most, it seems to me they were all really good at their job.  Maybe we were just lucky to have dedicated young women come to the Plains School, but we all liked our teachers, and I believe they were happy teaching there.  In spite of age differences, all the kids got along with one another - nobody got bullied because if someone started picking on someone else, there was always an older kid who would intervene and set the culprit straight.  Everyone had a chance to "shine" at whatever they were good at and the older students helped younger ones when they needed it.  We learned from one another.  We also respected our elders and our teachers.  I think it's worth considering, this "new" idea of one-room schools.