Maine Spirit Quest #36 – Santiago School House Traditional Cache
Northwoods Explorer: Always liked this spot but it appears that there will soon be a new blueberry field with the work going on. If there are blue berries in near the cache it means chemicals and the chance folks may steel blue berries not understanding it is a crop belonging to a farmer.
Maine Spirit Quest #36 – Santiago School House
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One-room schools are a legacy of a less mobile, more rural time in American history. Mostly serving isolated communities, these schools required one teacher to educate children of varying ages at the same time in a single classroom.
All that is left of the Santiago one room school house is the foundation. This community fell to the wayside because of WW II and changes in the community and regionalization. All that is left of the community are a few foundations and plants that do not belong in the forest.
One-room schools were commonplace throughout rural portions of Maine were once commonplace in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In most rural (country) and small town schools, all of the students met in a single room. In 1919 there were 190,000 one-room schools scattered all around the American countryside. In 2008 there are fewer than 400 left in the United States. In most one-room schools, there are few students. The result is a good student-teacher ratio. It's also not unusual for students to have the same teacher for many years in a row, a concept referred to as "looping" when it's used in larger schools. In a one room school, a single teacher taught academic basics to five to eight grade levels of elementary-age boys and girls. The quality of facilities at one-room schools varied with local economic conditions, but generally, the number of children at each grade level would vary with local populations. Most buildings were of simple frame construction, some with the school bell on a cupola. The blackboard really is a black board, made of wide boards painted black. It was not until much later that slate was used for chalkboards, although students often had individual slates for writing practice.
Teachers in one-room schools were often former students themselves. Their role is well described in the 1940s: "The teachers that taught in the one room, rural schools were very special people. During the winter months they would get to the school early to get a fire started in the potbelly stove, so the building would be warm for the students. On many occasions they would prepare a hot, noon meal on top of the stove, usually consisting of soup or stew of some kind. They took care of their students like a new mother hen would care for her newly hatched chicks; always looking out for their health and welfare." A typical school day was 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a morning and an afternoon recess of 15 minutes each and an hour period for lunch. The older students were given the responsibility of bringing in water, carrying in coal or wood for the stove. The younger students would be given responsibilities according to their size and gender such as cleaning the black board (chalkboard), taking the erasers outside for dusting plus other duties that they were capable of doing.
Another way in which the teacher could make sure they had time for each class was by having older students act as teaching assistants for lower grades. After introducing a new lesson the teacher could move on to the next class and let the some of the older students help the younger children with their questions. This not only helped the teacher be more efficient, but it also reinforced the lessons, which older students had already learned and it gave younger students one-on-one attention.
Transportation for children who lived too far to walk was often provided by horse-drawn kid hack or sulky, which could only travel a limited distance in a reasonable amount of time each morning and evening, or students might ride a horse, these being put out to pasture in an adjoining paddock during the day. The schoolhouse was the center and focus for thousands of rural communities, hamlets and small towns. Often, town meetings and picnics were also held there. The final blow to the one room schoolhouse came in the 1920s with motorized school buses making longer distances possible, and one-room schools were soon consolidated in most portions of Maine into multiple classroom schools where classes could be held separately for various grade levels. Gradually, one-room schoolhouses were replaced. Except in the most rural areas most one-room schools had been replaced with larger schools by World War II. The vast majority of one-room schools in Maine are no longer used as schools and have either been torn down, were burned or converted for other purposes.
Maine Spirit Quest #36 in a series used to remember people, places or events and bring you to the location that would have otherwise been forgotten.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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