- By Dan Veaner
- Around Town
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4th Graders at the School Board MeetingTen fourth graders attended the October 17 Lansing School Board Meeting to tell the Board about their experience traveling back in time. They and their classes experienced an authentic historical day in the Eight Square School House on Warren Road in Dryden, part of the DeWitt Historical Society's Living History program. Teachers Kate Bevington and Lisa Kledzik helped them present a PowerPoint presentation with pictures from the trip, while the students narrated.Lansing students visited the school house to learn first hand about what it was like for kids their age to go to school in Tompkins County over a hundred and fifty years ago. Students had to dress the part, wearing long dresses, shirts with collars, bonnets, suspenders, straw hats, boots and overalls. The presenters wore their costumes to the School Board meeting as well.
The red octagonal school house is across the street from Cayuga Radio Group studios on Warren Road. It owned and run by the DeWitt Historical Society of Tompkins County. The school's eight sides correspond to eight families whose 87 children attended the school. It was built around 1835 to replace a smaller, frame school house that occupied the location earlier.
Volunteers have trained to act as nineteenth century teachers who recreate an authentic school day for visiting students. The schoolmistress taught the class a traditional flag ceremony. The students learned there were only 44 states at that time, so that is how many stars were on the flag.
44 Star Flag Boys and girls were segregated on opposite sides of the room. They were given a primer from which they learned their lessons. Students were required to stand up when answering the teacher's questions. Because paper was expensive in those days, students wrote on slates. The science lesson was about pumps and how they work. They also learned about the seasons, and how rust forms. Many of the students liked the games they played at recess. One favorite was "Grace," a game played with sticks that are used to push a hoop. They also liked playing Tug of War. One unpleasant lesson had to do with plumbing, or the lack of it. Students used an outhouse when they had to go.
Everything had to be authentic historically. The students brought their lunches wrapped in cloth, in baskets or tin pails. They ate lunch outside, under an apple tree.
Next was a lesson in penmanship where students learned to write using nibs and blotters.
When the fourth graders were done with their presentation they answered questions about their experience. When asked by Board President Bonita Lindberg what the one thing they didn't like was, one girl shouted, "The outhouse!" The board was told, "The outhouse was very very very dark!"Also on the "difficult list" was penmanship. But when asked what they did like the outhouse also made the list, because it was different from what we have today.
While the penmanship lesson was hard, some of the students liked the ink pens. After one student explained how rust formed Ms. Lindberg noted, "That would have been useful in our boiler discussion," referring to the Middle School boilers that were replaced this summer. Everyone laughed.
The students clearly enjoyed the experience and could relate to it, because it let them experience what their lives would have been like if they had grown up in the area in the nineteenth century. While they had fun for a day it seemed as if they were glad to actually be in the twenty first century.
Ms. Lindberg thanked the class and teachers for sharing their experience and presented certificates for the students, and they were thanked by loud, appreciative applause.
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