Girls sit on one side of the room and boys on the other. Students clean up their classroom because there are no janitors. Children always write with their right hand and a Bible lesson is up next.
Donna Berry of Minot teaches children how it once was inside Auburn’s last one-room schoolhouse. She opened the front door to the West Auburn School 10 times over the current school year to let kids explore the way it was in 1850.
The schoolhouse on Boothby Street served students from 1843 to 1950. It was restored by the West Auburn School Historical Society beginning in 1991 after a campaign by local citizens to keep the school from being demolished.
Lisa Stevens brought 25 second-graders from Oxford Elementary School to experience a typical 1850s school day. Stevens made bonnets for the girls and had students bring lunch in a pail or basket. “We really take things like that for granted,” Stevens said about using plastic bags to hold a sandwich. “It’s really nice for them to come and see this.”
A visit inside the one-room schoolhouse consists of lessons in reading, arithmetic, spelling and penmanship. Children use slates for math problems and quill pens dipped in ink for writing. Students in 1850 always wrote with their right hand to prevent their sleeve from dragging in the wet ink, said Berry.
Visits from students are down from past years, said Berry. She believes budget cuts play a roll in fewer field trips. “I feel very honored when you have one trip and you come here,” said Berry, who offers the three-hour program for $30.
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- Donna Berry of Minot gives Oxford Elementary School second-graders a lesson in what it was like to go to school back in the 1800s at the West Auburn one-room schoolhouse. Berry, a board member of the West Auburn School Historical Society, attended first and second grades at a one-room schoolhouse on Long Island.
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- Dylan Davis, left, and Aaron Card, both Oxford Elementary School second-graders, work at the blackboard during a school field trip to West Auburn School in Auburn.
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- Students from Oxford Elementary wore period clothing and brought their lunches in pails or baskets during a recent field trip to the one-room schoolhouse.
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- Kaitlyn Pelletier, an Oxford Elementary School second-grader, writes with a quill pen during a penmanship lesson.
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- Allison Cottle, 8, listens quiety as Hailey Parsons, 8, reads during a lesson at the West Auburn School in Auburn. Both girls are second-graders in Lisa Stevens’ classroom at Oxford Elementary School.
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- Auburn’s last operating one-room schoolhouse closed in 1950. The building was being used for storage before the West Auburn School Historical Society restored the school.
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