WATSON TOWNSHIP, PA. Teacher recalls community, simplicity of one-room school

This last teacher at the last one-room school says all her kids turned out good.
TIDIOUTE, Pa. (AP) -- Before there were cyber schools, charter schools or mega-schools, there was the Plank Road School, believed to be the last functioning one-room public school in Pennsylvania.
And for a generation of pupils, the Plank Road School in Watson Township was synonymous with Mrs. Peg Marshall.
A product of a one-room schoolhouse herself, Marshall knew exactly what made the multi-grade schools with only one teacher work.
"Whether they were good or not good depended on the teacher. If you had a good teacher, it was wonderful," she said. "If you had a poor one, it ruined it. I tried to be a good one."
Apparently, she succeeded.
The spry 94-year-old was invited to a family reunion this summer, and six of the family members had gone to Plank Road School between 1951 and 1969 and had been taught by Marshall.
"I got six good hugs and six good kisses," she said, beaming. "No matter where I see them, they're still my family."
Proud of successes
She has kept track of her pupils over the years and has a scrapbook of newspaper clippings tracing the successes of her pupils after they graduated from Plank Road School.
"There are a minister, lawyer, principal, dietitian ..." she said, "and they're all wonderful mothers and fathers. I don't know one kid from the Plank Road School who turned out bad."
Just the fact that she has kept an album full of her pupils' accomplishments and milestones says something about the family atmosphere of the one-room school.
It had been the same at the Buckhorn School in Clarion County, the one-room school with eight grades where she began teaching in 1931, and then a few years later at the Pitch Pine School in Clarion County.
Remembers closeness
"There was such a difference in the closeness of families then. Neighbors would get together," she said. "While I was at Buckhorn, in the fall all the farmers would all go to one house and they'd all do the corn husking and apple snitting [coring or peeling] and the children would play. Everyone worked together. The community was one big family."
And the schoolteacher was a part of the family.
"One day one of the students got sick. I had to close the school and carry her in my arms one-and-a-half miles to get her home," she said. "We knew when something like that happened we just had to do it."
At Pitch Pine, she was paid $100 a month.
"But I had to give 10 dollars a month back to keep the school afloat," she said. "Every month I had to go to school board meetings and ask them for the pencils and tablets and crayons we needed for the month."
At both the Buckhorn and Pitch Pine schools, Marshall wanted the inside of the schools painted, so she organized socials and used the proceeds to buy paint for her father to do the job.
After two years in the demanding teaching job at Pitch Pine, Marshall found herself at a crossroads.
"I had to decide whether to quit or find another job," she said. "I wasn't going to paint every one of their schools."
Taught seventh grade
She heard about an opening for a seventh-grade teacher and went to Custer City in 1937 and tracked down one of the school directors who was working on an oil lease. He interviewed her right on the spot, asking her all the important questions such as "Do you smoke?" "Would you take a social drink?" and most important, "Are you married?"
There was a rule then that teachers couldn't be married, and that was before she had married James Marshall, who went on to become a Warren County commissioner. After teaching at Custer City, she was approached by the superintendent from Rew, who said that Hayatt School needed a principal.
The first day on the job, Marshall met with the parents and admitted, "'I don't know how to be a principal. The only way I can do this is if you help me.' We had a wonderful year."
She left teaching for almost a decade after her son, Jimmy, was born, but in 1951 she was asked to teach the six grades in the one-room school at Plank Road.
By then Jimmy was a fifth-grader and he faced the dilemma of whether to call his new teacher Mother or Mrs. Marshall.
"So I had the students vote," said Marshall. "They all raised their hands and said he should call me Mother. Everyone else called me Mrs. Marshall."
Had a scare
Because she often stayed at the isolated school in the middle of the forest in the evening to correct papers, Marshall took her Boston bull terrier, Zipper, to school with her.
One night she was correcting papers when she heard a thud at the back the building and Zipper growled.
"I decided it was time to leave," she said. "I went outside and got in my car, but I just couldn't leave that school without making sure everything was all right. So I drove around the school and under a window there was a pheasant with a broken neck. It had flown into the window."
Enrollment at the school for Watson Township children ranged from nine pupils one school year to 28 another.
Typical day
Marshall said a typical day at Plank Road School began when "the bell rang and the children got in their seats. They each had their own hook and a spot on the shelves for a dinner pail. We did our own janitor work. Each team had a day.
"Then I would read the Bible and we'd recite the Lord's Prayer, sing a chorus and say the salute to the flag, inside or outside, depending on the weather," she said. "Then I'd read a chapter out of a book. Sometimes the book was geared for younger kids and sometimes for older kids, but they all had to listen. I never had a discipline problem. Never."
Writing, arithmetic and spelling classes were held before lunch. The first- and second-graders were grouped, as were third- and fourth- graders, and fifth- and sixth-graders.
"I'd spend about five to 10 minutes with each group on each subject," she said. "While one group of students was being taught, the others would have an assignment. So there was never any homework."
After lunch, the younger pupils worked on their workbooks while Marshall worked with older pupils on English and social studies.
Special Fridays
"Fridays were entirely different," said Marshall. "That was banking day. Everyone kept a bank book and kept them up to date. I wanted children to be able to take care of their own money."
After banking class, art, music and health classes followed.
"The last 30 minutes on Friday, I tried to do something special," said Marshall. "We popped popcorn or made ice cream."
In Marshall's view, the Plank Road School was the ideal setting to teach science and nature. For instance, flocks of turkeys wandering through the school yard would lead to an unscheduled lesson on turkeys.
"We got our lessons right there from nature," said Marshall. "We had our own apple tree -- we studied the buds, in the spring we looked at the blossoms, and then we ate the apples. We got the whole lesson right there. We took hikes and picked up hazelnuts and ate them. Sometimes we just went outside and I told the children to be quiet and listen to the sounds of nature. We watched birds build nests. We didn't get it all from books. We learned so much firsthand right outside the school."
And Marshall expanded the horizons of the Plank Road pupils with field trips to places such as Walker's Creamery and Anderson's Bakery in Warren, the North Warren Firehall, country store in Custer City, and a trip to see the lobo wolves in Kane.
Kept up with the times
For its day, the Plank Road School was actually ahead of other schools in some respects. Marshall was among the first teachers to bring a television into the classroom for some science, art and music programming, and pupils exercised along with the "Jack LaLaine Show."
The school, which now serves as the Watson Township building, had fluorescent lights, brand new desks and chairs, a refrigerator, hot plate and telephone.
In a neatly kept box of photographs and memorabilia, Marshall found attendance records of pupils who attended the Plank Road School. She pointed out the high percentage of pupils who had gone an entire year without missing a day of school.
She likes to think it had to do with something other than the two silver dollars awarded to pupils with perfect attendance at the end of the year.
"I think they just loved coming to school," she said.