One Room Schoolhouse

(The view from a car driving down a country road passing fields and groves. The title of the film appears: One Room Schools.)

(Leah Uffelman shares memories from her home over zoom)

Leah Uffelman: I went to the school at Irricana. At that time, we were all in the same school district, Wheatland School, and that was seven miles from the town of Beiseker. As you know at that time, the government sent out a rule that all schools should be five miles apart so they were accessible to many students.

(Adrian Wolfleg sits in the Niitsitapiisini: Our Way of Life Gallery in the Glenbow Museum in front of a large tipi)

Adrian Wolfleg: When I went to school it wasn’t the wood burning stove or anything, there was more than one room in the schoolhouse. We actually had the elementary school, and then the  junior high and high school were just opening up. I went to school there.

(Vera Schmaltz shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Vera Schmaltz: In the classroom, the students all had their own desk and we had pencils an

d scribblers. We had a few textbooks, not everybody had a textbook. The teacher would write- we weren’t supposed to write in the textbooks-because they were saved for the next year for the next kid in that grade. The grades were one to eight. There would be about 18-20 kids and our subjects, we’d copy out of the textbook or off the blackboard- whatever the teacher had written. And in those days, they didn’t have photocopiers, so there was kind of a wooden frame, sort of like a book, it had a hinge in the middle and a frame around each side of the board and they’d measure about 8”x 12”. The teacher would make clear gelatin and fill it with that and then she would write something on a paper with indelible pencil, dampen the gel and put that on and the ink would go into there, and when you wanted to make copies, you would just dampen it again and put a clean piece of paper on. Every so often she would have to clean it all out and put new stuff in because it would get full of ink.

(John Richter shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

John Richter: There was a school bell, but because I lived just a short distance away, my parents made sure I got to school on time most days.

(Fred Lyczewski shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Fred Lyczewski: Well, we didn’t come to town that much because we used to go to school and come home and change clothes. In the wintertime we played out in the snowbanks. In the summertime we found things to do. We used to come to town in the wintertime to skate, but not too often. In those days, we didn’t have sports and stuff the same.

(Leah Uffelman shares memories from her home over zoom)

Leah Uffelman: In the early days, each community was responsible for their schools. They were also responsible for naming their schools and for keeping those schools circulating and for the financing, with some help from the government. Many people in the whole district didn’t have any experience with carpentry particularly, but they got together and managed very well to build a school and to be on the board.

(Jean Schwengler shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Jean Schwengler: We were in the country and with only so few kids at school, everybody was involved. The little kids and the grade eights and we played all kinds of games. There was no segregation, all the kids were all together.

(The Beiseker Station Museum logo appears)