From a prairie Hutterite colony to a forest cabin, one-room schools of Montana shine
Kristen Inbody
"John Adams taught in one. Abraham Lincoln attended one. Laura Ingalls Wilder attended one, and at the age of 15, began teaching in one."
GALATA — Though the school didn't get any more money for preschoolers, teacher Jill Kaiser included them as a way to keep this rural school 30 miles east of Shelby going. Preschoolers become kindergartners in time, after all.
Kaiser and her students are among those profiled in "Chasing Time: Last of the One-Room Schools in Montana," a new book.
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In stone schools, brick buildings, log cabins, pre-fab wonders and clapboard schoolhouses, children growing up in the most remote corners of the state are getting an unusual family-like education.
When school began in the fall of 2013, the United States had an estimated 200 one-room schools, 67 of which were in Montana. That's more than any other state.
A century before, the country had 212,000 one-room schools teaching half of American students. (Now it's less than 1/100th of 1 percent of elementary students.)
Photographers Keith Graham and Neil Chaput de Saintonge visited a third of the active one-room schoolhouses in Montana during the 2013-2014 school year, a project that took them from the northwesternmost school in Yaak to the southeasternmost school in Alzada.
The pair recounts how they saw the important role the schools have in educating country kids and also as a gathering place for the community. They saw how hard teachers, aides, clerks, school board members and volunteers work to keep those schools going, though the demographics often are against them.
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"My hope is they don't vanish all together but remain a strong, viable presence where teachers provide one-one-one mentoring, where older students help the younger ones and where each school feels like family," Graham wrote. "I cannot imagine Montana's landscape without them."
On North Harlem Colony near Blaine County, the book explored how students balance their public school and German school, which has a Hutterite teacher from the colony. At German school, they learn language, heritage, culture and religion.
"Hutterites are proud of the fact that their kids go to a public school, and they support them very well. In fact, in some of those small districts, the Hutterite Colony is the largest taxpayer," Claudette Morton, former director of the Montana Small School Alliance told Graham.
At Hawks Home School in Carter County, they found a one-student school. Natalie Foxley, a second-grader, and her teacher, Lynnette Wolff, stay busy from flag raising to paper grading. Foxley and Wolff both have red hair so people assume they're related when they take school field trips.
Teacher Sidney Rider at Pass Creek School near Belgrade had to juggle seven grade levels among her 10 students.
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Carter teacher Marjorie Scott has been at her post longer than any other one-room school teacher at 22 years when interviewed.
"You get to teach each student individually. Each one is an individual person and you design your program grade per grade," she said. "You don't have to teach a first grader just first grade stuff. A first grader can learn third grade stuff if he is ready."
They photographed Brittney Bo Cox on her horse, Sister, which she rides to school on warm mornings from her family's ranch two miles east of Cleveland School in Blaine County.
Graham tallied 67 one-room schools in Montana, 23 of them on Hutterite colonies. At least six of those schools are not open this year.
One of the remote schools featured in the book, Bear Paw School southeast of Havre in Blaine County, closed a year ago as finding a teacher proved an insurmountable challenge.
South Stacey School southwest of Volborg in Powder River County, Spring Creek School in Custer County, Springdale School between Livingston and Big Timber in Park County, Shawmut School in Wheatland County and Dupuyer School in Pondera County no longer have students.
Bloomfield School, northwest of Glendive in Dawson County, was inactive last year but has two students this year.
MAP: The book lists 67 one-room schools open in 2013-2014. The map includes those, with schools since closed marked in magenta. Enrollment is based on the state figures for the 2016-2017 school year. (Enrollment is collected in October.)
Book: "Chasing Time: Last of the One-Room Schools in Montana"
Author: Keith Graham
Photographers: Keith Graham, Neil Chaput de Saintonge
Publisher: Riverbend Publishing
Pages: 268
Price: $32.95
Montana Preservation Alliance surveying country schools
HELENA — The Montana Preservation Alliance has launched the Big Sky Schoolhouse Survey to identify former schoolhouses and help property owners who want to stabilize the historic buildings.
At one time, an estimated 2,600 rural schools operated in Montana, the Phillips County News reported.
"Not every schoolhouse can have a new use, but our hope is to encourage stabilization of rural schoolhouses so this strong and tangible piece of Montana history is there for future generations to learn about and enjoy," Christine Brown, project director, said.
Survey team Jim Greene and Martha Vogt will give a presentation on their adventures in schoolhouse sleuthing on Oct. 25 at the Montana Club in Helena. They have determined the status of more than 650 schoolhouses and counting. Most are gone now, but they have done the legwork to find and physically document about 130 that are still standing.
Anyone with information about an old schoolhouse is asked to contact Brown at 406-457-2822 or via email at christine@preservemontana.org.
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