As a high school senior, I remember my mother encouraging me to write a college admission essay on “What It Was Like to Attend a Two-Room Country Schoolhouse.”  At that point in my life, I didn’t appreciate the novelty of the angle, as it was all I had known.  Now that I’ve lived in the New York City metro area for the past two decades, I get the appeal.  I often use it as a fun fact for those awkward icebreaker exercises, and can count on people sizing me up as if I were Anne of Green Gables.

My family grew up on a beautiful little horse farm in rural northeast North Dakota.  Ten miles outside the nearest small town, the closest and best public school was Nash Elementary School in Nash, ND (population of 32, 2010 census).  I once rode my horse, Nifty, to school to ride in a one-village-block parade for the centennial celebration of the grain elevator–complete with a Ferris wheel, live music, and fireworks.  It was magical.

In terms of the academic model, there were a lower- and an upper-grade classroom and some makeshift spaces for kindergarten, science, and technology (we even had an early Macintosh computer) carved out by movable dividers in the gym.  The lower-grade housed 1^st-4^th grades in one classroom.  The upper-grade classroom housed 5^th-8^th grades and was taught by my uncle Jim. (My mom got him the job when she temporarily left the workforce to focus on us kids in the early years.) 

The median class size was 3-4 students per grade.  There were some years with one child per grade and some empty years with no children at that age level.  My sister Kristen was lucky enough to have a class size of 7.  We were all slightly jealous. 

To avoid my brother, John, being the only kid in his grade, my mom sent him to kindergarten a year early to be in a class with three other girls.  This also put him just one year behind me, and my class had two boys in it.  I’m so grateful she did that.  John and I being in the same classroom all but one year at Nash and under that academic model–being taught many subjects together–was really special.

So how did it work? Now that my kiddos are in the elementary school years, I can compare and contrast with a more traditional model.  The classroom itself had nearly as many students as a traditional elementary school setting (14-20 students).  The unique part was that we had four grade levels embedded within one classroom.  This made for a lot of independent study at a very young age. 

For subjects that were sequential like math and English (phonics in the early years), each grade was given a lesson and assignment by the teacher and he or she would then rotate on to the other grades while we worked on ours.  You relied on your grade-level classmates or a student from an older grade who wasn’t in active lesson to help you if you had questions.  With that small of a class size, it was fully apparent when a student didn’t understand a concept.  There was quite certainly no child left behind.

For subjects where sequence didn’t matter (e.g., earth science vs. life science), lessons were taught in groupings of two grades (i.e., 5^th & 6^th grade students taught together).  You’d get both subjects within your two-year rotation, but the order might be flipped. 

There was no bell system, which allowed the teacher to spend a disproportionate amount of time on any given day on any given subject as it was needed.  The upper-grade teacher, in particular, used this to his advantage and slipped in all sorts of “subjects” that had almost no lecture time, but a ton of independent reading (e.g., civics).  

As students we heard the lore of what having a bell was like from the area students who went to the town public school and idealized it.  “You mean the bell rings and you can just get to get up and leave?!?” 

Truth be told, it was a wonderful educational setting.  Not only did it instill a work ethic and accountability at a very young age, but it built in stretch opportunities in getting to listen ahead to what the older grades were learning. There was also repetition in hearing lessons you covered in years past that provided an incredibly rich opportunity to gain true comprehension.  With rare exceptions, every student that came out of Nash was an honors student when he or she entered the public high school system in town.  

Nash School has since shuttered due to dwindling class sizes as the farming market consolidated and farmers bought one another out of their family businesses.  I know I speak for many in saying that the school’s alumni look back on that time and place as a deeply special and formative experience.  I am profoundly grateful for the education received and the old-world values derived from this wonderful little two-room country school house on the prairie. 

While I may work on Park Avenue now, I will forever be a “Nash kid!”

How did your upbringing shape the adult you grew up to be?  I wonder what our education system would be like if we adopted a cross-grade level integrated model like Nash.