In the Long-Ago

By Laura Addison--The Wichita Eagle

Charlotte (Campbell) Chin, 85, who used to teach in a rural school, talks with kindergarten students from Mueller Elementary School who were visiting the Old Cowtown School.

Before schoolmarm let her charges out for recess, she brought out several wooden hoops and asked a guest to show the kindergartners how they were rolled.

"Well," said Charlotte Chin, 85, a former teacher in the Wichita schools, "there was a stick that had a cross on it." When the teacher presented the T-shaped stick, Chin demonstrated its use.

Chin and Ruth Clow, 92, also a former teacher and principal, accompanied the students from Mueller Elementary School to Old Cowtown Museum for a morning in the long-ago.

The schoolmarm, dressed in a prim, long-sleeved, white blouse; black taffeta long skirt; and matching slip, was their teacher, Carolyn Bryant. When it was time to go out for recess, Bryant donned a black taffeta sunbonnet as well as her coat. The children streamed out into the winter sun to roll hoops, play a ring toss game and swing on the rope swing.

Recess was the reward after the morning in the day spent learning 19th-century style.

Earlier, Ed Post, a grandfather of one of the kindergartners, had shown the students an antique brace and bit that folks once used to drill holes in wood. And he explained how a carpenter's plane worked.

Then Bryant led them through a dictation exercise, using slates and chalk.

"I'm going to say a Christmas word and you should write the letter it starts with," she began. "H-h-hh! H-h-hh! Hh-hh-holiday. What letter does that begin with?"

"H!"

"Yes, and did you write a lower-case h?" And the list went on: elf, Christmas, jingle.

Lots of seasonal words, lots of attentive students diligently writing, as Bryant walked among them or stepped to the blackboard at the front of the room to remind them that a lower case j takes a dot above, not a circle.

After the slates were cleaned, the erasing cloths folded neatly and the chalk pieces placed on top of the desks, it was time for a class recitation.

"Who remembers what a recitation is?" asked Bryant.

"It's where you remember things and you say it."

"That's right," said Bryant. "You stand up beside your desk to say it." As the youngsters began to rise and come to attention, she asked, "Are we going to do 'Loose Tooth'?" No, this was a Christmas lesson.

The recitation was "Twas the Night Before Christmas," complete with broad gestures and two dozen little round bellies that shook like bowls full of jelly.

With the youngsters outside for recess, Clow and Chin, both residents of Larksfield Place Retirement Community, reflected on the start of their own teaching careers in rural schools.

"I had to build a fire; first I had to carry the coal," said Chin. "And I walked a mile and a half to get there."

Clow said: "Children came to school to learn. Their parents sent them to learn."

And Chin had another memory.

"It was different in a country school," Chin said. "This (the school) was their community, their neighborhood. They would bring in covered dishes and have a big dinner at least once a month. The whole community came; they were really school conscious."