I remember growing up, sitting on a stool in the middle of the kitchen engrossed in reading the adventures of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family’s life on the prairie. In the one-room schoolhouses, she studied alongside kids of all ages and skill levels. She isn’t the only example of respectable greatness to develop from these early educational venues. Think about John Adams, our second president. While he would have rather been fishing and hunting, he applied himself well to the one-room learning environment. After college, he even taught in a one-room schoolhouse while contemplating his career steps – lawyer, delegate to the Continental Congress, diplomat in Europe, President of the United States. More wonderful examples include Abraham Lincoln and Henry Ford. In fact, Henry Ford loved his one-room schoolhouse so much that he had it added to the Ford Museum in Michigan.

What about the one-room schoolhouse applies to today’s movements toward blended, personalized learning and competency-based education? What made this environment so productive and supportive?

1. Community: Every one-room school was attached to a community. The teacher knew the parents – the parents knew the teacher. Their lives intertwined through daily activities such as growing food, raising livestock, gatherings at the one and only store, and local worship services (camp meetings) held when the traveling preacher came through town. How well do we establish a community of support beyond just the regularly scheduled parent-teacher briefings? What can we do to increase parental involvement and support of the blended environment?
2. Kids taught other kids: Sure, we include peer-to-peer problem-based learning activities in our blended, personalized environments. But, how many of our students automatically assist one another as a part of their core being? How can we plan for every student to teach and be taught by another student? This means as teachers we have to know the deep down skills, interests, personalities, and abilities of each of our students. Remember how well Christy Huddleston, early one-room teacher in Appalachia, knew her students and leveraged that knowledge to encourage peer teaching in the school and the community?
3. Eavesdropping and Osmosis: Since students in the one-room schoolhouse often overheard other students working on and discussing their lessons, they easily picked up new topics to explore, ways to practice or methods to solve problems. Today, if we put the students in front of the online learning devices without offering them small group instruction, large group activities, or opportunities to connect with other learners, we create isolated pockets of lower quality learning. What are we, as educators, doing to increase the odds of students overhearing and absorbing something new and interesting?
4. Self-paced, positive support: In a CBS Sunday Morning story from June of this year, students in 21st Century one-room schoolhouses describe themselves as ranking at the top of their college classes even though their K12 experience was so very different from the norm. They tell reporter Barry Peterson this result is because the teacher is solely focused on education and encouragement – always with the message “You can do this. You will learn this.”

Today’s Challenge:

Think through your own educational environment. How well would it fit in a one-room model? What if you were teaching kids from K through 12 grade all in the same room, how would you adjust what you’re doing? How can you apply those potential adjustments to your current teaching environment?