Exemplars from Community Works Institute

From One-Room Schools to One New School:
Walden’s Community and School Make the Transition Together

Walden, Vermont underwent the difficult transition from a series of one-room school, scattered throughout the community to a single consolidated school. Community Works Journal writer Susan Bonthron had the opportunity to interview staff members at Walden School to find out what it was like to experience this transition.

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Walden is a small rural community east and slightly north of Saint Johnsbury in Caledonia County, Vermont. Populated by a diverse collection of old farm families and more recent arrivals, most of its citizens value the old traditions of the community and only reluctantly accept change. Even the latest arrivals (many of whom commute to St. Johnsbury) gravitated to Walden because they were attracted to its small size and its rural peace. Up until quite recently, Walden’s children attended a series of one-room schools, each housing separate grades, that were scattered throughout the community. Kim LaRose, who was the third/fourth grade teacher at one of these schools and now teaches at Walden’s centralized school, described what it was like:

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There was a first/second, a third/fourth, a fifth/sixth, and a seventh/eighth grade, each in its own building, all five miles or more apart. Originally they were each K-8 schools, heated by a wood stove. Later on, bathrooms were built on and each school had its own cook, who prepared hot lunches. The neighborhoods liked the fact that they each had a school in their own location, but there were difficulties: the art and music teachers, who came only once a week, had to spend a lot of time just getting from one building to the next. The two special education teachers also had to travel from school to school. The community had only one bus, so families with several children had to keep track of several different bus schedules.There was no physical education teacher (they did a lot of cross-country skiing!) and the children had to play for other schools’ teams if they wanted to do team sports. In the end, this was one of the factors that finally convinced the community there were real advantages to building a centralized school.

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Finally, pressure from the state to improve their facilities—and the demands of upkeep and repair on five different buildings—forced the issue. But consolidation was painful, involving a long voting process. “The community was overtly afraid that a consolidated school was going to become a factory school,” says Kim.

According to Walden Principal Shirley Richardson, the next challenge was the challenge of moving. Students who had never been together in the same building and teachers who were used to ruling their own roosts suddenly had to accommodate themselves to a very different situation. On the first day of school they lost their principal. With so many different opinions about how the transition should be handled, there was inevitable friction. Walden has now successfully navigated that challenge. “The climate is no longer one of a community in crisis,” says Shirley. “The teaching staff are team players now, united in a vision they have created, which is totally geared toward improving student performance.” Now the concern is whether they will be able to sustain this vision despite rising costs (including some fixed costs that Walden cannot control, such as tuitioning their students to the regional high school). Walden is an economically challenged community, but many of its citizens have become involved in the school, helping to develop learning goals for the students and sustaining a vision of what the school can be for its community. Hopefully they will be able to convince the entire community of the value of this vision, and thereby gain support for the school budget.

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Community involvement in the school has increased as a result of the changeover, according to Kim LaRose. The school library is available for use by the community, and the school hosts a number of after-hour activities that need a large meeting place, including a men’s basketball night, scouts, town meetings, and concerts. Recently elected school board member Carolyn Greaves agrees that the centralized school has brought the town closer together. “Now parents can go to one place and talk to all their childrens’ teachers.” She adds, “The older kids didn’t know the younger ones like they do now. The little kids no longer fear the bigger ones, who look out for the youngsters.” Kim LaRose adds, “In the old days, children sometimes hadn’t even visited other parts of their community. Now they visit all the houses and cemeteries, and all the main buildings in the town.”

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[photo at left: A group of students learns how to identify trees in Walden’s fir and spruce forest.]

Enhancing a sense of place drives much of the school’s current curriculum. Teacher and curriculum designer Regina Quinn has been at Walden School for three years. She has taught the same group of children in mixed classrooms of first/second and second/third graders, and will rejoin them next year when she teaches fourth/fifth grade. This year, however, she is working half time as an art/technology teacher, and spending the rest of her time developing (with other staff members) curriculum that connects the school deeply with its community. Walden’s emphasis on a sense of place is characteristic of schools that belong, as Walden does, to the Annenburg Rural Partnership. Walden classrooms have worked with FoodWorks to study the ecology of their area and school yard habitats. They have also been part of a Web Project technology grant that studied historical artifacts. The new school is located near a tract of land that the students (with grant support) have helped develop into a nature trail, and Regina is working on a combined science and social studies curriculum that will take advantage of the trail.
Regina has also developed a study of one-room school houses that she will use in her fourth/fifth classroom next year. The study will incorporate writing, photographs, and interviews collected by local historian Betty Hatch, who also taught in the town’s one-room schools. Ms. Hatch has collected journals written by students and teachers about one-room schools, and memories of older community members who used to attend them.
Regina’s focus on the town’s history led her to apply for and receive a Vermont Council on the Humanities grant, which will have two components. One is called “Family Treasures/Family Stories,” and is designed to promote reading, increase library use, and stimulate discussion and awareness of local heritage. In a series of multi-generational workshops, students and community members will be encouraged to write, share and publish their own family stories with the help of visiting authors, bookbinding workshops, and a Family Stories celebration. The grant’s other component is an early childhood literacy project to enhance children’s preschool literacy experiences; this will include home visits, tutoring, bookmaking, and family story hours.

Walden’s efforts to bring its school system into alignment with state guidelines and standards has gone hand in hand with the effort to strengthen and deepen the school’s connection to its community. Walden’s struggles are characteristic of struggles that have taken place all over Vermont, in which the need to address new standards of student achievement and school improvement is tempered by a strong desire to keep alive the rich tradition and sense of place that makes each Vermont community unique. Walden has progressed a long way toward achieving that goal, thanks to its dedicated staff and community members. “The most important thing I’ve learned as a teacher,” says Regina, “is to keep the vision of what’s possible in front of you, and then focus on how to get there.”