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Chapter 3 Bad Boys and Girls
- The University Press of Kentucky
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Chapter 3 Bad Boys and Girls A recurring theme of the teachers whose stories grace this book is that they taught in a kinder, gentler era in which students respected their elders and misbehavior was limited to relatively harmless pranks and the occasional youthful defiance of authority, quite unlike the horrors that today’s teachers often face. But even back then teachers sometimes encountered dangerous delinquents—and not all of them were students, as a few of the stories herein indicate. Arson and Firearms I typically didn’t think we needed to spank, but one time this little twelve-year-old boy went out of the schoolroom through the only door we had. The schoolhouse was setting up about three wooden steps, and this boy set fire to the steps. After we got the fire out, I spanked that boy! A week later he shot at me in the schoolhouse with a rifle and just missed me, but he didn’t miss very far. Before he could straighten up and reload, I was right behind him. I picked him up by his spinderless [sic] pants and took him to his house, which was up the creek a little ways. I had a little talk with his daddy, so that was the last I had of that. Irma Gall, Barbourville, November 20, 2008 Violence at the Swings Something that comes to mind is about a bad experience. I had one child that lived in walking distance of the school, and she was supposed to have gone on home before the bus came by there to pick up the ones that were to be transported. We were very fortunate to get a swing set, and this girl was swing- 66 Tales from Kentucky One-Room School Teachers ing on the swing and one of the boys got aggravated at her for some reason. I never did find out what that problem was about. Anyway, Brenda was swinging, and Dennis, whatever his problem was, took another swing and as Brenda started swinging toward him, he let that swing go and it hit her in the mouth. It cut her lips. She came into the school crying and bleeding. It even broke two of her teeth. I never did find her teeth. I don’t know whether she swallowed them or what. But we could not even find her teeth. I told her, “Brenda, you should have gone on home. If you would have gone on home like you were supposed to do, this would not have happened.” She had to go to the dentist after that and get two teeth capped in order to repair them. Of course I lectured him, too, and I lectured the whole school the next morning when they were all together, telling them that they were not to do things like that. I said, “If anything like this happens again, I will have someone on the school board come out here to take those swings down, and you will not have a swing.” That settled it. I didn’t have any more trouble about the swing. Emma Walker, Eddyville, October 7, 2008 Bad Boy Turns Good The year after my husband began teaching, Mr. Lay, the superintendent of Knox County schools, came to my daddy and said, “I’ve got a job for your daughter, but I’m not sure you’ll want her to take it. It will be teaching a one-room school at Wilton. It had three teachers last year, but couldn’t keep any of them. Your daughter is awful young, and I hate to put her out there, but I really need a teacher desperately. Your sonin -law has done a fine job, so I thought maybe your daughter would be interested.” Well, my husband knew the community, so he said, “No, you don’t take it. It is dangerous out there.” I decided that I would take it because he told me not to. So I took it and the first two months at that school went really well. I was doing the same things I had done in helping my husband at his school the previous year. I began working with the children and finally got them in groups, found out who could read and who couldn’t. I’d make me some flash cards at night at home, and was really getting into my job because I loved it. [18.205.67.119] Project MUSE (2024-03-29...