Dear Parents,

Conversations are always interesting when families get together over meals. This year Linda and I hosted our family's Thanksgiving dinner, and yes, we had "all the fixin's" along with lots of tales. One of my nephews just started college at U.B.C. in Vancouver and his stories revolved around the newness of life as can only been seen through the eyes of a college student. My sister and brother-in-law brought the perspective of being parents in transition, one son at college and the other at home. My oldest son told stories of his work restoring salmon habitat along the Skagit River. My parents updated everyone with news from the neighborhood, and we all shared stories about family members who weren't with us at the table. In Denmark, one of our family's oldest members, Edvard Lyse, a member of the Danish Resistance in WWII and priest, passed away this year. He was a fascinating man who passed to us many stories when we visited with him. He was the first we toasted as we sat around the table. Lots of "Remember when..." stories soon followed, including a few about my grandmother and grandfather on my mother's side. My grandmother was a schoolteacher much of her life and it was while she was calling the students in from recess that my grandfather first spotted her from across the field he was plowing. My grandfather was a hard worker, a good story teller, and a history buff.

It was nearly 100 years ago that my grandfather attended school in rural eastern Washington. Things were different then; we had a republican president (oh, I guess that's the same), there was no income tax, plastic hadn't quite yet been invented, Henry Ford was getting ready to introduce the Model T, and there wasn't a single Oreo Cookie to twist apart (they were first created in 1912). A few years before he passed away my grandfather wrote to my nephew's class about what school was like for him. I know he wouldn't mind if I passed it along to you.

"...I can tell you what being a kid was like long ago in 1909 when I was your age.

I lived on a farm just at the edge of a small town called Govan, Washington. I had a big brother Dorse, and a little sister, Mary. We could walk to school, but many of the students lived 5 or 6 miles away. They had to ride in a buggy pulled by two horses. It might take them one and a half or two hours to get to school in the morning. The big brothers or sisters drove the horses. During the day the horses stayed in a barn by the school until the kids were ready to go home again. School started at 9 a.m. and was over at 4 p.m. In the winter those who came by horse and buggy would have to go home in the dark.

The school I went to only had two rooms. In one room were Kindergarten and Grades 1, 2, 3, and 4. In the other room were Grades 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Each room had one teacher and about 25 students. Some teachers had older kids help younger ones. In front of the room was a row of desks for recitation. When it was time for the teacher to work with my grade, we would go up to the recitation row for reading or other learning from Mr. Sickles, who was my first teacher. The other kids would be at their own desks doing their work quietly. Each grade took turns.

One of the books I remember is Black Beauty. My parents didn't read to me at home, but our teacher read to the class every morning."

Well, a hundred years is a long time and things have changed since my grandfather was in school. We do still have multiage classrooms and read to our children every day, but recitation is not the mainstay of our educational practice and we don't have a barn for the horses on our school grounds.

I'd also guess that another thing that is quite different from my grandfather's day is the pace of change. Next year will be Swan School's 25th anniversary and in that time we have grown from about 18 students and 2 teachers to 65 students and 5 classroom teachers plus 4 music and 3 enrichment teachers. I had the good fortune to meet a teacher at our recent potluck dinner that had previously taught at Swan School. We invited her to stop by the school and take a look around, she was astonished at the changes she saw. When she had been teaching at Swan there were 4 students in what is now called the Adventurers' class. Although they had started meeting in the Unitarian Church, they eventually moved back to the school and met in what is now the art room. The office, as many parents of the older students remember, was in a closet-sized room near the 24th street door. We didn't have a preschool that included 3 year olds, and we were four classrooms short of where we are now. Wow, a lot has happened at Swan School over these past years! But even with all these changes, we still have our core values and the vision that originally brought families together as members of the Swan School community. That foundation helps us keep smiling as we tell our own "Remember when..." stories while creating new ones that I'm certain will be passed around in the future.

Russ

P.S. Here is a photo of my grandfather's old school as it looks today: