Interesting Responses From My One-Room School Students

     From 1973 to 1977 I taught in a very remote one-room school in the Interior of BC.  About half of my students had grown up in the bush, without television or radio, so whenever I asked the students a question, I got some really interesting and unexpected answers.  I had forgotten all of those sort of things over the years, but I recently got a trove of some of the letters I had sent home to my family, and in one of them, I had written down the unusual things they had told me.

    I showed the class a photo of a windmill, and asked,  “This is a windmill.  Does anyone know what is it is for?

    One of my forth graders gave me the answer:   “It goes around and around and makes wind to keep the town cool.”

    Another time I showed a picture of a man raking leaves and asked the class, “What useful thing could this man do to the leaves instead of burning them?”   The answer I got was:  “Save them until next year.”  ( I guess to spread them out again, so he could rake them again.)

    My first graders thought all of the ropes on a sailing ship were to hold up the mast.

    One of my fifth graders thought that Sundance, our dog, wouldn’t get mad because he had had a distemper shot.

    One weekend, I saw all of my goofy first and second graders running around the camp where we lived carrying sticks with ribbons or string tied to the end.  They were sticking them in ditches and puddles.  They told me they were fishing.  A couple of them told me they had gotten “some bites, but the fish got away.”

    I always found it interesting, the things kids had in their young brains.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca