Washington Twp

Dalton & West LeMars Schools

School Daze Memories from former students and teachers!


 

Interview segments and memories by Mildred Tindall Hunter.
She taught at these rural schools:

Washington Dalton 1934-1937
Elgin No. 5 1937-1938
Liberty No. 1 1938-1939
Washington (formerly Dalton) West LeMars 1958-1961

Source: Newspaper clipping from Grandma’s scrapbook
Possibly a LeMars Sentinel newspaper clipping

Mrs. Hunter retired last spring from her job as 4th grade teacher at Kluckhohn Elementary after 30 years of teaching.  Her career began in 1934 when she began teaching in Dalton Independent School, a one-room school house.

There were no modern convenience in those days, and Mrs. Hunter worked as janitor, principal, and school nurse, as well as teacher.  During the winter she walked the mile to school early enough to start a fire.

“It was great if you'd like to go into a building where the thermometer says 15 below,” Mrs. Hunter said.

“But one-room schoolhouse kept the neighborhood closer than today's consolidated schools,”  Mrs. Hunter said.

“There was lots of cooperation from parents,” Mrs. Hunter said, adding that the school was the center of many social activities in the neighborhood.

“I taught those first years right out of high school,” Mrs. Hunter recalled. “I had normal training in high school.”

During her first year, Mrs. Hunter taught her sister, an eighth-grader in the kindergarten through eighth grade school.  “I taught three generations of my own family,” Mrs. Hunter said.

In 1939, she married and quit teaching.  Mrs. Hunter returned to teaching in 1958, when her husband was hurt in an automobile accident and left with injuries, which kept him out of work several years.

“When I went back in 1958, I had my brothers’ daughters in school,” Mrs. Hunter said. Eventually, before retiring, Mrs. Hunter also taught some of her nieces’ children.

Since 1974, Mrs. Hunter has taught fourth grade at Kluckhohn. She said in her years as a teacher, children have not changed a great deal, though society has.  “Children still want to learn and discover,” Mrs. Hunter said.


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