I have taught in Isle of Wight County for forty years. I’m a native of Isle of Wight County. I grew up in the Windsor area. There was a great deal of difference when I stopped than it was when I began to teach. My first problem was to get a job, and so I went to the superintendent and applied for Windsor Elementary, that frame school in front of the present Windsor Elementary. Well, they told me that what they really wanted was someone with experience, so I told them, “Mr. Hall, everybody that’s teaching now had to have a start someplace. If you don’t ever give me a chance to teach, I won’t ever have any experience.” So he said, “Well, I’ll think about it.” Mrs. Georgie Tyler came to see me—I was out picking cotton when she came, and she said, “I’ve come after you. I’ve come after the new teacher here.” And I said, “Mama, I don’t want to go,” and she said, “Go on.”
Mrs. Georgie Tyler was the supervisor, and she came after me to take another lady’s place for a while, but I didn’t have a contract or anything like that. So the next year, 1931-32, I didn’t get a contract, so I went to complain about it. So Mr. Hall said his understanding was that somebody had been there and told him that I was getting married and I was leaving town, but that was another girl. He should have found out from me what my intentions were. But he said, “I’ll tell you what; I’m going to put you in the closest school I can to Windsor.” So in a day or two, I got a letter from him telling me that I was placed at Walnut Grove in Zuni. I had a one-room school, and I had to go over and live with a lady about a mile from school. I had to walk to school.
And so I went to Walnut Grove, and it isn’t too far from Windsor, and Mama said, “I have a friend that lives up there near that school. I’m going to see her, and see if she’ll let you board with her.” So she did, and her name was Lucy Johnson. And that way, when I went to board with her, I had to walk over there to school, but it was just a mile away. And I stayed there and taught for years and years. Where I struck his attention was, it was time to take in the term report. I walked into the office, and all the way around were people seated working on those reports, (they had those reports wrong). I said, “Lord, there’s no need for me to even put mine up there because I’m so new, and some of these teachers have been here for years.” I was scared to death, and I could hear my heart just hammering, and when I walked in there, he was so disgusted, that instead of having the secretary checking the report, he said, “Let me check her report.” So he looked, he looked, he looked, and he said to the secretary, “I don’t see any mistakes in this report.” He said, “You check it over.” So she checked I over, and she said, “Mr. Hall, I don’t see any mistakes on this report.” And he said, “Well, I’m glad one in the county brought a correct report.” And from that day until he died, I had it made with him.
And I taught there several years, until in 1950… no, before 1950, Mrs. Julius B. Chapman decided she wasn’t going to teach anymore. So he came to me and asked me what I thought about him settling me in Fairview. Fairview is in Zuni. Both schools are in Zuni, but it’s just a mile and a half apart. So I said to him, “What’s happening to Mrs. Chapman?” He said, “She had to resign.” I said, “Well, I’d like to go then.”
Then Mr. Hall decided, “It isn’t many students here, and it isn’t many students there. We’ll combine the schools, since she is retired and put you there.” So I was there until 1950. So he came one day, and I said, “Mr. Hall, would you do me a favor?” He said, “If I can, I will.” I said, “You know the school over there will be a new school, new situation, new friends and everybody, but I would like to have the third grade.” And he said, “Alright girl, I’ll see you get the third grade, if that’s what you want.” I said, “Well, that’s what I want, the third grade.” That’s when I went, and I have never forgotten it, and another woman said, “I asked for the third grade. I don’t see why I didn’t get it.” I didn’t say a word, except to say, “I asked a long time ago. Maybe I asked first, or something of that nature’s the reason I got it.”
And so I went on there and got along alright, and I taught from 1950 to 1970. And I had 40 years then. And the children –I didn’t tell you this—when I first started teaching, we had ten pieces of green wood, and the parents had to bring the wood, and that was green; they had to go out into the woods and cut it. You had to get the bigger boys to go try and find some light wood. In the afternoon, before we’d go home, we had to have something to start the fire with the next day, and when we’d get there the next day my fingers would be so cold I couldn’t even hardly unlock the door and get in there and try to start the fire. And that being so cold, by the time the room got warm enough to be comfortable, it was time to go home. Add to that, I’ve got arthritis in my knees, and when I used to get home I was cold from right under here, clean down to me heels.
Oh, the children then and now. Well, one thing about then, we had a great deal less difficulty. Number one, the children respected a teacher, and number two, their parents worked with those teachers and the children. They would see that those children were obeying you, and they would come and tell you, “Now listen, don’t send me word that my children needs to be spanked. You do it, and nothing’ll be said.” And it wasn’t, but now, before I stopped, all that changed. And the children got to the point that they disrespect their teachers or most anybody. They wanted to say whatever they wanted to say. I said, ‘Well, you don’t do that. Cursing’s wrong. You shouldn’t say words like that.” And they’d say, “Well, my mama and daddy never told me it was wrong.” So I taught until 1970, and I told them I was going to retire.
In the early days when we were teaching, most of the time you just had a homemade desk, one of the slanting kind, and double chairs, where two or three children shared a seat, and if we didn’t have enough of those, if there was space left, we just had benches. You do your writing in your lap. When I first started teaching, there weren’t any school buses. The school buses started in 1950.
For my own schooling, when I was going to Windsor, I always had trouble with my throat. And when I was nine years old, I had my tonsils removed, and the doctor told them then that he wouldn’t like for me to be exposed to bad weather. So then my parents decided they would send me to Booker T. in Suffolk, where the lady that I stayed with was right across the street from the school, so I wouldn’t be exposed to the weather. And so I went there. And after I finished Booker T., I went on to Nansemond Collegiate Institute. At that time, you could come out of school, high school, and go to school twelve weeks, and teach. I went on like that, and then I went to St. Paul’s and finished through summer school. Most of my work for my certificate was from St. Paul’s.
The book Many Voices was published in 1986 as part of a project of the Interview Committee appointed in 1984 for the Isle of Wight County 350th Sesquitricentennial Celebration. The Oral History project taped the recollections of our older citizens and developed their stories from the transcriptions. Many Voices gave a permanent record of the previously unrecorded family life and history in Isle of Wight County. These excerpts take only the discussions dealing with the education memories of some of those citizens.