Schoolhouse Dreams
January 21, 2012
My mother taught one room school in Rosetown, Saskatchewan, in the ’30s. There was such an age difference between herself and her sister that my Aunt ended up being her student. When my mother had no choice but to keep her after school for talking back, that was the beginning of a lifelong distance between them. They got along–don’t get me wrong–but they weren’t ever the best of friends.
The notion of a one room school has always been appealing to me, personally. I would have bloomed in such a setting, and benefited from having both older and younger learning their lessons in the same room at the same time–(though probably not if the teacher had been my mother).
This painting, entitled ‘Schoolhouse Memories’ is based on a dream I had not long ago, of heading towards a building like this, in a setting like this, on a warm day at dawn, yet never reaching the front door.
It was in the Federation of Canadian Artists’ Open Show in April of 2010.
weisserwatercolours 
Your welcome Lance 😉
Enjoyed it very much…
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Oh thank you Jenny. You know, that reminds me that I once lived not far from Malone, New York, where the writer of the ‘little house’ books wrote them in. They were all read to us by our 2nd Grade Teacher, Mrs. Combs. (smile) Thank you very much again, jen.
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Remind me of the little house of the prairie setting
🙂 Nice piece of work as always
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how nice to hear the full story. our responses to the word ‘school’ are complex and usually very deep. much goes on within them, and a one room one just seems somewhat less complex and more nurturing. to walk into the very one your mother went to must have sounded some new chords within to help fill the scale of who she was and became.
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Hi,
I was lucky enough to see the one room school my Mum used to go to as a child.
They actually put the little building on the heritage list, and we could even go inside, I was amazed how small it all seemed to me, as Mum was explaining what it was like to go to school there, I was a teenager at the time, so it was many years ago, but I still remember it all very clearly. 🙂
I love your painting, I think it’s wonderful you can paint something that you had in a dream.
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thank you for taking the time. but tell us, what exactly is a ‘two room school’–I mean, does that indicate the split between say, elementary and high school levels?
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Love the painting, and the story.
I went to a two room school in rural Oklahoma in the early 60’s. It was a great experience, and I enjoyed my time there. Eventually, though, I had to go to “town” for high school.
You have a very interesting blog.
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very kind of you to say so. I personally don’t have any memory of Saskatchewan because of being born long after they’d moved away. This scene is quite typical of the land here in the Interior of B. C.–yet I would imagine it would seem familiar in many parts of Canada. All I know is, it was like this in my dream!
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oh thank you again for your remarks. Yes, same here. She was always hovering. The only thing that satisfied her standards was my penmanship (smile)
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My mother was a teacher also – not in a one room school. I would have enjoyed that setting better myself. Like you, not if my mother was the teacher. She was quite frustrated with the fact that I had a great deal of difficulty in school and she could not seem to help me.
I love the dream painting.
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Lovely. The dirt road, the landscape – so typical of the prairie.
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