PRESQUE ISLE — The Aroostook Medical Center and the Presque Isle Historical Society will team up again in 2016 to bring alive a piece of years gone by through their quarterly presentations. For the first session, planned Wednesday, March 2, the focus will be on former one-room schoolhouses in the region.
The presentation is free and open to the public. It begins at 5:30 p.m. and will be held in the McCain Conference Room, located on the second floor of TAMC’s East Annex.
Photos of the various 22 rural schools from the area will be shown and information will be shared on what a typical day was like, teacher salaries and school budgets, interesting anecdotes and more. It is an interesting look back to how the youth in the community were educated decades ago.
“One of the things I am most fascinated about with one-room schools is how the teachers, who were often quite young and petite females, could handle a school full of children of varying ages, grades and sizes — some much bigger than they were,” explained Kimberly Smith, secretary and treasurer of the Presque Isle Historical Society’s Board of Directors and the presenter at these quarterly events.
“The parallel with today’s teaching techniques is also interesting in that one room with eight grades and only one teacher really gives new meaning to progressive learning,” Smith said.
