San Juan County Schools Reta Bartell
My first experience with one-room schools came in the fall of 1956 when I became elementary supervisor in San Juan School District. I brought to the job thirteen years of teaching experience, so I had a fairly good understanding of an elementary school curriculum. Besides being the largest school district in the state, San Juan was one of the poorest. For years a good part of the money spent on education in the district came from the State Equalization Fund. But none of this prepared me for the eleven one-room schools I was given to supervise, in addition to the larger schools at Monticello and Blanding. These eleven schools were scattered all over the district: La Sal and La Sal Creek in the far north; West Summit; East Summit; Cedar Point and Eastland between Monticello and the Colorado State line to the east; Aneth to the far south across the San Juan River at Montezuma Creek; Bluff and Mexican Hat in the southwest; and Fry Canyon and Hide Out, over fifty miles west of Blanding. The typical one-room school was a small, lonely building, off by itself, way out in the "sticks" and badly in need of paint. Inside were a dozen desks of different sizes, a teacher's desk, and several shelves attached to the wall. On the shelves stood a teacher's roll book and an assortment of basic reading, arithmetic, spelling, and language texts, most of them outdated and worn. One shelf held expendable supplies — notebooks, ruled paper, pencils, crayons, and a three-inch stack of colored construction paper. A stand by the door held a grey enamel wash dish and a galvanized bucket for drinking water. In the bucket was a battered dipper. Beside the big pot-bellied stove stood a coal or wood bucket, empty. 329
