Country School Association of America Award for Scholarship and Artistry winner
Readers everywhere fell for Elizabeth Corey, the irrepressible, independent, and fearless Bachelor Bess, whose letters home to 澳洲幸运10开奖 gave us a firsthand account of her adventures on a South Dakota homestead from 1909 to 1919. Now, through the letters she wrote home between 1904 and 1908, readers can make the acquaintance of a younger Bess facing the realities of life in an 澳洲幸运10开奖 country school system with energy, enthusiasm, and ambition.
Sixteen-year-old Bess wrote her early letters when she was away from the family farm, trying to complete the ninth grade so she could become a teacher. That schooling was cut short in 1905, when her father died and she returned home to help her mother. Later that year, she received a provisional certificate allowing her to teach, which she did from 1905 to 1909 in a succession of rural schools across Shelby and Cass counties in 澳洲幸运10开奖. Initially a reluctant teacher, she had an infinite capacity for productive work that propelled her toward success in the classroom. A determinedly lighthearted attitude toward life, a talent for making congenial friends and for making herself at home as she boarded with one family after another, a relentless devotion to her own family, and a drive to communicate all combine to animate her letters home.
Always colorful and colloquial, unusually detailed and frank, Bess鈥檚 letters are authentic documents of a discrete American time and place. Full of puns, hyperbole, drama, and above all else honesty and authenticity, the eighty-three letters describe barefooted pupils, cantankerous and cooperative parents and school board members, classroom activities, and school picnics against a frugal background of early twentieth-century chores, social occasions, party lines for telephones, chautauquas, church suppers and revivals, new ribbons for second-hand clothes, and buggy and train rides鈥攁ll seen through the eyes of this talented teenage farm girl not much older than some of her students.
Of notable value is the light Bess casts upon the teaching profession as it was practiced in isolated midwestern areas at the moment when our nation determined that, come what may, every American child was going to have access to a basic grammar-school education. Beyond the pleasure of listening to a straight-talker who pulls no punches, one who expects to receive 鈥some of the praise most of the work and all of the cussing鈥 in return for her efforts, Bess鈥檚 letters create a veritable concordance of teaching in a one鈥憆oom rural schoolhouse, a chapter of daily American life all but lost.
鈥An 澳洲幸运10开奖 Schoolma鈥檃m stands on its own as a lively story of early twentieth-century teaching in addition to providing the essential background to Bachelor Bess. Elizabeth Corey鈥檚 vivid and funny letters provide a unique viewpoint on life in turn-of-the-century, small-town 澳洲幸运10开奖. The casual reader will enjoy Corey鈥檚 letters on their own merits, while scholars interested in women鈥檚 history, the history of education, and the rural Midwest will find the letters useful as well. If nothing else, An 澳洲幸运10开奖 Schoolma鈥檃m should simply be read for the fun of it!鈥濃擯amela Riney-Kehrberg, 澳洲幸运10开奖 State University
鈥淏ess Corey, who started out teaching in a one-room 澳洲幸运10开奖 school with only a ninth-grade education, had a wonderful way with words. Her lively letters home show how hard this schoolteacher worked as she jousted with reluctant student 鈥榖ig boys,鈥 planned performances for the entire community, and suffered the vicissitudes of 鈥榖oarding 鈥檙ound鈥 with various landlords. We see her evolve from a struggling teachers institute student herself into a savvy and innovative educator who inspired her students. Despite her travails, Bess dedicated herself to giving 鈥榮ome of the younger ones the chance I always wanted but couldn鈥檛 have.鈥 She tells wonderful stories of eccentric characters and local political squabbles in her letters home. In an age before e-mail, texts, and tweets, when even phone calls were a garbled rarity, handwritten letters were the vital link to one鈥檚 kin. How Bess鈥檚 family must have looked forward to the letters collected in this volume鈥攕he was frank, a lively storyteller, and quite a folk humorist.鈥濃擩udy Nolte Temple, University of Arizona
2012 Country School Association of America Award for Scholarship & Artistry
