School sticks to old-style education
TENDOY, Idaho – At one time, one-room schoolhouses dotted the West.
Even miners infected with gold fever knew the value of educating their children, and remnants of these schools are still visible in ghost towns such as Custer and Bannack City. Early residents, most of whom barely scraped by, chipped in for the schoolhouse and a teacher’s salary, determined to make sure their children would have a better life.
It was in this tradition that Lemhi County residents built the small white Tendoy School in 1914, a time when the 20-mile stretch from Salmon to Tendoy was a good distance.
Today, as the teacher rings a small brass bell to summon boys in flannel shirts and long-haired girls from the playground, it’s not hard to conjure visions of the early 1900s. Only the pickup trucks, bright lunchboxes and tennis shoes belie the fact that 90 years have passed.
The nine girls and six boys who attend the Tendoy School range from first grade to a lone sixth-grader. Most will spend years together, sharing a classroom and teacher, playing at recess, and swapping treats from their sack lunches.
“This isn’t just a school, it’s a family,” said Kathy Coleman, who drives 90 miles from Dillon, Mont., every Monday and lives in a trailer during the week so her three children, Jake, Clay and Connor, can attend the school.
Like school children throughout the country, the Tendoy students start their day with the Pledge of Allegiance. Show-and-tell gives them a chance to share news and treasures. One boy shows off the ribbons he and his Black Angus steer won at a fair. Another boy describes a fox that ran through his family’s field earlier that morning. Fifth-grader Jake Coleman can barely conceal his excitement about the parcel he hides behind his back – his most prized possession, a 2½-inch thick Caterpillar Performance Handbook, Edition No. 32.
“Jake wanted that for Christmas and my other son asked for a rock, so that’s what we got them,” said Kathy Coleman.
This is the norm for Jenny Peterson, who has taught at Tendoy for five years. A graduate of Leadore High School who attended the one-room school in the Pahsimeroi Valley, Peterson is no stranger to the country life.
She won’t take credit for the well-behaved students who beg to do their timed math quizzes one more time. Traditional values are alive and well in Tendoy, she said.
“These kids have very important roles in their families,” Peterson said. “Most of them have animals to take care of and other responsibilities at home. The parents aren’t letting television raise their kids, and it shows. Most kids today think it’s not a toy unless it comes out of a box and has batteries.”
The Tendoy students are more likely to know how to operate a tractor than a Nintendo.
“I do think all of that makes them better thinkers and better problem solvers,” Peterson said.
Peterson understands that her students need to learn about life outside their sheltered glen, but she also realizes her students gain a lot from their surroundings.
Fishermen have been known to stop in with notable steelhead. Wildlife lessons present themselves almost daily. The children press their noses against the windowpanes to watch moose, bear, deer or red-tailed hawks wander near the swing set and wooden teeter-totter.
“Grandma Vi,” Tendoy’s 86-year-old storekeeper and unofficial historian, gives firsthand accounts of when members of the Lemhi-Shoshoni tribe lived in the community, which is named after their ancestor, Chief Tendoy.
Known in the education business as “teachable moments,” such occasions are seized by Peterson to bolster her students’ learning.
Jim Smith, the South Lemhi superintendent, said the school’s approach works. Tendoy students are outpacing the state average in almost every category of testing. Because students are making progress in the highly regulated world of academic goals, Smith can condone a class structure that is slightly unconventional.
“The reality of American education is that bigger is not better,” he said.