I was feeling completely confident in my role as an 1865 one-room schoolteacher. Wednesday, May 23, I realized how wrong I was to be so self-assured. I was totally and completely unprepared for what happened on that dreadful day.
I arrived at This is the Place Heritage Park early that morning as I had most week days in April and May. I changed into my pioneer clothes and walked up the dirt road to the red brick one-room schoolhouse. I was joyfully prepared to instruct four groups of eager fourth grade students, who were coming to the park for an end-of-the year field trip focusing on Utah history.
When my first group of children arrived, I instructed them on proper etiquette in entering the classroom. Girls entered first with a curtsy and "Good Morning, Mrs. V," and the boys followed with a bow. We talked about "paddle" and "dunce cap" discipline and the importance of coming to school on time, so they wouldn't be locked out of the building for the day. I told them I would be spending at least a week at each of their homes during the school year, because I was unmarried and didn't own a house of my own.
I drilled the students on multiplication tables and their knowledge of U.S. presidents. I taught them the Deseret Alphabet, a phonetic alphabet developed in Utah in the mid 1800s to help European immigrants learn to read and write English more easily.
After my thirty-minute presentation I led the 28 students to the door, ready to bid them farewell and welcome the next group. As I opened the door, an old couple stood at the bottom of the stairs shouting, "Don't come down the stairs. Don't come down the stairs." They pointed to a stair three steps down from where I was standing with the students and yelled, "There's a giant rattlesnake up there!" They have to be kidding I thought, so I stepped down to take a look. Sure enough, there was a giant rattler coiled up in the corner of the stair next to the building. Terrified, I hurried back up the stairs, pushing the students back into the classroom. I led them down some inside stairs and let them out the basement back door exit.
If I had been an authentic 1865 schoolteacher, I wouldn't have had Heritage Park staff there to help me. I don't know how they got rid of the poisonous snake, but it was gone when my second group of students was ready to leave. In pioneer times, it would have been my sole responsibility, as the teacher, to handle the problem. I don't think most schoolhouses back then had a back door to sneak out of. I would have had to battle the rattlesnake alone.
What would I have done back then? Stick out my tongue and make faces at it until it left? Cry? Talk to it in my sweetest voice, telling it to please go away? Tell the children to quietly tiptoe around it? Jump out the window and let the students fend for themselves? Pray? Chase it with a stick? Throw rocks at it? Keep the children at school all night until the rattlesnake left on its own?
Today, not many of us face the challenges of rattlesnakes, wolves, and bears. But are our lives any easier than the pioneers? No. Our "rattlesnakes" today come in the form of pornography, war, rebellious children, drugs and other addictions, high taxes, terrorism,sky rocketing gas prices, school shootings ...
Are we prepared for the rattlesnakes lurking outside, and inside, our doors?
