From Ted's Typewriter by Ted Mangner

In all probability you may have heard about the fellow who attended night school one evening when they didn't have any lights and the teacher didn't come. True or not, the same thing happened to me but in reverse. I showed up to teach my first term of country school in the fall of 1926, but no pupils were there most of the time. The reason was simple. There weren't any pupils. In fact, I could well be the only person dead or alive who ever taught a school with no pupils. If you say that can't be done, somehow I man­aged to do it. At least I was called the school teacher and got paid for teaching nobody anything.

I was fresh out of Eastern Illinois State Teacher's College at Charleston where I had been primed to the gills in the art of teaching by Dr. Livingston C. Lord and his most capable staff. He preferred to be called Mr. Lord, but I could never buy that as I was called Mr. Mangner by all my teachers. So, to me, that was putting me on the same level with one of the greatest teachers I ever knew. He took great pride in mention­ing that there were only two places in the United States where students were referred to as "Mr.," and they were Harvard and Eastern Illinois.

Nevertheless, after one year at Eastern I was qualified to teach any of the first eight grades in the State of Illinois. I had applied for my home school in the fall of '26 and was hired. In those days it was considered quite an honor to be hired to teach in the country school where you attended. So I strode out from town two and a half miles away as proud as a rooster with his first spurs.

When I arrived at the school house and rang the bell, which was the signal that school was now in session, the sea of faces I had planned on seeing seemed to be missing. I could only count five pupils: three boys and two girls. I figured what I might lack in quantity I would make up in quality. As it turned out, nobody stayed long enough for me to find out. Before the day was half over, the oldest girl had an attack of appendicitis. She was taken to the hospital for an operation, and when recovered she was past the age of sixteen and was no longer required to attend school. While I had lost one pupil the very first day I lost another by the end. of the week.

It happened because one of my three directors moved into town and quite naturally took his little boy along. I didn't become too alarmed until the end of the second week when another director moved to an adjoining neighborhood in another district and likewise took his son with him. I was now down to two pupils and one director, the Clerk of the Board.

(PART 2)

Faced with the grim reality that I had lost three pupils and two directors in the first two weeks, I be­gan to wonder whether or not I might have something that even my best friends wouldn't tell me about.

I still hesitated to take any action when my one remaining little girl simply up and quit. She didn't iike school in the first place, and lived two miles away, so I could appreciate her position when the rainy fall weather started. Now faced with one pupil and one director I wondered if it weren't high time we discussed school matters with the powers that be. I still hesitated, figuring like General Grant, that it might be better to fight it out on this line if it took all winter.

So teaching went on as usual at Prairie Grove, District 13 in Marion County, Illinois. When my lone pupil showed up, which wasn't too often, I sat up at my desk in the front of the school room and taught, while he sat in the back of the school room and learned, I hope. He was much bigger than I, but I was wider and stronger. At recess we went out in the school yard and wrestled to work off surplus energy.

As winter approached and the weather became worse, my lone star pupil failed to show up on sev­eral mornings. He also had two miles to walk to school across frozen fields. When he failed to show up morning after morning, I thought it was high time I had a conference with my only remaining school dir­ector, the Clerk of the Board. It had been a couple of months or so since he had had a meeting. It was so nice to get together and show one another that at least somebody cared; the Director, me and myself, Ted and I.

I explained to him that perhaps it might be best to call the whole thing off. It was a waste of my time to walk five miles round trip each day to teach nobody anything. Furthermore, it was a waste of the tax pay­er's money, not to mention the coal bill that could be saved from heating up a big building all day long. So I suggested that if he'd release me from my contract there would be no hard feelings and I'd get back to town and stay there.

(PART 3)

An old country school teacher himself, he thanked me for being so considerate. But he was quick to add that once the school was closed officially, it might be difficult to reopen it. A new crop of first graders would be starting the following year, so he suggested I continue to keep the school open until one o'clock five days a week. I complied. Each weekday morning I walked out from town and stirred up the fire that I'd banked the night before. At nine o'clock I rang the bell. Then I pulled my swivel chair near the big stove in the center of the room. I propped my feet on its big black jacket, munching an apple while I read a book.

At 10:30 I took fifteen minutes time out while I walked around the building to stretch my legs. Besides, since I'd lost two of my three directors and all of my pupils, I'd better not take any chances of anyone running away with part of the school house. At a quarter of eleven, I rang the bell again signify­ing that recess was over, and also to let my lone director know that I was following orders and still holding the fort. Then I returned to my place by the stove with another book and more apples. I never read so many books nor ate so many apples in my entire life as I did during that school term.

At twelve o'clock I ate my lunch, marked everybody absent, brought in kindling in case the fire went out over night, brought in coal, swept the floor, rang the bell once more, and headed back to town at one o'clock. I attended Teachers Institute at the County seat to take home piles of information and booklets for my pupils whom I did not have. When my fellow teachers inquired how my pupils were getting along with "Evangeline," I told them she hadn't even arrived yet, but I was hoping she'd get there as fast as she could. The County Superintendent of Schools was a woman who was supposed to visit all schools in the county twice during the term. She never, however, came to see me. She was fully aware there was no use. What could we have done? Held hands?

The only visitor I ever had was the neighbor's dog that would come slinking through the schoolhouse door, left open on balmy days. I would have assigned him a seat had I been sure he would stay. I was ready and willing to teach anything that might have flown through the window. When friends in town would inquire what I was doing and I replied, "teaching school," they didn't be­lieve me when I told them I had no pupils. At the close of school a new family moved in to the neigh­borhood; two little boys and two little girls, while my remaining male pupil returned, leaving me with five pupils again which was the number I'd started with.

I taught six more terms of country school before I returned to the University of Illinois for a degree and a place on the staff. My second term made a bit of interesting history as well as the other four. But that's another story. If there's a moral to this story, it might be that you can teach some of your pupils part of the time, or part of the pupils some of the time, but it's extremely difficult to teach anybody anything any of the time when they aren't there. Believe me, I tried it.