A Living History Lesson in State’s Oldest One-Room Schoolhouse

PETALUMA, Calif. —  “Second-graders: Line up!” Rushing to the steps of their one-room schoolhouse, the children practically fall over one another, all two of them.

Nobody tells the kindergartners to line up; they just call “David.”

Welcome to Lincoln District School, the oldest one-room schoolhouse in California.

Here, dodge ball is a districtwide activity; they need all the bodies they can get. Even teacher Chris Gordon skitters across the circle in her narrow jeans and designer clogs.

Situated on a lonely stretch of road dotted with Herefords and Angus cattle, the school educates 14 ranchers’ children and the children of those who work the ranches.

Marin County may be known for its macrobiotic diets, shapely bodies and its BMWs (Basic Marin Wheels), but west Marin is a quilt of dairy farms and cattle ranches, red barns and lichen-laden wood fences.

Coming across the 131-year-old one-room schoolhouse is like eyeing a four-leaf clover or ripping into a Cracker Jack box and discovering not some silly riddle, but a tiny gold-plated whistle.

Climb up the steps and inside country children from kindergarten through fifth grade sit, stand, fidget and, in the case of Alisha Spaletta, twirl.

This year, there are no fourth- or sixth-graders. Like a Norman Rockwell scene, the school reminds you of a place you never knew.

From its long, narrow four-paned window, no houses are visible, just an old red barn high in the hills and in the springtime the meadow larks, California poppies and scarlet pimpernel.

With white posts, century-old gingerbread trim and the front porch -- a parking place for sand-caked athletic shoes of all sizes -- it bears the unmistakable look of what it is, even when one of the boys mistakenly hoists the California flag upside down.

Many one-room schoolhouses across the country have been converted into single-family homes, second homes or museums.

Others have been used as burn sites for fire departments or as restaurants, county storage facilities and, near Kalamazoo, Mich., “Sherry’s Hair Perfections. (Her Web site explains that “Sherry does not like to do punk haircuts.”)

Less than 1,000, perhaps many fewer, survive. Thirty-three still operate in California, including Tulare County’s Johnsondale Elementary, which some years has only two students.

“It is in one-room country schools that we became a nation,” said Andrew Gulliford, an expert on one-room schoolhouses and director of the Center for Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo. These schools, he said, “did a superb job of Americanizing immigrants.”

Lincoln’s 14 students include four sets of siblings, so most everyone has a relative at school. Anyway, they feel like family. “The kids are like my brothers and sisters,” said Dale Katen, a fifth-grader.

Three of the students are third generation. Alisha and Jake’s father, Tony Spaletta, owns a 780-acre cattle ranch, a backdrop for the “Happy Cows” commercials. In his time, he graduated alone, the school’s sole sixth-grader.

He marvels that despite the increase in land values and the selling of land to city dwellers for what he calls “entertainment ranches,” the old school always has enough students to keep its doors open.

“Hola!” the teacher, Gordon, says in the middle of a lesson as Carmen Jimenez arrives with her brother David, who speaks no English. They come to school when they can, dependent as they are on their father’s milking schedule.

Farmhands from Mexico are immigrating to western Marin. While three of the students are from Mexico, only little David speaks no English, which means that when the class is writing, Gordon is teaching David the difference between “on” and “off.”

When he seems not to pay attention, the teacher asks Carmen if her brother missed breakfast. She nods.

“That’s readily apparent,” Gordon says, providing crackers and juice.

Nearly everything at the school is individualized. Gordon knows that Kyle Sepulveda has two overnights this weekend, so watch out when Monday comes; that Jack loves animals but didn’t take good care of his hamster, which is why she bought him a book on rats -- she hates rats -- then bought a rat for the class and put Jack in charge.

“I can’t believe Mrs. Gordon. I’m so proud of her. She’s overcome her fears,” Dale wrote in his diary.

Gordon knows that Percy Stubbs, a great actor and fine reader, favors only fantasy, which is why she bought him Michael Chabon’s “Summerland” for sustained silent reading -- to push him.

Hers is a niche profession designed for people who simultaneously can consider the Seven Years War, the Pilgrims and sweet Kyle, who, if he’s not focused, might bounce off the walls.

Gordon teaches in rural California, but she’s not of it. When one mother fed the class spaghetti, Gordon and her much-loved aide, Penny Carnegie, were quite surprised to learn the meat sauce had a special tang that came from minced moose. Gordon lives over the hill and buys her meat wrapped in plastic.

Before she came to Lincoln District School, she taught at a one-room schoolhouse in Humboldt County, and before that, she taught at a juvenile hall.

The woman thrives on challenges.

Orchestrating the subjects takes a sophisticated conductor or a teacher with a 3-D mind. Before they can go to lunch, Gordon tells the fifth-graders to figure out what continent and hemisphere Canada is in; third-graders have to know the seventh month of the year; second-graders must subtract 16 from 91; and kindergartners and first-graders have to come up with two words that rhyme with “bat.”

When the fifth-graders are rolling into the American Revolution, the second- and third-graders will hang back in Colonial times. The youngest children will focus on firemen and “my community.”

Although math is usually taught by grade, Gordon one day gave every child a Hershey bar. If their minds wander, she said, their stomachs will focus them.

Fifth-graders are given a bonus point for measuring the bar’s perimeter, and no, Gordon is not going to explain what the word “perimeter” means. She works with all but the youngest students, who are helped by the aide.

Six-twelfths, the students find, is the same as one-half. Although they usually raise their hands, one voice calls out for marshmallows. As Gordon guides them, the various grades make their own fraction discoveries.

When the lesson ends, one boy announces, “I have 12 twelfths in my mouth.”

Her science segment is on yeast; the children stir sugar, water and yeast together, then watch it bubble up like a mad milkshake. The older ones analyze what the yeast is doing, informing the younger ones.

If she had to teach, say, third grade alone, Gordon said she would be bored. Here, she teaches not only academics, but how to be an effective person. In such close quarters for so many years, she said, the children all have to get along.

And so does the teacher. Regular teachers, she points out, will have a difficult child in the class and say they can’t wait until June. Gordon has no such choice. She looks for the positives in each student, she said, because they are hers for the duration.