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Westside students meet
centenarian
Photo by Kirby Neumann-Rea
Fourth-graders at Westside Elementary listen to
Ressie Patton, and her former student, Ray Dixon,
center background. Principal Dan Patton helped field questions
for his mother, who he described as
“my Show and Tell on our 100th day of school.” |
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By SUE RYAN
News staff writer
February
28, 2006
Westside Elementary celebrated its 100th day of school by having
the principal’s 100-year-old mother come and speak with
students.
On Feb. 23, Principal Dan Patton brought in his mother, Ressie,
to share her life experiences. She was also a teacher and
principal who began her career in 1929.
After graduating from the Oregon Normal School in Monmouth
(later renamed Oregon College of Education; now known as Western
Oregon University) Ressie went to a remote area of Yamhill
County. Her career began with teaching at the one-room Gilbert
Creek School.
“It was near Willamina, on top of the mountains. We could hear
the ocean when it was storming,” Ressie said.
She had five grades in her school but said she knew of one-room
schoolteachers who had up to eight grades and 35 students.
Ressie has written anecdotes from her experiences, titled
“Country Schoolmarm,” for her son. One excerpt details some of
her teaching experiences at Chenoweth School near The Dalles.
“My fellow teacher and I found in our contracts a couple of
demands we hadn’t seen before. We were to be on the school
grounds at all times when children were outside, and we could
not get married,” she wrote. “It was quite difficult to have no
time at all to plan classwork, check work done, help those in
need or have time for personal problems. It all worked out very
well though, as I learned to work faster, and did much of the
planning, paperwork, and keeping records after school and at
home evenings.”
Ressie spoke to Westside Elementary students throughout Friday
about what school was like when she taught.
“We had to fix our curriculum so each grade had a certain amount
of time,” she said.
Studies fell into blocks of arithmetic and reading but Ressie
also played outside with the children during recess.
“At one school, I was out playing baseball and I hit a home run.
I was running around the bases and I was the principal at the
time,” she said. “Someone came to talk business and here I was
running around the bases.”
As a young child, Ressie hated school and especially disliked
math. But she said when she reached the eighth grade, one
wonderful teacher in particular inspired her to stick with
school.
“She got me to love school,” Ressie said. “I was planning to
quit when I got to eighth grade.”
Originally she planned to study science at Whitman College in
Walla Walla, Wash. But family circumstances required her to
attend school closer to home. So she chose to go to Monmouth.
Her son, Dan, followed in her footsteps as a teacher and later a
principal. Ressie said she attempted to discourage him.
“I tried to talk him out of it,” she said. “Because I said,
‘It’s a night and day job,’ but he might have been a minister
and I didn’t think about that being even more of a night and day
job.”
She said when Dan met his wife, Janice, they both pursued
teaching as a vocation. They attended the same school as Ressie
and went to the Oregon College of Education in Monmouth. |
