Recollections, a publication of the
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Foundation, Inc.,
1725 State Street, La Crosse, Wisconsin 54601,
is made possible, in part, by contributions from the
following donors:
James E. Burgess
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Roy Campbell
Mr. and Mrs. G. William Cremer
Harry J. Dahl
Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Gelatt
The Philip M. Gelatt Foundation, Inc.
Sue Anne Gelatt
Sandy Gordon
Dr. A. Erik Gundersen
Dr. and Mrs. Adolf L. Gundersen
Dr. Jerome and Mrs. Charlene Gundersen
Leif Gundersen
Dr. and Mrs. Sigurd B. Gundersen, Jr.
Peter G. Hurtgen
Mr. and Mrs. Paul A. Johnson
Warren Loveland, Jr.
Mr. and Mrs. Brian E. Lynch
Mr. and Mrs. David R. McDonald
Steven P. Mewaldt
Patricia Robinson
Schilling Paper Co.
Signe G. Schroeder
Mr. and Mrs. James N. Sherwood
Mr. and Mrs. Tom Sleik
The Foundation also is grateful for the support of the
College of Education of the
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse; the Campus School
papers, pictures and other
memorabilia of the late Alice Frazee Ginn which are now
located in the Special
Collections of Murphy Library; and the efforts of Allen T.
Trapp,
Barbara J. Katrana, Dennis O'Brien, Sara Olson and Diane
Workman.
PHOTO CREDITS
Unless noted otherwise, photographs are from the
collection of Murphy Library,
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
ON THE COVER
Making beautiful music - for years, students of music
teacher Olive B. Place and third and
fourth grades teacher Agnes Breene strummed ukeleles and
banjos, tooted penny whistles, and
played psalteries, xylophones and violin. The students
performing here during the 1935-36
school year are: Front row, left to right: Mary Jane
Young, Patricia Schillings (Davidson), Albert
L. Miller, Jr., Signe Gundersen (Schroeder), Robert P.
Gray, Jane Valier, Karna Cichowski, Sally
Schwanzle (Cremer), Patricia Johnson (Robinson), Anne
Gundersen, Ruth Ann Thomas
(Dwyer), Patricia Yerly (Davy); middle row: Marshall Goff,
Jr. (with violin), Katherine
Schwalbe (Kelsey), Jack E. Horner, James Michael Laux,
Richard McKenzie, Stewart (or Stuart)
Smith, unidentified, Helga Isakson, Ellen Lyga (Funk),
Colleen Kerr, Mary Oyen, Marilyn
Minard (Matteson), Sally Wilson, Janet Nelson, Marie
Wenzel; back row: Nile Peters, Jean
Swartz (Rennebohm), Mary Marshall, Bernard R. (Ben)
Keeler, John Jones, Merrick S. (Ricky)
Wing, Dick Pieper, Thomas S. Steele, David Pieper,
Elizabeth (Betty) Bayer, Frances
Chamberlain (or Chamberlin); teachers in back row: Miss
Place, Miss Breene and assistant
teacher Helen Stolte. Identification by Signe Gundersen
Schroeder and Merrick S. Wing, then in
third and fourth grade, respectively.
Recollections derives from the memories of students and
teachers of the Campus
School at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. The idea
of this colorful volume
featuring those memories emerged from an initial proposal
to hold a reunion of those
whose remembrances, spanning several decades, make up the
story of that school
and its predecessors.
Planning both the reunion and the publication forced
constraints of time. But the
gathering day came to be within a few months of the
concept. And Recollections,
brought together as expeditiously as possible, reflects
records and photos readily
available and interviews primarily with persons near at
hand.
Working within these constraints, Susan Hessel contributed
her journalistic
talents and Margaret Larson her editing skills to bring to
each reader warm memories
of the school that used to be just twenty years ago.
Several other persons deserve thanks for their generous
support that has made
possible the publication of this timely volume.
Our thanks to each person who has shared remembered
moments with all of us.
With those thanks go our hopes that every event reported
and each person recorded
will provoke still other recollections for the reader.
George Gilkey
Marian Ramlow
Stanley Rolnick
Bob Voight
PREFACE
As I conducted interviews for Recollections, the nostalgia
was ever flowing, not only
in the stories told to me by the former students, teachers
and parents of the La Crosse
Campus School, but in my own mind. Somehow, the past
always seems so much
more positive than it likely was. Evil didn't seem to lurk
in every corner when I was a
child in the 1950s and 1960s, or at least I was fortunate
enough to be unaware of it.
Having felt safe in my idyllic, suburban St. Louis
neighborhood, I related to the safe
and idyllic life described to me in the interviews. The
times for Campus School
students (but perhaps not the community as a whole) may
have been more innocent,
at least in the remembering.
But memories are funny things, spotty at best. Our
memories are like photographs
of certain events in our lives, usually dramatic, funny or
sad, while day-to-day events
are often forgotten. We freeze frame the times we got into
trouble or had trouble in
school. We remember the eccentric teachers, not their more
bland but hard-working
counterparts.
Still, I'm impressed with what those I've interviewed
remembered. If someone had
asked me the same questions, I would not have done as well
as some graduates from
50 years ago or longer.
I am reminded of some truths about childhood and
education. There are teachers
who inspire children and those who do not. There are days
when children absolutely
love learning and days when they would just as soon stay
home and watch TV or
listen to the radio. The same is true about those who
teach them or send them to
school to learn.
The stories in this book are told and written with the
recognition that we're all a
composite of our experiences - good, bad and in between.
The Campus School was
not perfect, but the pride and love that teachers,
students, parents and staff had for it
are obvious 20, 30, 40, 50 and even more years later. I
did not meet a single person
who didn't like it, although I met some who admit to not
taking full advantage of
what it had to offer. Even in their mischief, they seemed
creative, perhaps a function
of the freedoms that flowed through the school.
One last thought... In the course of researching this
book, I came across a note in
a history of childhood by Barbara Kaye Greenleaf in which
she described the
professional standing of teachers through the ages. In
ancient Greece or Rome,
teachers had little respect and less money. Often teachers
were slaves or reputable
men who had turned to teaching after suffering some bad
luck. "Indeed, it was said of
someone who was missing that 'He's either dead or else
he's teaching somewhere.'"
Thanks to all of you hard working teachers - the missing
and the found - who
have helped so many children (including myself) to grow
and learn. I hope you and
anyone else who has been a student at the Campus School
(or anywhere else) enjoys
this book.
One of the reasons parents - and children - enjoyed the
Campus School was that children were
active learners. Here, they became bakers, hats and all,
in the Second Grade Bakery. This photo,
circa 1950, was taken in the classroom of Rhea Pederson.
They came armed with lawn chairs, sleeping bags, coolers,
hot coffee, rolls,
radios, and anything that could pass the time. La Crosse
parents were there
for the duration, parking themselves overnight to register
their children for
the school on the university campus.
"When I started I couldn't believe what was happening,"
said Julia Steinke
Saterbak, a third grade teacher at Campus School beginning
in 1960. "The
year before I came I was told some of them waited in line
two nights and
took turns, husband and wife."
From the day the "Training School" opened in 1909 with the
La Crosse
Normal until the "Campus School" closed in 1973, the
school was much
sought after in La Crosse by parents who believed it the
best place to educate
1
RECOLLECTIONS
their children. There were times, particularly in the
1920s and 1930s, when it
was not as difficult to enroll children. But during the
1940s, 1950s and 1960s,
admission to the school was tough, often involving
fruitless waits by parents.
Because children of faculty members were given first
priority, followed by
those who had siblings in the school, community residents
had to have
determination and perserverance for very few openings.
Campus School graduate Sally Schwanzle Cremer was among
those waiting
in line in 1954 to enroll her oldest daughter, Tina. After
putting their names
on a waiting list, she and another mother purchased one
ticket to a university
play. Cremer saw the first act, while her friend took in
the second. At
midnight, the changing of the guard occurred with husbands
taking over the
wait for them.
Cremer came by her commitment to getting her daughters
into Campus
School honestly. Her mother felt it was extremely
important to attend the
Training School because it offered swimming lessons. With
no municipal pool
then in La Crosse, swimming lessons in a pool were
unusual, as were the
many opportunities for other physical education and the
arts.
When Signe and Harry Schroeder were ready to enroll their
children, they
lived close enough to keep an eye on the developing line
in front of the school.
They were lucky enough to be able to join the line in the
wee hours of the
morning rather than stay the entire night.
Because classes were small, it was difficult to get into
the school. Until
1961, the Trainiig School had combined grade classroom
limits of 36 children
- only 18 from each of two grades in a room. Kindergarten
admitted 20, two
of whom had to be "booted out in first grade." Sally
Cremer was one of the
boot-ees. Her mother was "just thrilled silly" when her
daughter was
readmitted to the Training School when an opening occurred
for second
grade. "I think it meant more to her than to me," Cremer
said.
Long before English as a Second Language programs were
developed, Rolv
K. Slungaard knew his young son, Arne, would need special
help when he
began school because he spoke only Norwegian. But the
pediatrician, who was
taking postgraduate studies at Mayo Clinic, knew he could
not be in
La Crosse in May 1956 to enroll his son for the following
fall. A fellow
physician, Kaare Goetz, agreed to be his proxy in line.
The decision to enroll
Arne at Campus School paid off because the teachers made
him feel he had
special contributions to make about his life in Norway.
Robert Ramlow remembered fathers only during the overnight
wait. "It
was man's work," he said with a smile. "We sat around and
talked. Some shot
baskets in the gym. Some of us tried to sleep on gym mats.
Mostly, it was just
Despite the lines to enroll children at some times in the
the school's history, there were years
when it was easier to get in. During the 1920s and 1930s,
boys often left the school in junior
high for sports programs in public schools. The class of
1934 had nine students, all girls. From
left, they are: Janet Ruggles, Marian Schlabach, Jane
Zeratsky, Vernetta Skundberg, Lois
Nissalke, Alice Isakson, Grace Hancock, Betty Jane Wenzel
and Harriet Fullerton.
talking. I remember it being fun, not a totally lousy
chore. People have waited
in line for lesser causes."
Not all parents, however, were willing to spend the night
in line. The year
Kenneth Fish served as acting principal after the death of
Emery Learner in
1952, he told one newcomer to La Crosse that registration
was taken on a first
come, first served basis. Fish acknowledged some parents
waited overnight.
"Line up to get into school-" the father asked
incredulously. "I can see that for
a baseball game, but not for school."
Bernard Young, school director from 1953 to 1962, never
liked the
registration system he inherited. Although it made him
feel good that people
were that interested in having their children come to the
school, he disliked
the procedure. The waits, often for naught, were
particularly frustrating.
Openings simply were not available, even for some at the
head of the line. It
was possible there would be no openings for several of the
grades because
most students began in kindergarten and continued through
ninth grade.
Young recalled one doctor new to the community who
practically begged him
to take his children before others. But the director would
not give his
youngsters priority. "I told him we have lots of good
schools in the
3
RECOLLECTIONS
community," said Young, who went so far as to drive the
man around the
community to show him the schools before he bought a home.
There were occasional exceptions to the overnight
procedure. One year
Pauline Abel was to teach a fourth grade class in which
only three of the
pre-registered students were girls. When one of the girls
moved away and
another died in a fire, the remaining girl's mother
refused to send her daughter
unless other girls were added. School officials agreed and
advertised the
openings. "In a situation like this, we felt a balance of
the sexes would
encourage better learning situations," Abel said.
There were years when it was easier to get into the
school. The class of
1934 had only nine students - all girls. The boys had
moved on after eighth
grade to participate in sports at Central High School.
Some students traveled a distance to come to the training
school, including
the Hundredmark kids, John and Margaret, who lived in the
2900 block of
South Losey Boulevard. A bit closer in were the Schlabach
sisters, Marian,
Anne, Peggy and Ellen, who lived "way out in the country"
at 26th and Cass
streets.
Marian Schlabach Ramlow could have walked over the sand
dunes to the
one-room school house on Losey Boulevard operated by the
town of Shelby,
HELEN
HANSEN
BRIESKE
PHOTO
Ed Hansen and his little sister, Helen, rode their bikes
to school
from their home on Pettibone Island.
4
CHAPTER 1
but her parents thought her education
would be better at the Normal than in
a single room with eight grades. Her
mother loaded her sisters and other
neighborhood children-the Feltons,
Brenners, Muensters and Grays-into
the family's Model T and drove them
to the Training School.
Helen Hansen Crieske and her older
brother, Ed, made the treck to the 16th and
State from their home on Pettiborne
Island by bicycle in good weather and
on foot in the winter. "Oh that wind
coming over the bridge," she recalled.
She attended the school, from
kindergarten through third grade from
1947 to 1950, because of the value her
mother placed on education. Martha
Ellefson HAnsen Minor, who earned
her normal diploma and her
bachelor's degree at La Crosse, did her
practice teaching at the Training
School. She felt the school was "more
modern thatn other schools, but not
much different." The Training School
had "more variety of methonds of
teaching" and "methods of
penetrating children's minds."
What was it about this school that would drive parents to
camp out to
enroll their children? Parents preferred the quality of
the teaching and the
educational opportunities, which included teachers eager
to try new
techniques based on the latest educational research.
"Campus School had to
be organized as a superior school for pupils," said Young.
"As I look back,
however, many of the parents may have forgotten that the
purpose of the
Campus School was to prepare teachers, and the students
were in a sense the
guinea pigs, although we did not act that way." To train
future teachers
successfully, the faculty at Campus School had to be good
teachers
themselves, added Richard Rasmussen the last principal of
the school. "We
couldn't be poor classroom teachers and have a positive
impact on people
seeking careers in education."
5
RECOLLECTIONS
A snowy day on campus is a fun day for Training School
students. 1917.
Campus School did have the reputation for serving La
Crosse's elite,
although its costs were modest - 15 to 25 cents a week in
the early years and
$35 a year when it closed in 1973. While many were the
children of doctors,
lawyers and affluent business people, there also were less
well-off children in
attendance, particularly from Goosetown, the neighborhood
adjacent to the
campus. Helen Brieske, whose family was anything but
wealthy, had no idea
the school was thought to be for rich kids until her
husband, Steve, a former
Washington School student, told her it was a school for
"rich brats."
Teachers fought the elitist reputation of the school.
"There was a
perception of some parents and some children that this was
like a private
finishing school," Abel said. "As teachers we downgraded
that. We felt ours
was a public school." Campus School teachers were paid by
the state, instead
of locally. "There was a misconception in the community
that all the kids at
Campus School were from well-to-do families," Young said.
"That wasn't
true, although a fairly high percentage were. There was a
mixture."
Not every child was eager to attend the Campus School.
Billy Cremer
hated leaving his friends at Washington, where he had
attended through third
grade. "Besides, the Training School kids were afraid of
us," he said. "We were
the tough kids from Goosetown. They were the nice kids."
Among the variety of students were the children of Greek
immigrant Gus
6
chapter 1
Pappas, who ran the Elite Candy Store on Main Street. The
Pappas family was
"absolutely not" elite, said Peter Pappas. Before
purchasing their home at 1611
Main Street, the family was discouraged from buying one a
few blocks away
because neighbors objected to uGreeks moving into the
neighborhood. Gus
Pappas had the equivalent of a sixth grade education. "But
my parents
drummed into us very early, even when we were down in
grades, that you
had to get a good education to make something of
yourself," his son said.
The partnership of teachers and parents, campus and area
residents did its
best to provide a good education. With strong families and
dedicated teachers
behind them, Campus School children went on to create
remarkable records
of accomplishments in high school, college and life.
Equally important,
Campus School influenced the careers of hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of
Wisconsin's fine public school teachers.
Main Hall, 1927, home of the Training School until 1940.
For much of the 19th century, and into the 20th, it was
not compulsory for
children to be in school - in La Crosse or anywhere else.
Nationally, most
19th century children received little or no education.
Some parents considered
education to be frivolous or even dangerous because it
could give children
"ideas." Turn of the century La Crosse, then a city of
28,895, had less than
50 percent of its youngsters attending the city's nine
elementary schools and
one small high school. In fact, with the decline of the
lumbering industry
came a parallel decline in attendance.
When Wisconsin first required attendance of youngsters
between age 7 and
14, in 1903, the numbers in school did increase. By 1910,
a year after the
opening of the Training School, 65.3 percent of school age
children were in
school. In 1920, attendance had reached 95.1 percent.
After age 14, the
numbers declined significantly, particularly for those 18
or older.
And what were children learning in turn of the century La
Crosse? The
basics - reading, writing and arithmetic - anything the
1900 annual budget
of $85,000 could buy. Undoubtedly, there were taxpayers
who thought costs
were too high, what with the city spending $2.90 a year on
each child.
Public education, such as it was, existed with practically
non-existent
budgets. As writer Barbara Kaye Greenleaf described it,
"Americans kept a
tight grip on the purse strings." Most Americans didn't
want to spend much
money educating someone else's kids.
In the days when Wisconsin was a territory, teachers were
said to be
"young New England boys hedge-hopping across the frontier
settlement in
search of fame and fortune, stopping here and there to
teach a term before
moving on." A few graduated from schools in the East or
from such
Wisconsin institutions as the Albion Academy and Normal
Institute or the
Platteville Academy. They were short on learning but long
on flexibility,
according to the History of the Wisconsin State
Universities. One candidate for a
teaching position was asked if he taught that the world
was flat or round. His
9
RECOLLECTIONS
answer, good enough to get him the job, was, "I can teach
her either way,
which ever way you want her."
The need for a system for training teachers prompted the
development of
the normal school, derived from the French term ecole
normale, which dates
back to the reorganization of schools as secular
institutions after the French
Revolution. In thel830s, it was applied to schools that
trained teachers. In the
United States, Horace Mann established the first state-run
training school for
teachers in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1836, a year after
Wisconsin became
a territory. His system was based on the work of German
psychologist Johann
Herbart, who developed the idea that the mind had five
levels. Ideas were
thought to rise like a bubble in a champagne bottle.
Teachers elevated that
bubble of knowledge using a prescribed "method" involving
introduction,
explanation, discussion, practice and application.
The Mann approach to teacher education mandated use of a
laboratory
school where students could see lessons performed by the
so-called
demonstration teacher. When proficient enough, the
practice teacher would
conduct actual lessons, which were critiqued by a critic
teacher.
In 1849, there were 11 normal schools in the United
States. By the end of
the century, 113 additional normal schools had been
established. Among them
were seven in Wisconsin.
With statehood in 1848, the Wisconsin Constitution created
a Normal
School Department offering one- and two-year courses for
those who wanted
to become certified teachers. Later, the state's free,
compulsory, tax-supported
school system would be called its "most glorious
achievement."
CAMPAINGN FOR A NORMAL SCHOOL
The financial benefits of a normal school were obvious to
most
communities. After the Normal System Board of Regents
decided in 1865 that
there would be a school in each of the state's six
congressional districts, cities
bid for the institutions. Among the bids in 1865 were:
* $10,000 and the building of the Baraboo Collegiate
Institute in Baraboo;
* $31,000 and a building in Milwaukee;
* $6,000 and the buildings of the Platteville Academy in
Platteville;
* $11,500 and a site in Trempealeau.
La Crosse made no offer and, therefore, was not among the
initial six sites.
Twenty eight years later, however, when the state
announced it would
support two more normal schools, La Crosse put in a bid.
City and county
officials worked closely together this time, each unit
appropriating $30,000 for
10
CHAPTER 2
the cause. Despite cooperation and the leadership of La
Crosse's flamboyant
mayor, Franklin Powell, La Crosse lost out to Stevens
Point and Superior,
which opened their normal schools in 1894 and 1896.
The frustrated committee working on the school for
La Crosse blamed politics for its failure to get the
school
and claimed it would have been successful had it not
been for the "treachery of pledged friends." Leaders
were shattered but vowed to continue the fight. The
new leader in the battle was attorney Thomas
Morris who had "both political ambitions and a
desire for a normal school in his city." It was in
1903 that new hope rose for a normal school in
La Crosse. The state of Wisconsin received a
$500,000 refund from the United States
government for Civil War expenditures followed
by another $700,000 in 1907. The refunds made it
easier to get appropriations for a new school.
As a member of the Normal School Board of
Regents in 1904, Morris worked hard for the
establishment of an additional school. By April 1905,
when Morris had moved on to the State Senate and its
education committee, he introduced a bill to locate the
school in La Crosse and to appropriate $10,000 for it.
Backed by
other legislators and La Crosse businessmen, Morris
received
credit for gaining the eighth normal school in the state.
He was
lauded in the press "as the only representative who really
worked for La Crosse."
LA CROSSE NORMAL SCHOOL
The new normal school was built in the southeastern part
of the city
encompassing nearly two blocks of an area known as the
Metzger and Funk
Addition. The area had been a fairgrounds, but, at the
time of construction,
was filled with sandburs. There were few houses in the
area, and even fewer
trees or hedges. Even nine years later, the sandburs were
much in evidence.
"We'd be covered with sandburs by the time we got to
school," said Margaret
Merman Holley.
Work began in 1908 on Main Hall. This $260,000, red brick
edifice was
Thomas Morris
State Senator and Regent for
State Normal System who is
credited with getting a normal
school approved for La Crosse.
three stories high and 200-feet square. It won praise as a
"model of modern
construction" and "a magnificent structure." The
Legislature allowed $15,000
for "marble-ithic" stairways and corridors in place of
cement.
When it opened in 1909, Main Hall was the sole building
for the La Crosse
Normal School. That one building housed classrooms, two
gymnasia, faculty
and administrative offices, kitchen, lunchroom, heating
plant, library and the
Training School. The large kindergarten room, in the
northwest corner of the
first floor, had a fireplace which created an idyllic
place for reading stories to
children gathered round. Holley, who transferred to the
school midway into
her kindergarten year contrasted the Training School room
with the one at
the city's Washburn School. "I got slivers in my rear
during story time" from
sitting on the old bare wood floor.
Also in the Training School's kindergarten room was a
magnificent bay
window with cushioned, built-in window seats where
children curled up with
picture books. This room, long since remodeled for the
university chancellor's
office, also had a table sandbox, a play house, large
building blocks and other
toys. Among early kindergarten activities was making model
houses. While
most kids made theirs out of simple grocery boxes, one son
of a contractor
covered his with stucco in an elaborate design. His work
stood out from the
"pretty primitive construction" of his classmates.
Other classrooms housed two grades each. The center of the
building had
air shafts, which provided light and ventilation as well
as places to perform
scientific experiments.
In announcing the Training School, La Crosse Normal
President Fassett A.
Cotton said it would be the department where theory and
practice "united
most happily." Its purposes, according to the first
Bulletin of the State Normal
School, were:
1. To educate children. Nothing will be tolerated in the
model school that
interferes with this, the supreme purpose of the school.
2. To serve as an example of a model school.
3. To give an opportunity to demonstrate and to observe
model teaching.
4. To furnish a means for studying, testing, and applying
educational
theories.
5. To afford student teachers who have given evidence of a
knowledge of
subject matter and of educational theory an opportunity to
gain a
limited experience in teaching under careful supervision.
Originally planned for 160 children, the number to be
admitted was
reduced to 140 before the school opened when the decision
was made to
admit 20 children to kindergarten instead of 40. "The
children will be
representative, no better and no worse," said Cotton, who
said the school
would "appeal strongly to parents."
The rooms in the normal school building set apart for the
Training School are large and splendidly equipped rooms,
with
seats and desks not only new but adjustable to the size
and needs
of the individual child. They are light and airy, with a
system of
heating and ventilating as nearly perfect as one ever
finds. They
are, of course, absolutely clean, sanitary and inviting.
A second announcement spoke of the popularity of schools
of this type in
other communities and foreshadowed the overnight lines of
later years.
When the parents having children within the reach of such
a school
once learn the advantages offered by it, there are always
more
In that first interview Cotton said students would be
admitted in order of
their applications. Interested parents could call by
telephone - the number
was 49 - or stop by the office. By opening day, Sept. 9,
1909, every grade
except fifth was filled and had a waiting list of pupils
wishing to attend.
Opening day enrollment at the Normal was counted as more
than 350,
including 120 at the Training School. The number far
exceeded expectations
of the faculty.
The building was not finished by the time school opened.
The first students
walked on boards up an incline to get inside and workers
were allowed to
pound down floor tiles only between classes. Occasionally
they would forget
to stop when the next class period began. President
Cotton, concerned about
workmen chatting with "the girls," patrolled the halls
during breaks to
discourage fraternization between the
workers and the coeds.
In his address at the Normal's
inauguration ceremony, Cotton spoke
poetically of 'the vital difference
between a mere instructor and a real
teacher. It is the same difference that
exists between a cyclopedia and a man,
between a dead machine and a real
flesh and blood man or woman
throbbing and pulsating with life." He
called the model school "the final test
of a school for teachers," and said
"there must be harmony and unity of
purpose if the school is to succeed."
Early teacher salaries were modest.
Principal W.H. Sanders earned $2,000,
while kindergarten teacher Clara
Hitchcock and librarian Florence Wing
each earned $1,000. Critic teachers,
those who combined teaching young
children with supervising student
teachers, earned a $900 a year salary. In
Fassett A. Cotton
First president, La Crosse Normal School
15
RECOLLECTIONS
an interview prior to the opening of the school, Cotton
described
the teachers as well trained. "The critic teachers in
charge of
the Model School are women of extraordinary
qualifications.
... Fortunate, indeed, are children when they may have as
teachers from their first grade on up, men and women of
sympathy and sense, to which have been added enough
scholarship and professional training to equip them for
college positions.'
In its first annual report, the normal school noted that
nine diplomas and three teaching certificates were
awarded to students who had come from other colleges. In
the 1911 report, 76 diplomas, 10 certificates and 15 rural
school certificates had been bestowed. The Regents'
proceedings also noted that prospective education students
would be rejected if they had "active goiter, valvular
heart
trouble, tuberculosis, excessive limping gait, extreme
spinal
deformity, epilepsy, paralysis or convulsions." Future
teachers were
expected to be hearty types or at least normal to attend
the normal.
The Training School in La Crosse, like the others that
opened across
i the state between 1866 and 1916, was meant to provide
teachers-in-training opportunities to observe teaching and
practice developing skills in front of real live children.
In the
first year of the La Crosse Normal, three departments were
organized. A two-year course was designed for high school
graduates, while a five-year course was for students who
did not possess a high school diploma. The elementary
rural course was for students who had completed eighth
grade.
By 1927, the program offered primary, intermediate and
grammar grade courses, which required two years of
education; junior high school and state graded programs,
each requiring three years of study; the rural school
course
for either one or two years; and the high school course
which entailed three or four years of classes. In 1928
La Crosse was accepted as a standard teachers' college -
able
to provide four-year degrees - but it was not until 1930
that it
was accredited by the North Central Association of
Colleges and
Secondary Schools.
So proud was La Crosse to have a fully-accredited college
that faculty
member Orris 0. White suggested in 1934 the city adopt the
slogan:
"La Crosse the Beautiful - a College City." He believed
that "in the
W.H. Sanders,
first principal
Clara Hitchcock,
first kindergarten
teacher
16
CHAPTER 2
background of America's rapid development to world power
of
varied progress and unique distinction, looms the college
or
university town and city."
The teachers in training were expected to be models for
their young charges. According to Cotton:
The best trained grade teacher will be the woman who can
do most for the life of the community. She must teach her
subjects well, but these are but means in the larger
process
of making men and women. She must be a factor in the
making of citizens. This she can be by understanding the
relations of life in the community. But citizenship is
only an
element in the larger manhood and womanhood which it is
hers to bring to the community.
On another occasion, the future teacher was said to have
to
have "inherent qualities that fit him for this occupation
qualities of scholarship, character and inclination that
the college
cannot impart but can develop." Young people lacking in
those
inherent teacher qualities were encouraged to "seek other
fields."
8 a.m. may have been too early for a composition
class for the boy in the center of the first row. The
rest of his fifth and sixth grade classmates appear
more interested. 1917 or 1918.
FRONT ROW, from left are: unidentified, Walter
Jande, Vernon Noble, unidentified, Donald Rau,
Joe Holley, Fred Goddard and five other
unidentified boys.
SECOND ROW: Dorothy Kroner, Catherine Wolfe,
Mary Wing, Marjorie Oehler(?), Marian
Florence Wing, La Crosse Normal
School's first librarian, also served
the Training School children.
Thuringer, Margaret Anderberg, unidentified,
Ruth Forrest, Beverly Carrington and an
unidentified girl.
THIRD ROW: Ellsworth Moore, John Clark, Robert
Lees, Jennie Lykens, Gertrude Salzer, Helen
Baker, Elizabeth Felber, Dorothy Killian(?),
Alberta Hirsheimer, two unidentified girls and
Miss Williams.
BACK ROW: Phyllis Bentley, Helen Buge, Ruth __
Helen Colman, and an unidentified girl.
Identification made in 1978 by Ruth Ulm Wager.
SEATED, from left are: unidentified, Miriam
Fairchild, Mary Higbee, Eva Marie Beguhn,
Francis Wise, Betty Millard, two unidentified
children, Betty Gay Wise, unidentified, Mary
Fraser and unidentified.
STANDING: Joe Bartl, Vincent Voigt, Tom (Junior)
Thompson, Jack Millard, Curtis Hart, Lewis
Melby, Bill Newburg, Ruth Miller, student
teacher, Bill Irvine, Dick Shannon, unidentified,
Bill Case and Bob Tausche.
THE PURPOSE OF A LABORATORY SCHOOL
As the laboratory for the normal school, college students
used the Training
School for observation, participation and student
teaching.
Observation
Individual students in education sat in classrooms to
observe lessons. Later,
they talked with their methods instructor or the classroom
teacher about
what they saw. An arrangement often was made in advance
with a Training
School teacher to illustrate a specific method, such as
the difference between
inductive and deductive teaching. But students also were
encouraged to drop
by to observe whenever they had time.
18
CHAPTER 2
Participation
In their junior year, students generally became active and
helped children
with desk work or led pupils in enrichment projects or
special drills. All this
occurred slowly and under the supervision of teachers.
Student teaching
Students spent six or ten weeks in a classroom assigned to
a critic teacher.
With responsibilities for both pupils and college
students, critic teachers did
not have an easy life. On at least one occasion, they not
only managed their
own pupils, but also pitched in for regular normal school
teachers due to the
"scarlet fever scare" among the normal students in 1917.
STUDENT TEACHERS
The life of a practice or student teacher wasn't simple,
either. In early issues
of the student newspaper, articles by student teachers
described their
experiences. A continuing early column, "The Real Diary of
a Real Girl,"
related the life of practice teachers in 1911:
What a relief it is to have a wee bit of fun after such
tasks as
beguiling innocent children into the belief that you know
absolutely everything, that you are not the least bit
frightened in
spite of the piercing eyes of Mr. Sanders and vast
quantities of
student teachers and that you consider teaching the
greatest
pleasure of an antiquated life!
The column continued a few months later with:
Miss Deneen is all worn out. All the little primary
children are
much beladen with hatchets, cherries, flags and Washington
hats,
for each student teacher tried to outdo the others with
her device.
... She said she's glad Washington was born only once a
year.
The other side was described in uThe Woes of the Critic
Teachers," a
column that referred to student teachers as
diamonds in the rough! And the critics are the emery
wheels on
which the polishing process is to be performed. What a
wearing
process it is for them! It is more than compensated,
however, by
the hundred finished products - each one dignified, yet
cheerful;
firm, yet sympathetic; animated, but not boisterous.
One writer later described a first student teaching
experience in an article
called "Anticipation and Realization."
From 6:30 A.M. until 3:10 P.M. Anita lived as in a
nightmare. At
the sound of a signal or bell, every nerve in her body
tingled with
anticipation of what was coming, and she can scarcely
remember
now, how the day did pass, until at 3:10 she stood before
the
room looking like any other experienced pedagogue but way
down in her heart something thumped and her throat seemed
strangely choked up. ....Only once did Anita feel any less
dignified, and that was when a boy on the front seat
looked at
her with a broad grin and winked - think of it, actually
winked
at the new teacher!
20
CHAPTER 2
Student teacher Martha Minor, who earned her bachelor's
degree in 1929
but did her practice teaching years earlier, remembered
sections or units to
teach the children, such as police work, food preparation
and gardening.
Student teachers also spent "little dibbles each week" in
public elementary
schools. One of these experiences involved teaching a
section on gardening at
the Elm Grove School, located at the south end of Losey
Boulevard, where
she planted carrots with her students, staying as long as
it took for the
carrots to grow to be two to three inches high. Minor said
Training School
teachers had a "better method of teaching," which
"produced a scholar as
well as a student well acquainted with books." As a
result, pupils had more
"ambition to better themselves."
From Student Teacher to Superviser
Christine Oakland Nelsestuen grew up in a community just
over the
Jackson County line from Ettrick. Because there were no
high schools in the
vicinity, she went to high school at Gale College in
Galesville, Wisconsin. "There was no busing so rural kids
would either have to stay with somebody in town or
board," she said. "I lived in the dorm at age 13."
After she graduated from high school, Nelsestuen came
to the teachers' college in La Crosse. She was no more
than 17 or 18 when she and Beverly Koops were assigned
to be student teachers in the room of Agnes T. Breene.
Miss Koops was to be called Miss Beverly by the children
because Miss Breene did not think she had a suitable
name. Miss Oakland, however, was acceptable. The two
women actually did little teaching during their student
teaching assignment, instead spending most of the time in
the back room correcting work books while Miss Breene
was teaching. "It was difficult to do a good job of
checking work books at the same time we were listening
to her style of teaching," Nelsestuen said. But then there
were days when Miss Breene would say "'Tomorrow you take
it." She
required no plans."
While there was less planning and supervision than
Nelsestuen would
have liked, she said Miss Breene "was very dedicated. She
was probably
trying to create a good impression of the school and her
modern ways."
Breene's modern ways meant she did not teach by a formula
but was
Christine Oakland
Nelsestuen
21
RECOLLECTIONS
independent and expressive in the way she responded to
situations. For
instance, Nelsestuen remembered reading to the class about
Admiral Richard
Byrd who then was exploring Antarctica. The student
teachers also were
assigned to plan an UOh So Sticky Party" of honey and
crackers, an
assignment generated by some unit of study.
The most eventful day of her student teaching came when
Miss Breene left
them in charge while she attended a teachers convention.
'Whew!"
Nelsestuen said with a remembering laugh. Manual training
teacher Merton
Lyon offered to step in if the children became too unruly,
but the student
teachers never dreamt his help would be necessary. Miss
Breene had told them
to "always be in command," but it was the children who
seemed to have the
command that day. When one of the student teachers could
not find principal
Emery Leamer or Jean Rolfe, director of elementary
education, she sought
Lyon's help to regain decorum in the classroom. There was
a certain amount
of discussion afterwards about that lack of control in the
classroom, but
Nelsestuen did go on to be a teacher.
She actually hoped to be teaching after two years of
college, but no jobs
were available in 1934. After her third year of teacher
preparation at La Crosse
State Teachers College, she found a teaching position for
which she was more
or less ready. "The theories were sound and the materials
we had made it
good," Nelsestuen said about her experience at the
Training School. "But the
theories didn't translate into what I found out in the
field at the time."
During the Great Depression, boards of education simply
could not afford the
kind of materials found in the Campus School. In her first
position, in
Independence, Wisconsin, teaching third, fourth and fifth
grades, materials
were in terribly short supply. "The big problem, besides
my immaturity, was
there were few materials. I had to stretch one reading
book for the whole
year. There were no work books, no prepared materials.
They didn't even
have construction paper for projects. It was a tough job."
Nelsestuen took time out to have a family but later
returned to the State
University at La Crosse to earn her bachelor's degree,
which she completed in
1960. Under the direction of Martha Sorenson and Dorothy
Heider, her
contact with Campus School included working with a group
of children who
had been "turned off to reading," an experience she
described as one in which
she learned and grew. Before retiring in 1981, Nelsestuen
went on to teach at
Jefferson and Hamilton schools in La Crosse, earn a
master's degree and
supervise student teachers. "I was not Miss Breene," she
said. "I did more
planning, more supervision."
Of course, the Training School children became old hands
at this business
of student teachers. Some children were oblivious to the
groups of students
observing them in class, while others were quite
interested in their progress.
Adolf Gundersen recalled classmates in the 1930s picking
up on student
teachers who were "pretty green. Sometimes we gave them a
hard time about
controlling the room." All children in those circumstances
have an innate
radar that alerts them to just the moment when the
shenanigans must stop
and they had to pay attention, he said. "If our teacher
showed up, things
would rapidly be back in order."
Children were quite critical of student teachers who
arrived with a general
aura of terror about them. Robert Seaquist, who attended
from 1952 to 1962,
and his classmates could be tough on
student teachers who did not meet their
standards. One poor victim was obviously
unprepared when she spote to his 9th grade
class about sex. She mumbled something
about girls breaking their hymen by
horseback riding and then walked out, only
to return a couple days later with an almost
identical presentation. "It must have been
pretty frightening to be in a room with 25
14- year-olds staring at you with no reaction
whatsoever," he said. "If we smelled the fear
we let them die. I am sure we led a few
people out of teaching. When you are
exposed to so many people with different
presentations, it doesn't take long to find
out which ones are good and which ones
aren't."
Seaquist cannot claim credit for leading
one potential teacher out of the profession,
for Margaret Holley spent her year at the
Teacher's College many years before his
birth. She remembered how much she In the 1960s,
university students taught
enjoyed deviling student teachers "for the short lessons
at the Campus School. These
microteaching lessons were videotaped so
sport of it" when she attended Training the student
teacher could be critiqued later.
School. But in that "frightening year"
23
RECOLLECTIONS
when she planned to be a teacher, she found herself unable
to stand before the
children. "I thought I'd be an elementary school teacher,
but all I had to do
was have all those youngsters look up at me for
instruction and I chickened
out."
In the late 1960s, student teachers were videotaped while
teaching short
lessons to small groups of students so their
"microteaching" could be critiqued
later. On more than one occasion, as these frightened
young adults attempted
to present their lessons, pupils stepped on or twisted the
cord leading to the
microphones they wore around their necks - in effect
tightening the noose.
Stalwart student teachers tried to keep going as best they
could as if nothing
unusual was happening.
Some critic teachers also could be hard on practice
teachers. "There was
very little place for critic teachers to have long private
discussions with
student teachers," Marian Ramlow recalled. "Quite often
they'd have their
discussions in the back room, but if we went to the back
room to get our
coats, we could hear the discussion about how the lesson
could be improved."
IN A FISH BOWL
In the 1930s, Training School students were accustomed to
having college
students around constantly. Jane Horner Stuckert found
they provided help
when needed and boosted her confidence. Physical education
practice teachers
often called on the children to demonstrate modern dance
and the Highland
Fling to other college students. "We got pretty good at
performing," Signe
Gundersen Schroeder remembered. Girls enjoyed the student
teachers, who
seemed to be pretty and self-confident, young women to
emulate. In fact,
they talked one student gym teacher, Maudie Pfeiffer, a
stylish young woman,
into running a charm school which they envisioned as an
after-school course
in makeup, clothing, hair styles and fashion. Miss
Pfeiffer, perhaps with the
advice of a critic teacher, cleverly turned the charm
school into lessons on
hygiene, much to the dismay of the adoring girls.
For the most part, Pauline Abel said, children learned to
be especially well
behaved when visitors were in the room - "even the
mischief makers ....
They wanted to protect the good name of the Campus School.
They wanted
people to know them as nice and cooperative, which they
were, of course. We
had very very few who were uncooperative." The intention,
of course, was for
children to go about their business unaware of the
observers who traipsed
through their classroom on practically a daily basis. Liza
Ramlow remembered
Older students dressed for the cold in the 1930s are:
FRONT ROW, from left: Walter Small, Ellen Schlabach, Hyla
Weeks, Tom Cremer,
Robert Neimeyer.
SECOND ROW: Frederick Michel, Elaine Nissalke, Jane Salzer,
Marilyn Chamberlain,
Margaret Marshall, Marjorie Hoopes and Dick Lucht.
THIRD ROW: Helen Homer, Theodora Neal, and Jean Muenster.
being in the school gymnasium when it was lined with
dozens of observers.
Children were acutely aware if observers had selected them
in particular to
watch. Occasionally, observers took children to lunch or
for ice cream.
Despite the obvious strangeness of being in a fish bowl,
kids could be normal
under these circumstances. "We all got used to it and went
on," she said.
Having college students around had its advantages for
Campus School
faculty. Abel recalled specific students who helped her
grow professionally
because they had special skills in poetry, music or some
aspect of science or
social studies. "I learned a lot from my first student
teacher. She was a great
storyteller," Abel said. "It was amazing to me that I had
a student teacher
because I considered myself so unprepared. I not only
learned how to teach
25
RECOLLECTIONS
kids, I also learned to work with somebody else who knew
just about as much
as I did."
Among those who returned to the Training School as a
student teacher was
Jane Horner Stuckert. First and second grade teacher Rhea
Pederson invited
her to do practice teaching with her. "I never had taught
on my own," said
Stuckert, who went on to teach second grade for many
years. "All in all, these
kids were really an experience. When I think back, it got
me organized. It
made me decide this is what I wanted to do with my life."
The Campus School environment encouraged continued
learning among its
faculty. In fact, that intellectual stimulation and
challenge were the reasons
Julia Steinke Saterbak wanted to teach in a Campus School.
The constant
observation by college students and other faculty forced
teachers to be better
prepared and knowledgeable about trends in education. "I
was a better teacher
because of it. I couldn't let down during the day," she
said. "When I taught in
Beloit, Wisconsin, our door was closed and we could relax
a little because no
one came in to check. Here the door was open. College
students were coming
in all the time. We were an observation center. That made
us a little crisper."
When this photo
of the faculty and
students of the
La Crosse Normal
School was taken
in 1923, the
Training School
children were
considered to be
very much a part
of the campus.
This picture is the
right third of a
panoramic shot
taken outside
Main Hall. '
While they were in Main Hall, the Training School pupils
had a strong sense of
belonging to the college. They shared a building and
teachers, and sometimes
could be excused from class for college lectures or
assemblies. They attended
college football games and participated in the Homecoming
parade and the
annual May Day celebration. College students, in turn,
attended Training
School activities. Training School kids often tagged along
after the college
students, who didn't always appreciate their pint-sized
shadows. "We
invaded all their territory," one former pupil said. "They
probably thought us
to be nuisances."
Robert Schilling, who transferred to the Training School
as a sixth grader
about a decade after it opened, felt he learned more in
Model School than in
any school he attended. "So many of the teachers were the
college teachers
and they would come down to our areas and be the head of
our subjects.
Perhaps what it did best, was to give us the incentive of
trying to learn - of
wanting to learn and it gave us the wherewithal to learn
more."
27
RECOLLECTIONS
With decorated bike,
David Gray, then age
8 or 9, is ready for
the 1938 or 1939
Homecoming parade.
26
Training School
students participated
in many campus
events, including
Homecoming
parades.
The student newspaper often reported on
Training School activities. Among events of
the early 1920s reported in the Randquet was
the fifth birthday party of young Sam
Fellows.
The kindergarten of the Training School, under the
direction
of Miss Foxwell, had a very delightful time last Wednesday
morning with the occasion of Sam Fellows' fifth birthday,
when Mrs. S. Fellows entertained.
The favors, which had been procured by the grandfather,
Mr. Wm. Doerflinger, from a foreign country, were most
unusual
and proved a delight to the children and to the visitors
as well....
The refreshments consisted of the huge round birthday
cake,
adorned with five candles on the top and pink candy disks
around
the edge, and red, yellow, and pink baskets filled with
sweets.
While the school had children who were less well off,
there was a sense
then that the Training School primarily had privileged
children enrolled in it.
"Washington School was a block west of us and those kids
referred to us as
the rich kids going to training school. There always was
that class distinction.
I don't think we felt it too much, but they probably did,"
Fellows said.
Margaret Merman Holley remembered a somewhat more strained
relationship with the Washington School children. "We were
always feuding
with them. They would call us the sissies. I forget what
we called them." So
great was the rivalry then that Training School pupils
kept their bicycles
locked in a shed at the north end of the building because
of fear the
Washington kids would do something to their bikes.
Thorolf Cundersen, who enrolled in the Model School in
fall 1915,
remembered a fight with a Washington School student. In
classic
28
CHAPTER 3
Dead-End-Kid style, the youngster from Washington
literally put a chip of
wood on his shoulder and dared young Thorolf to knock it
off. "I knocked it
off and, of course, got into a fight with him," he
recalled. "I don't know why
we were fighting. They called us 'sissies' I guess. We
weren't as tough as they
were."
Among the memories of Peter Pappas, a contemporary of Sam
Fellows, is
the big, open playground between Main and Wittich Hall. In
spring, there
would be intense marble games, in which youngsters
daringly would risk a
good flint shooter. Less valuable were shots with megs -
rough, glazed clay
balls.
In fall, there were spirited games of tackle. One boy
stood in the middle of
the playground trying to tackle the other kids. The last
one standing won the
game.
Pappas remembered one game of tackle that cost him more
than a little
glory. "I got hit so hard on my chin that eventually it
killed a tooth. A couple
years later it had to be capped and then removed."
Recesses for Holley included hitching a ride for a couple
of blocks on a train
Training School
students in
physical
education on
tennis courts at
17th and State.
1927.
29
RECOLLECTIONS
that ran behind the school. "The train would stop and let
us hang on. We'd go
a couple blocks and it would back up and let us off. The
engineer was so cute
about letting us hang on." Also during recess one day, she
broke her ankle
after being tripped by a classmate. It was not the pain
that was so devastating
to her, but the black bloomers the children saw she was
wearing. Her mother
had made her wear that color over her objections. "I
wanted white with lace."
For Holley's first few years of school, the neighborhood
surrounding the
normal school was bare except for one house that rented
rooms to students.
About the time she was in fifth grade, however, houses
were being built
between 16th and 17th streets. "We had more fun crawling
all over those
houses as they were being built. We were told not to do
it, but, of course, we
did."
SELF CONFIDENCE
Campus School students frequently gave talks to their own
classes. These
experiences built students' confidence, an attribute that
helped them when
they moved on to high school.
The stability in the school also contributed to students'
confidence, said
1962 graduate Steve Mewaldt. "Campus School students
probably had more
confidence in themselves and confidence in the friends
they made in school,"
he said.
Being under constant observation also helped them grow in
self-esteem. So
confident was Mewaldt, in fact, that he once gave a report
about a book he
hadn't read before his entire class and 30 to 50 college
observers. "When I sat
down, Warnie said, 'I read that book. I don't remember any
of those things.'"
KIDS WILL BE KIDS
Still, kids were kids - the good and the bad.
There was the time Pappas set out to make the first day of
junior high
teacher Ann Hanratta's life miserable. He was called to
the front of the class,
where she slapped his face. "I must have been pretty
obnoxious, but I didn't
dare go home and tell my parents what happened." The
following week
another teacher, Dora Carver, stopped by his parents'
downtown La Crosse
candy shop, The Elite, and remarked, "Isn't it terrible
what happened to
Peter?" His parents, totally unaware their son had trouble
at school, quickly
cornered him. After a consultation with his parents,
Pappas apologized to
Miss Hanratta the following day.
30
CHAPTER 3
Ricky Wing and Sally Cremer had their share of
difficulties as well. In the
same grade their entire school careers, the two nearly
always were assigned
seats beside each other. While there were times when
Cremer and Wing were
friends, walking each other home, the relationship did not
advance in the way
little Sally hoped. She decided she was in love with
Ricky, writing him
frequent notes attesting to her devotion.
"She always tried to tell me she should be my girl
friend," Wing said. "I
always wrote back nasty notes to her until one day my note
was intercepted
by Miss Breene." Thankfully, Miss Breene did not go
through with her threat
to take the matter to Ricky's mother, Edith Irish Wing,
who was teaching
junior high English and social studies.
In a retirement interview in 1961, Edith Wing spoke of her
son, "He was
supposed to be a model child, and he wasn't." She may have
been referring to
such incidents as the time Ricky claimed credit for a
beautifully modeled car
because it had the initials M.W. on it. Those letters
could have stood for
Merrick Wing, but actually were for Marie Wenzel, a much
more skilled
sculptor. "Being a natural-born cheat, I endeavored to
claim it as my own," he
said. Friends of Wing lined up in his favor, claiming they
saw him model the
automobile. Friends of Marie's did the same for her. The
issue was decided in
Marie's favor because he never used M.W. as his initials.
TEACHERS
Students' deepest and most cherished memories were not of
the building
but of the adults who taught in it. They saw some teachers
as strong
disciplinarians who ruled their classes with iron fists
and others as unable to
keep the youngsters in line. Some teachers seemed eager to
adopt new
teaching techniques, while others simply taught the way
they always had.
But, according to kindergarten teacher Lenore Wilson,
"they were teachers and
proud of being teachers. They tried to be the best
teachers they could be."
Agnes
AGNES BREENE Breene
From 1940
At the top of that most-recalled list is Agnes Breene, who
La Crosse
yearbook
taught from 1924 to 1959. While Miss Breene's teaching
style
occasionally made some parents nervous, Marian Hammes,
who taught in the Campus School's Rural Room, described
31
RECOLLECTIONS
The third grade students in Agnes Breene's MIDDLE ROW: C.
Netwal, Ann McLoone, John
third and fourth grade room studied Schilling, John Rooks,
Babs Shely, R. Martin,
vegetables. Nancy Ducke, Abigail Holley, Mary MacAuley,
FRONT ROW, from left: Richard Rozelle, Francie Pamperin.
Garrett Van de Steeg, Kent Quisel, Abby BACK ROW: Mrs.
Rowe, Miss Breene.
Hebberd, Vinge Dahl, Tom Schilling. From 1949 Training
SchoolAlbum
her as a really marvelous teacher who was way ahead of her
time.
Miss Breene taught units on a variety of subjects, often
about the outdoors
and nature. "There will always be an out-of-doors and
eight- and
nine-year-olds who like to know about these phases of
life," she said at the
time of her retirement. "One boy called me a naturalist
and I hope I am."
One summer, she spent six weeks investigating a cubic yard
of earth. Many
people might wonder how anyone, particularly elementary
school children,
could spend so much time on something as simple as dirt.
But they studied the
layers of soil, analyzed its organic composition, learned
what could be grown
in the dirt, and discovered the life the dirt sustained
-bugs, worms and so on.
Bruce Walters, a 1957 graduate, remembered being recruited
one hot
summer day to learn how to work a garden properly. "I
bicycled by with Ted
Murphy and Miss Breene called, 'Boys, come here. Come
here, boys." Walters
recognized the lesson on "how to pulverize dirt" as a
not-so-subtle cover for
wanting the boys to do some of the hot and dirty garden
work, but they did it
nevertheless.
Another common memory is of Miss Breene waltzing around on
the tiniest
"bird legs" to the "Minuet in C" which she taught students
to play on the
32
CHAPTER 3
psaltery. So often did the class play the "Minuet in G,"
that Bill Cremer was
convinced it was the "Training School fight song."
Many years later, Miss Breene and the "Minuet in G"
revisited the Cremers. In
the aftermath of a toddler's birthday party, their
daughter was running "buck
naked" around the apartment, when Miss Breene unexpectedly
appeared. Totally
oblivious to the disarray, she called on Sally to sit down
and play the "Minuet in
G" on the psaltery. Miss Breene called out the notes as
she waltzed around the
room with her arms outstretched. When Sally later told her
husband that Miss
Breene was recruiting former students to perform at a
special event to honor
Emery Leamer, Bill promised to attend but refused to play
the psaltery. The night
of the event, he stood in the back of the theater, hoping
to go unnoticed. With so
many years of experience catching little boys hiding in
cloak rooms, Miss Breene
was not fooled. "Billy Cremer, I see you standing in the
back row," she called out.
"You come up on this stage."
Miss Breene assigned students to be sopranos, basses and
altos in a "vocal
chorus" to recite "The Owl and The Pussy Cat." When the
class studied the
American South, students learned "Dixie" and played in a
mountain of cotton as
part of their unit on the cotton gin. They also dressed,
some in black face, for a
play about the region.
To students in trouble, Miss Breene gave pink slips
indicating the nature of
their grievious offenses. It was no problem for one
frequent recipient. He simply
destroyed the evidence by eating his pink slips. Innocent
students sometimes
experienced the brunt of their classmates' crimes. Miss
Breene had the habit of
resting her hand on the shoulder of a neighboring student
as she confronted an
offender. A nervous woman, her hand pinched the neighbor.
"Aggie was a pincher
if you got out of line," Bill Cremer said. "She didn't
pinch you hard enough to
leave a black and blue mark, but it was something that you
didn't easily forget."
The Breene classroom was theatrical. Children planted
trees and dramatically
recited Joyce Kilmer's "I think that I shall never see a
poem as lovely as a tree."
Visiting mothers saw Miss Breene, full of music and drama,
dancing the hula, lei
and all, during a unit on Hawaii.
Sandy Gordon remembered some uncomfortable days when Miss
Breene tried
to cure his childhood stuttering. She used an idea from
the Saturday Evening Post,
which suggested that forcing a stuttering child to use his
or her opposite hand
somehow freed the brain of the pressure that was causing
the stuttering. Breene
tried to get him to write left-handed for about a month
before realizing it would
not be effective.
Another of her ideas involved helping youngsters with the
many viruses that
naturally run amuck in elementary schools. Miss Breene
displayed plants
throughout her classroom and grouped many together in the
"chlorophyll area,"
which was designated for children with colds.
Another teacher who provoked strong memories was
Olive B. Place, the school's music teacher from 1927 to
1943.
Miss Place was a large woman with a well-endowed chest,
here she stashed her handkerchief. "She had a huge bosom.
She'd be hunting in there trying to find her handerchief,"
said Jane Mitchell Aarstad. "I was sure it was lost."
Jane Horner Stuckert, a classmate of Aarstad's in the late
1930s and several boys once did the daring deed of making
a
sign of an olive and placing it over the music room door.
It
was a brave bit of mischief in those days and the children
lived in fear of being caught, but never were. "She looked
like
"an olive," Stuckert said.
The other distinguishing feature about Miss Place was her
"plop zip glasses." These glasses, more properly called
Olive B. Place pince-nez, had no temples but gripped the
bridge of her nose. They were kept
Bachrach portrait in place with a spring attached to her
dress with a clip. When she let go, the
from collection of glass would spring back with a "plop
zip" sound.
Sally Schwanzle Miss Place's style of teaching apparently
was less sensitive to those without
Cremer
great singing voices. She frightened Signe Gundersen
Schroeder, who often
was told simply to mouth the words when others sang. "She
singled me out. I
couldn't get D to be D for anything in the world."
"Sing from down here," said Miss Place as she pushed so
hard on a student's
diaphragm to demonstrate the proper breathing technique
that the student
thought she was going to throw up. Another student
remembered Miss Place
putting her arms on her own diaphragm to demonstrate the
breathing
technique. Because of the size of her endowment, which
moved with the
demonstration, pre-pubescent boys had a major chuckle.
"Some of us couldn't
help but burst out laughing. She was funny, but she was
actually a darn good
music teacher," said Rick Wing. Added Pat Johnson
Robinson, "She was trying
Merton Lyon to make us professional singers."
From 1940 MERTON LYON
La Crosse
yearbook
Another name that quickly came to the mind of Campus
School graduates was Merton Lyon, the manual training and
junior high math teacher from 1916 to 1946. Lyon knew how
to
keep a class in line. At the first sign of his
frustration, he threw
chalk or wood - whatever was handy.
34
CHAPTER 3
Lyon did not get angry at a student for making a mistake
in a math
problem, but would be angry if the pupil did not take his
school
responsibilities, including homework, seriously. He also
was concerned that
the equipment be used safely. Discipline had to be
maintained because
students in woodworking could damage the equipment - or
injure
themselves. Sandy Gordon was among the targets of Lyon's
wrath. "He was a
pretty good shot. He got me a couple of times," he said.
"I wouldn't know it
was coming and ... BANG!"
Despite his temper, Lyon contributed much to the school
and its pupils. He
took interested students to the school's roof to view the
skies from his
telescope. Lyon also was an "extremely precise teacher,"
Wing said, "and
extremely careful in explaining so clearly just how to
work those darn algebra
equations." Robinson saw Lyon as trying to get students
"to reason" rather
than just do rote drills. Among his assignments was
writing an essay
explaining the theory behind square roots, which
"apparently did not stick
with everybody." Students admired him enough to ask him to
be their
graduation speaker.
DORA CARVER
Margaret Holley remembered how frightening it could be to
be called to see Miss Carver. "My knees would knock. I'd
be
scared to death. Anybody who misbehaved was sent to Miss
Carver." The English teacher wore long skirts with side
panels
that flew when she marched down the hall. "She was always
in a hurry and so stern," Holley said. "But she really
taught us
English. We knew English backwards and forwards when we
were through with her."
EDITH WING
Edith Wing, a junior high school teacher, could
always be found with a pencil between her teeth. A
woman knowledgeable about world events, she
worked to help the children make the transition from
grade school to high school. "She was very lively and
challenging," Marian Ramlow said. "She was a good
introduction to the kind of teaching we would get at
higher levels."
Jane Horner Stuckert traced her love of art and painting
to Miss
Angell, a teacher who always was positive about students'
work.
"She loved colors. I remember walking to school and
looking at the
colors of tree leaves and colors of the grass and it all
came from her.
When I paint now, I think back to what she said, 'Just
look at
nature and be original.'"
Because she had no family, Campus School children became
Angell's children. She hosted teas in which she used her
fine china
and silverware. "She would hover over us, afraid that we
would
break something, but she wanted us to use it," Jane
Mitchell Aarstad recalled.
FERD LIPOVETZ
What students remember about college
physical education teacher Ferd Lipovetz was
his emphasis on correcting flat feet. A small,
mustached man, with an accent and clipped
way of speaking, Lipovetz had the children wet
their feet and walk on paper so he could
measure their arches and then prescribe
corrective exercises, such as walking on a rail.
Also of concern to Lipovetz were lordosis,
increased curvature of the lumbar spine, and scoliosis,
curvature of the
spine. He examined children regularly for these
conditions, developed
exercises, and then recorded the results in research
projects.
Physical
education
instructor
Ferd Lipovetz
had a special
concern
about
curvature of
the spine.
From 1924
La Crosse
yearbook
SARAH BANGSBERG, M.D.
Children in the campus school were regularly seen by Dr.
Sarah
Bangsberg, who ran the college student health services and
was dean
of women from 1923 to 1941. This short, stout woman had
definite ideas of her own about saving children from the
perils of life.
No girl in the school was allowed to wear red because she
thought
the color was sexually provocative. She advised girls to
place a
newspaper on a boy's lap before sitting on it. She also
advised against
eating olives, which were said to make people passionate.
One
student was sent home to get permission from her parents
to wear
knee socks when she arrived without the usual long
underwear.
You probably noticed the group of small children in Dean
Bangsberg's office on Friday and wondered what it was all
about. No - they weren't being scolded for keeping late
hours, for wearing high heels, or anything of the kind.
Neither
have they been guilty of wearing red apparel. In fact,
Dr. Bangsberg was nowhere about. But Miss White was there,
looking very serious and, as always, efficient. She was
weighing the knowing-looking little boys and coy little
maids
and putting her figures down on important white cards. I
really mean 'important,' too. The results of these
physical
examinations are sent home each time with their grades.
Any
falling off in weight is quickly noticed and checked up.
Naturally the teacher and nurse discover that where there
is a
fluctuation in weight there is likely to be one in grades
too.
They find the regular examinations a great help in keeping
the
child fit mentally as well as physically.
LENORE WILSON
Lenore Wilson
taught many
Campus School
kindergarteners
from 1935 to 1943
and from 1948 to
1957. "She had the
philosophy that
children would
never try anything
they were not
capable of doing,"
said Peg Fish, who
had to control
herself when her
Children gathered in front or the fireplace to hear a
story from
kindergarten teacher Lenore Wilson in this January 1936
photo.
37
RECOLLECTIONS
son, Reuel, was helping with Christmas decorations. As the
mother held her
breath, the young son took down a 10-foot ladder, folded
the latches and
carried it out.
Steve Mewaldt remembered kindergarten as emphasizing
social skills and
play rather than academics. "We had great projects," he
said. "We built a raft
to take the kids on the river, but obviously we never did.
We just nailed
boards together."
Grace Tripp
GRACE TRIPP
From 1940
La Crosse
yearbook Even in the 1930s, junior high science teacher
Grace
Tripp, was vigorously opposed to cigarettes, alcohol,
coffee
and even chocolate. Frequently, her lessons taught her
young students about these evils. "She believed if you
indoctrinated the young, you would avoid a lot of
problems in society," Gunnar Gundersen said. "She had a
lot of influence on me. I never did smoke."
Children in Helen Kay Felber's class learned to count
money in the Kindergarten
Grocery Store. Note the sign: "You can buy candy 10
cents." That may have been
good news for the children, even if the store was closed
weekends.
Miss Felber encouraged her kindergarten children to share
pets and other
animals from home. On one occasion, one child brought in
his Easter gifts of a
pink rabbit and a yellow chick. When the animals died, the
children assumed
it was something they had done. Miss Felber was quite
relieved to learn the
animals had died from the dyes, which had gone through
their skin and
poisoned them, rather than from improper care or
mistreatment.
Rick Wing recalled the store and bank the children ran in
kindergarten
when classmates took turns selling products and/or making
change. "This was
genuine progressive education in those days. She was maybe
the most
progressive of them all."
RHEA PEDERSON
Rhea Pederson's classroom, while kept under strict
control, was
an active place. Children baked rolls as part of a unit on
breads and
had many an imaginary boat or train excursion. One year
they had
a circus with a ringmaster and "fierce" animals.
Rhea Pederson intently listens
to one of her first and second
graders in this circa 1955
photo. Note the timeless
advice of the class rules: "One
person speaks at a time. We
raise our hands. We say
please."
39
RECOLLECTIONS
For children like Dan Gelatt, first grade was a year when
the big pressure of
kindergarten was off. To graduate from kindergarten in
1952, he had to finish
knitting a hot pad. "I was busy finishing it on the last
day of school," he said.
"I had no such onerous duties in first grade."
One story has it that the business office periodically
called to remind
Pederson to cash her paycheck. Because she had invested
her money so wisely
she often neglected the mundane task of depositing her
salary. She also
invested heavily in the children she taught those 26 years
until the school's
closing in 1973. On one occasion, music teacher William
Estes was amused to
hear Pederson muttering as she helped her children get out
of their boots.
"Buckles and boots," she said. "Twenty-five years of
buckles and boots."
The caption for
this photo from
the 1949
Training School
Album said:
Emery Learner
shown seated at
the desk in his
office discussing
problems with
Miss Pederson,
first grade critic.
THE DIRECTOR
EMERY LEAMER
Of course, no one could forget principal Emery Leamer,
whom children
dubbed "the warden" because they sometimes felt they were
in jail. Another
reason could be that the institution's name, "Training
School," suggested a
reform school.
40
CHAPTER 3
Perhaps it is in the very nature of the child/teacher,
teacher/principal and
child/principal roles, that there are such differing
memories of Emery Leamer.
While students found him strict, Pauline Abel was
concerned he may have
been too lax.
Early on in her Campus School teaching career, her
students asked if they
could attend a college play. She said she would ask the
principal. To her
shock, the children asked him directly, and he gave his
permission without
first checking with her.
She also remembered when Richard McLoone was sent to the
director's
office because he was disrupting other children. Not only
did he enjoy the
attention of the office staff and visitors, but the boy
returned to class chewing
gum. McLoone did not remember the gum incident but he
admitted making
life a little rough for Abel in her first year at the
school, like sliding down the
waxed floor to the front of the Little Theater during
Lowell Thomas
travelogues.
Still, Abel said, Leamer tried to be progressive. "He
didn't require us to
follow a curriculum. He encouraged us to experiment. He
was trying to be
progressive, but his interpretation of progressive was a
little too lenient."
Wilson said Leamer challenged her as a teacher. "Every
time I went into his
office with some kind of idea, he would ask, 'What have
you read? Where did
you get this?' I hadn't read anything, so I would go out
and read."
On a cold, January 25, 1940, day everyone had an
assignment - to carry his or
her own belongings and other materials to the new training
school building
at 16th and State streets. Children lined up, youngest to
oldest, and moved in
a long stream from Main Hall to the new building. One
student remembered
everything was new over there ... tables, chairs, desks. A
kindergartener,
however, recalled that the chairs he and his classmates
sat on in a circle were
not. "I vividly remember carrying little green chairs,
books and other things,"
said Richard McLoone. "We made several junkets."
Even without "media handlers" it was obvious the press
would be favorable
if little children hauled their school belongings in
sleds, wagons, bicycles and
old wheelbarrows. Among articles about the kiddie movers
was this one from
the January 26, 1940, La Crosse Tribune:
They made a gay procession as they carted their books,
papers,
sports equipment, and smaller furniture pieces to the new
building. ... The gaiety of the occasion was further
enhanced by
the sight of a serious second grader diligently trudging
along under
a light but bulky package, leaving a trail of water
drawings and
other school work in his wake. ... While the occasion will
undoubtedly be unforgettable to the youngsters, it is also
a
memorable day for the educational history of the city. For
La Crosse the occasion marks another important step in the
city's
educational development. For the college, the school
provides a
modern and complete laboratory for the training of
teachers.
The new Training School took the place of the first floor
classrooms in
Main Hall that had been used as the laboratory school
since 1909. Preliminary
plans for a new Training School had been drawn three times
prior to the
state's approval in 1937. Approval to build a new $200,000
school came from
43
RECOLLECTIONS
the Board of Regents in 1931. However, it was not until
1938 that the new
building won much-needed federal approval for funding as a
federal relief
project.
State Teachers College President George M. Snodgrass
proudly announced
that a new school would be built at 16th and State along
with a new heating
plant for the campus. The federal government agreed to pay
for 45 percent
and the state 55 percent of the building, whose cost had
grown to $325,000.
Construction was hurried. The federal grant required work
to begin by
January 1, 1939, and to be completed by November 15, 1939.
The contractor
moved equipment onto the site December 30, 1938.
Among articles in the Racquet was one on Milwaukee
architect John Brust,
by editor Fay Katharine Gallagher:
Of course the general contractor, Wm. Christianson,
actually piles
up the brick on top of each other, but John (Mr. Brust to
you, a
Hot lunch during most of the years of the Campus School's
existence meant going
home to mom. But during World War II, the Training School
tried an experimental
kitchen, offering hot lunch in an era when the public
schools did not. Former student
Douglas Phillips, who supplied this picture, said "This
experiment was like many I
witnessed ... the Training School would be the laboratory
for new educational ideas,
many of them to become standard in public schools years
later."
From left, the students are: Susan Spence, Elizabeth
Spangler, Alice Engelhard and,
with his back to the camera, Douglas Phillips. 1941.
44
CHAPTER 4
friendly little soul), keeps the various contractors,
electrical,
plumbing, etc., from tearing out their own and each
other's hair
and keeps peace among the great big bruisers carrying
steel and
stuff - watching so that one of the boys doesn't bounce a
beam
off another's head when his back is turned.
Although Gallagher did not discuss the building design or
equipment, she
did come away "with a very favorable impression" of the
architect. "He's a
swell fella', easy to talk to - and girls, he's awfully
pretty too!"
The final design combined two grades for each classroom
and limited
enrollment to 18 for each grade. The goal was to have the
new school ready
for the second semester in early 1940. It was, and the La
Crosse campus
obviously was proud of its newest building, the fourth
after Main, Wittich
and the power plant:
A real transformation has taken place in L.S.T.C. this
past month.
The moving of equipment, the rush and hurry and the
exclamations of joy and smiles on the faces of those two
venerable
gentlemen of the training school, Mr. Rolfe and Mr.
Leamer, tell
that a long thought of dream has culminated. The new
training
school opened at the beginning of the second semester and
the
work is now progressing in leaps and bounds in the new
surroundings.
Racquet reporter Adeline Hanson described the new building
as a "fitting
memorial" for the life work of Snodgrass, who died January
12, 1939, shortly
after the ground-breaking ceremony. At the dedication of
the school, director
Leamer gave credit to Snodgrass, "We shall always remember
what his efforts
made possible for us."
The new building was of reinforced concrete and brick
fireproof
construction with terrazzo floors in the corridors. It had
four entrances and
collapsible gates to confine after-hours use of the
building to the auditorium,
which seated 366. The original draperies in the auditorium
were decorated
with student-made block prints. The stage was high enough
to allow unused
scenery to be raised into a loft. The lower level included
a 45 by 78 foot
gymnasium, a photography dark room, and a home economics
room.
The first floor included rooms for kindergarten, first and
second grades, and
third and fourth grades, along with an office suite for
Leamer and Jean Rolfe.
The second floor contained the fifth and sixth grades
room, the library, the
junior high classes, and a music room. One significant
feature was a sound
system, through which the director of the school could
speak with any
instructor or class in the building. The system also was
used to broadcast
radio or phonograph programs to one or all of the rooms.
Designed to allow the director to hear actual classroom
instructional
proceedings, teachers may not have thought about the
implications of such a
capability when the system was first proposed. Merrick
Wing recalled,
however, that an agreement was reached after extensive
faculty discussions
that there would be no spying by the school
administration. That did not
keep other interested parties from doing a little
clandestine listening. After a
competition among ninth grade students, Wing and classmate
Tom Steele
earned the coveted right to learn to operate the
equipment.
One of the sweet rewards of having this sophisticated
know-how was
escaping from class under the pretext of playing music for
teachers. Certainly,
there were occasions when their efforts were bona fide but
they also snuck out
just for the joy of being out of class. Most treasured of
those moments was
Among the Training School extras was this 1949 orchestra.
Students are from left,
seated: Alice Engelhard, Mary Byers, Mary Seaquist, N.
Youngdale, Barbara Byers,
Douglas Phillips, J. Miller, Esther Rynning, Carol(yn)
Spence, Janice Cowley;
standing: Ed Hanson, Anne Simonson, S. Sobotta, Miss
Smith, Beverly Cowley, Nancy
Sorenson, Gertrude Thiel, Nancy Byers.
From 1949 Training School Album
47
Jean Rolfe,
Director of
the Division
of Elementary
Education
48
their electronic eavesdropping. The administration may
have promised not to
listen in, but the boys had not. What they heard was not
particularly valuable,
except perhaps in verbal exchanges of adolescent bravado.
Another of those
pleased with the sound system was Sandy Gordon, who was
such a devoted
Chicago Cubs fan he would intentionally act up in class to
get kicked out.
Gordon had a clever racket. "I knew how to run
the radio in the office," he said. After doing time
in the principal's office, he set the radio to
broadcast the baseball game into the empty art
room. There, he secretly enjoyed the game while
his classmates worked across the hall. "I held the
misconduct record until just before the school
closed," he said with a slyly proud grin. In the
third and fourth grades, a time when he was
"just warming up," his crimes included spitting
into the gym shoes of girls in his class.
The new building also was praised for its
auditorium, which was said to be one of the best
in the city, the classroom work rooms, and the
library, which had four study rooms connected
to it. The gymnasium was called "the answer to
any student's dream with its roomy lockers."
Being old enough to use those lockers for
physical education classes was a milestone. In
the lower grades, children sweated in their street
clothes, rather than change.
A large multi-purpose room in the building's lower level
was used for scout
and other community meetings. The science room not only
had laboratory
facilities, it also had an open space on the top of the
building which could be
used for plants. The English room had the latest in visual
equipment, movie
facilities and slides.
Fifth and sixth grade teacher Pauline Abel, sensitive to
the
reformatory-sounding name, "Training School," lobbied for
a change after she
arrived in 1943. Although a photo of the new building was
identified as
Snodgrass School in the 1940 Racquet annual, the school
never was officially
named after the deceased president. "Our kids were already
thought of as smart
and bossy," said Abel. "I could envision the school being
called the snotty
school." She wanted to name the school for faculty member
Mauree Applegate
Clack who authored many books on teaching children to
write and lectured to
educators across the country. In the end, the name all
could settle on, Campus
School, was made official in March 1953.
CHAPTER 4
Children learn with the aid of a slide projector.
1948 La Crosse State Annual
Within two years of the new school's opening, the nation
joined the Allies
in World War II. The Training School participated in its
own way, with
children selling 10 and 25-cent war stamps which could be
traded in on war
bonds. They also collected tin cans, paper and rubber for
recycling.
With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Campus School suddenly
had a new
role: preparing women to take the places of male teachers
who enlisted in the
service. Many, who had been home for years raising their
families, came to
summer sessions to observe classes in preparation for
returning to teaching.
49
RECOLLECTIONS
Students take a
class trip to the
La Crosse Municipal
Airport. THE POST-WAR ERA
1948 La Crosse State
Annual
After the war, Campus School was eager to serve children
of the many
veterans who came to study under the G.I. Bill of Rights.
Using the headline
"Childrened Vets, Notice!" the Racquet ran a memo from
Leamer saying
"Veterans interested in enrolling their children in the
Training School next
September should see me at once."
HOWARD FREDRICKS
Linda Schleiter Sherwood, who attended Campus School
beginning as a
kindergartener in1947, remembered discussions in the
post-war era designed
to make students think about their most cherished beliefs.
"These were the
Eisenhower days," she said, "and just about everybody came
from a
Republican family except for a few children of college
professors." She
described social studies teacher Howard Fredricks as
playing the devil's
50
CHAPTER 4
advocate "to get us to think through some issues."
When the class studied Communism, shortly after
U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin had
hunted communists with a vengeance, he "spent a
lot of time trying to get through to us that the
philosophy of Communism and what people were
doing in Russia were not necessarily the same
thing."
One of the ways he taught about Communism
was to run his class like a totalitarian society.
Fredricks was the dictator during this unit, which
some students loved and others hated. Behavior
was closely monitored and discipline strictly
enforced. Students stood at attention when the
teacher walked into the room and when they
spoke. The unit also included a forced march up |
the bluff one morning at 5 a.m. |
Tom Sleik learned, much to his dismay, of the
existence of "informers" in the class. One day
Fredricks bicycled by the home where a group of
classmates were playing their regular football game. The
group stood up
except for Sleik, who instead made some flip remark. The
following Monday,
Fredricks called him on his disobedience, telling him that
a class member had
informed on him. Dan Gelatt, who does not remember how or
why he was
selected as an informer, said his class did have a
distinction. "We were the
only class to suggest a counter revolution. I remember one
morning we stood
on our desks and said, 'Power to the people' or some other
slogan. We then
refused to do any school work."
Because students followed world events closely, they
understood how
precarious the relationship was between the United States
and Cuba in the
coldest days of the Cold War. During this era, when some
families were
building bomb shelters in their backyards, Christine
Midelfort had dreams
about the end of the world, especially after the United
States unsuccessfully
invaded the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. Dan Gelatt was in
the office of
La Crosse Mayor Milo Knutson for an interview in October
1962 when the
United States and the Soviet Union stood nose to nose over
the shipments of
missile installations to Cuba. After answering a call on
his news telephone, a
very relieved Knutson announced, "The ships have turned
back."
Among Fredricks' skills was his ability to teach
controversial subjects with
sensitivity. For example, in a unit on Germany in the
post-war era, "he gave
Howard Fredricks
51
RECOLLECTIONS
us a deep appreciation of the good things in Germany, the
beautiful music,"
Sleik said.
Junior high students also were assigned to study various
religions and
report on them to the class. Fredricks brought in
representatives of different
religions, who spoke about their beliefs. He challenged
students to think
about the beliefs they held as well.
In an interview at the time Campus School closed in 1973,
Fredricks said
"We tried to get people to assume responsibility. On any
particular subject,
such as religion, we'd have independent research. They
could work at their
own speed. If they made a statement or a generalization,
they'd have to
support it with evidence."
Fredricks, who was the news anchor on La Crosse's only
television station
in the 1950s, did something more for his students over the
years. He required
them to read the La Crosse Tribune cover to cover. Each
student had to arrive
each morning with questions and answers from the newspaper
- not just
ones about simple facts but analytical issues. In addition
to giving quizzes, he
divided his classes into teams for current events
competitions, similar to
spelling bees. "To this day, I read everything in the
paper," said Sleik.
Classmate Roy Campbell agreed. The habit "taught me to
read for continuity,
not just for the story of the day. We saw stories come and
go and we learned
to follow the progress."
It wasn't difficult for Julia Steinke Saterbak to decide
between teaching
positions at the campus schools of the universities in La
Crosse and
Milwaukee in 1960. Vivid in her memory is the Milwaukee
faculty member
assigned to accompany her for the day of her interview.
uHe was in the
Department of Education and obviously felt the Campus
School was the
lowest of the lowest," she said. "I could see he was very
angry to be stuck
with me at lunch. He didn't speak to me all day even when
he walked me
through the campus."
During the official interview portion, the faculty member
and the head of
the Milwaukee Campus School sat on one side of the table
firing penetrating
questions: What is your philosophy of life? What is your
philosophy of
education? Each time she answered, the two interviewers
looked at each
other without expression. "I didn't know if it was a look
of pleasure or
disbelief," she recalled.
When she first came for an interview in La Crosse, the
reception was so
warm the faculty gave her a tea. They invited her to visit
every classroom and
to walk through the campus to learn whatever she wished
about the school.
Interview questions were low key. "They assumed that I
knew what I was
doing and I assumed they knew what they were doing," she
said.
Saterbak did have one additional interview with Campus
School Director
Bernard Young. They met for lunch at the union at the
university in
Madison. Inexperienced at "doing lunch," Saterbak ordered
very little, perhaps
no more than a cup of coffee. Always the gentleman, Young
did the same.
After a pleasant interview, the now-starving educators
said good-bye and
parted, only to find each other in the cafeteria line
moments later to get their
real lunch. Equally discreet, they politely ignored each
other, although their
mutual deprivation during lunch has long since become a
cherished story.
As an only child and a single woman, Saterbak said the
life at Campus
School could not have been better for her. 'This was my
family," she said.
"They certainly were the people who took care of me."
Anything was an
excuse for a party in those years, including the
remodeling of the bedroom of
Ken and Peg Fish. "I wore pajamas and a robe. Alice Hagar
came with a
sleeping bonnet."
The family-like relationships meant faculty members took
the extra step for
each other when it was needed. On one occasion, Mauree
Applegate Clack
suffered a stroke in Portland, Oregon. After her initial
treatment, she flew
back to Minneapolis, where Young and Richard Rasmussen met
her and
arranged for further care in La Crosse. "We looked after
one another," the
latter said. "It was a wonderful, supportive environment.
We liked each other
a lot." Applegate was "a gifted, creative genius, a
wonderful, wonderful
person," he continued.
These caring relationships extended to the children and
their families. It
was mostly women who came to conferences at the Campus
School in
Saterbak's time, although a 1930 Racquet article
encouraged fathers to meet
with teachers concerning their children's test scores "and
in particular to
discuss the mental abilities of their respective progeny.
As has been already
stated this idea of having the fathers present at the
discussions is establishing
a precedent because formerly the mothers had had the
confabulation to
themselves."
Thirty-plus years later, fathers were still rare at
conferences, although
Saterbak remembered a distinguished father who dressed in
suit, topcoat and
hat to meet with her. She knew his attire was much less
formal in his own
business.
Many of the mothers of children in her third grade classes
were eager to do
whatever they could for their children's school. Saterbak
remembered one
particularly wealthy woman who came for parent-teacher
meetings
beautifully dressed, with perfectly coiffed hair and
applied make-up. Yet after
one mothers' meeting, this woman was the first to roll up
her sleeves to wash
dishes.
The very verbal students looked out for faculty. When a
student
complained that a teacher was leaving the classroom during
sessions for a
coffee break, another stood up and said the teacher was
taking a break because
he was teaching an extra course to expand the junior high
program. The first
student retracted his complaint. "That was the spirit,"
Rasmussen said. "It
was much like the faculty. We could get mad with one
another over an issue,
but we would pull together. The conclusion was always
let's forget the
pettiness and get about the business of learning and
teaching. It was
wonderful from my perspective. There was a lot of maturity
on the part of
the kids and faculty."
The size of the staff reinforced the family feeling.
Because the school
faculty was small, everyone could meet around a conference
table, an
informality that led to respect for each faculty member
and his or her ideas.
"We ran the school. We set our own calendar. We set our
hours," Rasmussen
said. "We were free and independent. We could do what we
felt as
professionals was best for the students."
"There were things we could accomplish because of size,"
Paul Neman said.
"No matter what you came up with, it was discussed. You
may then have
discovered the idea was not good. But we did learn from
each other."
55
RECOLLECTIONS
The Campus School e
staff included
Principal Richard
Rasmussen,
Secretary Carolyn
Duncan Lawrence,
and custodians Joe
Hurley and Myron
Berg. Circa 1970.
Among those important to the Campus School environment was
custodian
Myron Berg, whom social studies teacher Paul Neman called
the school's
unofficial guidance counselor. Berg could be counted on to
repair children's
toys or to comfort them. "He was Mr. Campus School. We
didn't have a
counselor, but we had good old Myron. He served as a
counselor for many a
kid, wiped their tears. He loved the kids and the kids
loved Myron." There
were times when Neman would be frustrated that a job went
undone in a
classroom because Berg was helping some kid somewhere. "He
wouldn't quit
as far as kids are concerned. He probably got more
Christmas presents than
anyone else in the building. They loved him."
Berg's maintenance rooms were "absolutely fascinating
places for boys,"
said Peder Arneson, a 1964 graduate. "We all wanted to
visit him." The
custodian could be trusted to maintain silence at critical
times if he caught
56
Chapter 5
boys "not doing what they were
supposed to be doing," added Bruce
Walters, who graduated in 1957. "He
didn't turn you in."
BERNARD YOUNG
Robert Seaquist was especially fond of
Bernard Young, who did him "a heck of a
favor" at a time he was "failing my way
through school." The problem was not
ability, but having too good a time
fooling around. Young worked personally
with him to help bring up his grades. "I
would go to Mr. Young's office and he
would tutor me in English. It really
influenced me to the point where it made
English a usable subject for me."
Out of this environment of respect
came freedom in the classroom that meant teachers could
try new techniques
and new ideas. When Saterbak first came to the Campus
School, she figured
she ought to ask Bernard Young for the curriculum. "You
are the third grade
expert. You teach," he replied. "You have no idea how
freeing that was," she
said.
ACADEMIC FREEDOM
Instead of merely using a text book, teachers built their
work around
themes, such as prehistoric life and living around the
world. Teachers
captured "teachable moments" and responded to the
immediate excitement
and interest of students. In the early 1930s the junior
high spent six weeks
studying the Greeks from the perspective of art, music,
and math. The next
semester the emphasis was on the Romans. Parents welcomed
a
student-inspired unit in the 1950s on human reproduction.
The topic was
approached through animals in comparison with humans.
Films were shown
about the developing baby.
One Easter, a poultry producer dropped off
100 chicks at school. Instead of females, which
would allow the children to observe the life cycle,
they were all males. "The fellow who donated
them was generous, but probably happy to get rid
of them," Ken Fish said. "I kept them in the back of
the science room until they got stinky. They grew
and grew. Finally, a farmer took them."
Another year, the class decided to make
gunpowder to launch rockets in the big field
between Main Hall and Campus School. Before
class one day, however, a couple of students filled
the hollow metal handle of a small paste brush
with the powder, lit a fuse and the rest is history.
"It zipped past me and stuck in the bulletin board,"
Fish said. Results were not much better when the
gunpowder was used as intended. Shrapnel from
the rockets went through windows in the library
and first grade classroom. "We discontinued the
manufacture of gunpowder," he
said simply.
JULIA STEINKE SATERBAK
Teaching through units rather than a prescribed textbook
did require more
time for preparation, Saterbak said. "I would go to school
often at 7:30 a.m. and
not come home until 5:30 or 6 p.m. But I loved it. When I
would get home, I
couldn't wait to go the next day." Rasmussen, the Campus
School's last
principal, described Saterbak as the "last classic Campus
School teacher.
Teaching was her life and her gift. She couldn't put a
label on what she did, but
she could motivate children and she had down the art of
teaching." A frequent
actress in local theater productions, she was an equally
good model for college
students observing her classroom, Rasmussen said. "Julie
was and is such a great
performer and this made her a great demonstration
teacher."
Her classroom had a big bay window with seats -a wonderful
place for
children to read. Just outside the window, a flowering
tree provided
opportunities to observe seasonal changes.
Among those remembering Saterbak's alcove is Laura Schein
Johnsrud. Much
58
CHAPTER 5
of what she did in that class in the 1960s
is being done in schools today, such as the
spelling lessons that avoided use of
spelling texts. On one occasion, Saterbak
brought in a three-dimensional snowman
to stimulate story writing. Spelling words
were pulled from the vocabulary of the
story with a few added at the teacher's
suggestion. "We had tons and tons of
reading and tons and tons of writing,"
recalled Johnsrud, now a teacher herself.
'I remember just writing up a storm. That
is the big push in whole language that we
do today. I feel fortunate that I went
through that. It was wonderful."
Saterbak, who enjoyed incorporating
music in her teaching, always made sure b iloa
there was a piano in her room. Because
she did not have a piano at home, she
spent long hours at her classroom piano practicing songs.
Among them was
"Come Ye Thankful People Come" for a Thanksgiving unit.
Before playing
the piece, she told the children how long she had worked
on it, thinking it
would be a lesson in the value of practice. She put her
heart and soul into this
dramatic piece, feeling triumphant when she completed it.
Turning around,
she anticipated some sort of congratulatory adoration.
"Miss Steinke," a little
boy began as he raised his hand. "Last year, our teacher
could play the piano
with just one finger."
CLASSROOM CHANGES
Thirty-six children in a room seems like a large number
today, but the large
classrooms and separate work/cloakroom provided
flexibility. Under that
combined grade system, the classroom teacher did get some
afternoon relief.
Practice teachers, who were working on their bachelor
degrees after many
years of teaching with two-year certification, would take
the older students.
"It was no picnic for them," Pauline Abel recalled. "They
had college classes in
the morning and taught in the afternoon. They had a full
load and I do mean
full."
Among those afternoon teachers was a Miss Baker, who
quickly captured
Julia Steinke
Saterbak
RECOLLECTIONS
the admiration of the boys. 'Probaby three-fourths of the
boys had a crush on
her," Steve Mewaldt said. Miss Baker taught the afternoon
sixth grade for
Miss Abel in 1958, at the time the United States launched
the history-making
rocket with two chimps named Abel and Baker. Always ready
to localize a
national story, the La Crosse Tribune took a picture of
the Campus School
teachers with the same names as the chimps.
A few years later, in 1961, combined grade classrooms, of
18 students from
each of two grades, were eliminated. Cutting down to
single grade classes of
25 students increased learning opportunities and class
openings.
A DEMONSTRATION SCHOOL
As the years went by, the Campus School became more of a
demonstration
center than an experimental school or a center for student
teachers. By the
1960s, most student teachers were assigned to the public
schools except for
Each year, Rhea Pederson's first graders made Easter
bonnets and modeled them in a pageant for
their parents. Circa 1962.
60
CHAPTER 5
special cases when students had trouble in their public
school placements.
Saterbak believed teachers were selected for Campus School
because they
could handle the stress of being in a fish bowl. One
teacher, whom she
described as a good friend and "a better teacher than I,"
hated the summer
session she taught at Campus School. "She couldn't stand
the stress of people
coming in all the time. She hated having to work under
observation."
Education Department faculty and Campus School teachers
frequently
arranged special demonstrations for college students.
Rasmussen, who taught
sixth grade for three years at Campus School before
becoming principal in
1964, said his students did so many projects that a
university professor once
said to him she wanted to bring college students to his
class, "but wanted to
make sure I was teaching at the time." Offended at first,
he later realized she
meant direct teaching rather than students at work on
projects.
The La Crosse laboratory school undoubtedly was influenced
by the
Progressives from the 1920s through the 1950s. Founded
around the turn of
the century by John Dewey, the progressive education
movement suggested
that instead of using just one method to learn and teach,
teachers had to
understand the student and what the student was thinking
or caring about.
"Campus School was student oriented and teachers were more
independent
characters," said Rasmussen. Stories about Agnes Breene
indicate that she
was very much in the progressive style. Breene's use of a
garden, where
children learned to grow and observe plants and nature,
was clearly an
example of a progressive concept. "Agnes Breene was a
living legend," he said.
"Rhea Pederson was of the same ilk."
PAULINE ABEL
Pauline Abel, who joined the staff in 1943, said the
education there was not
ultraprogressive, but it was progressive. Academic and
behavioral standards
were high. Academic freedom "made teaching an adventure
and fun." Despite
the freedom given to her in her classroom, she was strict
in discipline. But she
clearly had to resume some order after the children's two
free-wheeling years
with Agnes Breene. One day in her second year of teaching,
a youngster said,
"Miss Abel, I heard you were very cross and crabby, but
you are not that way
at all." She replied, "Cheer up, Sandra, maybe you will
change your mind."
Abel's classroom definitely was not what Tom Sleik
expected. He started at
Campus School in May of his fifth grade year because that
was when an
opening occurred. With the mistaken notion that Campus
School students
had it easy, transferring from the public schools was just
what that
61
Pauline Abel with half of her combined fifth
and sixth grade class in 1949. The fifth
graders are, left to right:
FRONT ROW: Judy Cram, Peter Nustad,
Stewart Miller, Robert McLoone, Nancy
Byers, Kay Donaldson.
MIDDLE ROW: Mary Ellen Hebberd, Bob
Howard, Esther Rynning, Anne Crosby,
Leif Gundersen, John Miller.
BACK ROW: Miss Abel, Nancy Hoelzer,
James Taylor, Paula Pokrandt, Mary
Cavouras, Fritz Schubert.
1949 Training SchoolAlbum
fun-loving kid wanted. "I thought it was going to be a
really relaxed way to
end my year. That was my plan, but it was anything but
that." However,
Abel was an excellent teacher whom Sleik was eager to
please. He made sure
his family's sidewalk along 17th and King was clear in the
winter before she
walked by on her way to school. "I would have done almost
anything to
please her."
Among the work Abel's students did was the so-called new
math, which
brought fear and trepidation to a generation of parents
who somehow were
forever confused by the concept. With new math, children
learned to estimate
answers so they would get a sense of whether they were
correct. "It was a
different way of doing math, but it really wasn't that
different," she said. "It
62
CHAPTER 5
was more of a thinking approach. They still memorized
facts, but they didn't
learn them in table form because that slowed them down."
These higher
thinking skills allowed youngsters as young as second
grade to study simple
algebra and geometry.
In reading, children were encouraged to read beyond the
basic textbooks.
They gave many book reports in the form of posters and
skits as well as in
written papers and oral presentations. Children of
different developmental
levels were encouraged to work together in units or
themes, selecting books at
their own reading levels and coming together in the
discussions.
As strict as she was, Abel also was a caring listener to
her students,
including the girl who burst into her room one morning
crying that no one
liked her. Her teacher didn't have to listen long before
the girl said, "I guess I
am just so bossy."
Abel prided herself in keeping up with what interested her
students. One
morning the girls in her class had turned frosty cold,
refusing to speak to the
boys. Upset and unable to understand what had happened,
the boys turned to
their teacher for help. By chance she had heard the
previous night's "Father
Knows Best" radio show in which the girls had given the
boys the silent
treatment. While she may not have solved the battle of the
elementary school
sexes, Abel said her stock went up with the boys, who were
impressed their
teacher knew about popular radio programs.
Students were encouraged to take active roles in the
school. This 1949 Student Council
consisted of four ninth grade students and two each from
fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth
grades. They are,from left, seated: Alice Englehard, Janet
Amrnet, Bob Thoeny, Wally Hintz,
Beth Murrie and Joe Longfellow. Standing: Jim Burgess,
Ester Rynning, Marit Gundersen,
Barbara Gryphan, Tom Gilbertson and Stewart Miller.
Campus School sought to lay a foundation of ethical
behavior and
citizenship. Students frequently were asked to decide what
was the right
thing to do in a difficult situation. One teacher left the
spelling list on the
board during spelling tests. "We were not supposed to look
at it. She was
trying to teach us honesty," said Pat Johnson Robinson. "I
know friends who
peeked. It not only taught us honesty, it taught us about
dishonesty."
Teaching values was part of the school's philosophy of
education. In a 1966
report to the Board of Regents, principal Rasmussen said
the philosophy
consisted of developing pupils who:
1. Accept and assume responsibility.
2. Have respect for themselves and others.
3. Have opportunities for planning, evaluating, and
cooperating
with others.
4. See that through effort comes a measure of success and
its
ensuing satisfaction.
5 Recognize, understand and find a solution for failure
(when it
occurs), thereby encouraging intellectual honesty without
which one cannot succeed.
6. Gain fundamental facts, skills and appreciations
essential for
modern living.
The school emphasized functioning democratically in
classrooms. There
was an assumption that leadership came from the group and
shifted within
that group as the areas of learning, knowledge and
understanding shifted.
More and more freedom was to be won as pupil groups showed
facility and
confidence in using that freedom wisely.
There were parents who wondered if their children would
learn enough in
these free environments to get into a good college. Of
particular concern to
one set of parents was when a textbook unit was thrown out
and replaced by
a six-week study of turtles. "Please don't worry. Your
youngster is learning
about how to get along with other kids, about how to use
the library and read
about reptiles," Young said. Years later, that mother
reported to him that her
son had been admitted to a good college and was doing
well.
Young was interested in developing children's ability to
evaluate and
analyze issues and to work cooperatively. Even first
graders could be helped to
reason and see the inter-relationships between people,
groups and events. For
Randy Beers, a 1969 graduate, the ability to think and
analyze was the most
valuable skill he learned in school. "We were taught the
scientific method
RECOLLECTIONS
64
CHAPTER 5
early on, to find the problem, to develop an hypothesis
and then test it," he
said. "We were taught early that if you are trying to
figure something out, no
matter what kind of problem it is, you can't let any
emotions get in your
way. You have to stand back and look at it and try to put
yourself in the
other person's shoes."
Young also emphasized an interdisciplinary approach to the
curriculum.
Through team teaching, teachers integrated disciplines,
including science and
math, and American history and literature. "We tried to
stress at the Campus
School that, at all times, every teacher should be a
language arts teacher. All
teachers should be teaching English," he said.
MARIAN GRANGER
Paul Neman considered Marian Granger, who taught from 1949
to 1971, one
of the strengths of the school. "Without a doubt, if there
is anyone who had a
positive impact on students as
scholars, it was Marian Granger. Beers
agreed, recalling her rapping her
She was probably the best teacher I
Many students dreaded the book
Miss Granger required them to write
each year in junior high English. These
masterpieces, which could be on any
topic, would be 50 pages long or more.
"That is where I learned to write,"
Paul Robinson said. "We wrote and
wrote and wrote and wrote and we
hated it and we thought that Miss
Granger was a slave driver, but I came
out of Campus School knowing how
to write." Students took pride in their
books, whether they were Robinson's
science fiction novels, Beers' secret
agent story, or Gretchen Cremer
Brant's collections of poems. Marian Granger
65
RECOLLECTIONS
Julia Steinke Saterbak with students in a reading group
that used the International Teaching
Alphabet to improve their reading skills. Clockwise from
lower left are Jana Katz, Ralph
Gundersen, Carl Wiggert, Saterbak, Eric Pinski and an
unidentified girl.
One area just developing in the last years of Campus
School was special
education. Children with disabilities were somewhat rare
at the school.
However, when no private school would take a boy with a
developmental
disability, Agnes Breene agreed to include him in her
classroom. Christine
Midelfort felt that Breene was "really enlightened" in the
way she managed
this student. "She did not tolerate us making fun of him.
If John was
disruptive, she didn't get angry with him." Christine's
mother, Helga
Midelfort, also respected Breene for the great pains she
took to make sure the
rest of the children allowed for his infirmities. Among
those Breene took in in
the 1920s was Tom Brenner, who was then going blind.
Because of his
disability, he was placed in Breene's class despite being
three or four years
older than his classmates. Marian Ramlow remembered
Brenner as a very
66
CHAPTER 5
smart man who had to drop out of school because schools
did not know how
to adapt teaching to the needs of a blind person.
The concept of learning disabilities was just becoming
recognized as
Campus School was drawing to a close. Third grade teacher
Saterbak
remembered telling children to just "try harder" when they
had trouble
learning to read. "I would tell them 'Don't let your
finger do the reading. You
do the reading.'" Later, she realized those youngsters
used their fingers to keep
their place because the letters appeared reversed to them.
"Nobody knew it
then," she said.
It was a mother who helped Saterbak learn abut reading
disabilities. When
one of the children of Betty and Gunnar Gundersen had
trouble reading, they
began looking for ways to help their son. Gunnar Gundersen
looked through
medical literature for learning disabilities research. One
of the studies he
found was on the Orton-Gillingham Method of working with
children with
dyslexia. When Betty learned of a summer training program
for teachers, she
decided to go and hoped that Saterbak would accompany her.
The teacher
was not happy about the assignment. Even after Gundersen
Medical
Foundation provided a stipend to make up for the salary
she would lose by
not teaching summer school, she said she went with a "chip
on my shoulder
about the whole thing." As it turned out, Saterbak said
the workshop "turned
my teaching around. I was a good teacher before, but after
that workshop, I
learned about the world of individual differences."
CONFERENCES
Because Campus School was linked to the university,
children's learning
was measured frequently through standardized tests and
other research
projects conducted by education students. "We had tests,
maybe too many
tests," Abel said. "If there was a new test on the market,
we gave it to the
children to become acquainted with it."
During much of Abel's tenure at the Campus School,
children were not
given letter grades. Instead, teachers kept portfolios
with examples of a child's
work as a way to measure progress. "We felt 'what is an A
or a B or a C?'" she
recalled. However, because Central High School wanted
grades to help with
placement, ninth grade students did receive letter grades.
Because report cards
were not given, parent-teacher conferences took on greater
importance. In
fact, it was because Abel had experience with these
conferences in Owatonna,
Minnesota, that she was hired.
67
RECOLLECTIONS
She used the conferences to ask parents what they liked
and didn't like
about the Campus School and if there was something they
wanted their
children to be learning. One suggestion was for more
creative writing. When
one mother asked for help with her daughter's weight
problem, Abel
developed a science unit around nutrition. Students
already had a "heavy
dose" of health education because of the number of health
education teachers
in training.
Having a conference in one home helped Abel understand a
boy's reading
problem. There was not a single magazine or book in
evidence. "I had to
gently say it would help if the child could see his mother
reading a book or his
dad reading the newspaper. They didn't even take the
newspaper."
EXPECTATIONS
Campus School teachers had high expectations for the
children attending
there. But like any other school, there likely were
unintentional differences in
the ultimate roles that boys and girls would play as
adults. Campus School
still existed in the environment of a society which,
utitil recently, recognized
boys to be the future doctors, lawyers and business
leaders. Girls were the
teachers, nurses, homemakers and, of course, mothers.
Campus School was, indeed, progressive and "very modern."
In the 1930s,
boys took a unit of cooking, while girls had woodworking.
Signe Gundersen
Schroeder quickly found manual training to be more
interesting and fought
for the right of girls to take more beyond the beginning
class. After pleading
her case unsuccessfully to Director Leamer, she went back
to sewing class, a
course in which she never did excel. "We had to make these
pajamas. I
remember sticking my pajamas under my sweater and having
my mother
finish them," she said. "I did anything to get out of
sewing so I could play."
Years earlier, Margaret Merman Holley had her own travails
in domestic
science. Her assignment from teacher Elizabeth Saenger was
to sew bloomers,
a practical task because ready-made underwear was not then
available. "The
sewing machine was in front of windows facing south. We
had curtains on
the windows and one day I sewed my bloomers into the
curtains. She just had
a fit."
Sally Cremer once led a mutiny in home economics when she
organized the
girls to buy checked material for their aprons. She knew
the teacher who had
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CHAPTER 5
replaced Saenger had astigmatism and thought she would not
be able to see
their mistakes.
Like any other teacher in the 1960s and 1970s, Saterbak
thought little about
whether she was treating boys and girls alike. While she
and other female
teachers in the Campus School were in traditional women's
jobs, they
certainly lived independently and were leaders in their
fields. Still, looking
back, she said, "I probably expected different behavior of
girls and boys.
Through questions, I probably encouraged that. I probably
said sexist things. I
still did a little bit in my teaching in college classes.
Students called me on
things that way. Thank heavens they did."
Both boys and girls certainly were expected to behave
appropriately and she
found they lived up to her expectations. If Campus School
pupils were said to
be "brats," Saterbak did not find them in her classroom.
"I had warm
relationships with my kids. They liked to learn. They came
and worked, but
we had a lot of fun." A good example was the year the
end-of-the-year picnic
was rained out. Normally, the staff took the students to
Myrick Park and ran
them until they dropped. When rain prevented going to the
park, teachers
took the children to the school gymnasium for games. Then
Saterbak
By 1949, Domestic Science had become
Home Economics, a class for seventh and
eighth grade girls taught by Meta Leibl.
FRONT ROW, from left are: D. Capicotto,
P. Myers, Joyce Ernst, Phyllis Koblitz,
Jeannette Funke and Beverly Cowley.
BACK ROW: Mrs. Leibl, D. Spangler and
Barbara Gryphan.
1949 training school album
69
RECOLLECTIONS
suggested an indoor picnic - in her home just two blocks
away. The very
excited children were warned to be careful in Miss
Steinke's three-room
apartment. They also were given a mini-lesson in privacy.
They could look
around the apartment, but not open drawers. When it was
time for lunch,
each child was given a paper towel on which to sit on the
white carpet in her
living room. "The carpet did fine. Kids will meet your
expectations if they
know what is expected of them," she said.
Saterbak did have the opportunity to go to the homes of
many students as a
dinner guest, a common custom then. "As a single person I
loved it. I loved
getting into kids' homes and seeing where they lived. Some
were quite
elegant." It usually was the proud child's responsibility
to take his teacher on a
grand tour of the home. Saterbak remembered one tour that
became a bit too
grand. The youngster led her into his parents' bedroom,
where he began
opening the closets. "I got him out of there quickly," she
recalled.
Among those remembering these dinners was Peder Arneson,
who as a
Campus School student proudly showed his freshly-cleaned
room to his
teachers. Arneson looked forward to entertaining his own
son's teacher, but
his wife was amused. "Lilly laughed at me," he said. "You
just don't do that
any more. But that was the atmosphere of the place.
Everybody knew
everybody. It was one big family."
Teachers and principals knew the students and their
families well. That is
the reason they didn't get too upset with the "Skeleton
Club" shenanigans of
young Peder and his pal Rolf Gundersen. The two boys had
made a pact to
make the sign of the skull and crossbones every time they
went to the board
to work math problems. "That was our big goal in life," he
said. "We took a
sacred pledge." Of course principal Young did not salute
when the Skeleton
Club made a Jolly Roger pirate flag out of a dyed sheet
and ran it up the school
flag pole. "It was our crowning accomplishment," Arneson
said. "It flew up
there until Mr. Young saw it in the morning and took it
down." Recognizing
who was responsible for the dastardly deed, Young called
the young pirates
into the office and placed calls to their parents, whom he
already knew well,
very well.
The best way to summarize the spirit of Campus School was
freedom and
family, according to Terry Witzke, a Training School
kindergartner and a
Campus School sixth grade teacher and junior high math
teacher. Most
memorable of his kindergarten year was the day President
Roosevelt died.
"My teacher cried. I had never seen her cry. She was
visibly shaken that day."
Included in the Campus School family, was Kathryn Schnur,
who was
fulfilling Wisconsin teacher certification requirements by
teaching in Witzke's
classroom. Although she had been a teacher in Illinois,
she had to have what
was called "contact teaching" under supervision before she
could be licensed in
Wisconsin. Students could not help but notice the evolving
relationship. They
would whisper whatever they had heard about the two,
including that they
were going out for dinner. When it was obvious something
big was going on
outside the class, students pumped Witzke about what he
would give Schnur
for Christmas. He gave them this clue: One of five in 12.
The students figured
out he was referring to one of the five golden rings in
"The Twelve Days of
Christmas." The sixth grade girls, absolutely delighted by
the romance, were
thrilled by the engagement. "They did as much to cultivate
the relationship,"
Witzke said. "They wanted it to work."
Strong, caring relations, whether between teacher and
student teacher,
teacher and child, or teacher and parent, created an
enriched atmosphere for
learning. "We had the freedom to do what you felt you
wanted to do as a
teacher," said Witzke. "The interaction with other staff
members was
definitely a plus. We had a real feeling of community in
that school. We were
a family, a supportive loving family."
Students in this 1911 performance of a play by Shakespeare
were certainly into the act. The boys
are identified as Chas Weise, Harold Oxen, Philip
McConnell, Houghton, Hewitt Toland and
Elmer Linker.
Ask a child - or for that matter a teacher or parent -
what made Campus
School special and the answers universally will touch on
the school's extras.
Among them were fine arts, manual training, and physical
education plus the
interaction with the college/university campus.
In a sense, the entire college campus was the school for
the students at the
Training or Campus School. The college instructors not
only taught the big
people, they came to Campus School to teach those who were
a few feet
shorter. "We had some gifted and devoted teachers," said
Richard McLoone,
who entered kindergarten there in 1939. "The college
people did double duty.
They were teaching college and supervising practice
teachers and teaching at
the Training School. They did it for little or no money.
It was not too long
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RECOLLECTIONS
after the Depression years. They truly were educators."
Campus School was an excellent place to be because
students could take
advantage of university activities, Rick Wing said. "It
made the atmosphere
different and more elevated. It was helpful to learning
just to be in that
atmosphere where you were surrounded by college teachers
and 500 college
students. We had contact with all different kinds of
teachers in regular classes
and outside."
The college was not above noticing the young students as
well. A 1927
article noted a junior high "mixer" that evidently won the
approval of the
Racquet staff. "Here's hoping these boys and girls go on
to college. They won't
need to waste any time getting into the 'swing' of
things."
Here are a few examples of these experiences as told by
the now adult
children.
DRAMA ART AND MUSIC
The Christmas Pageant
For decades, it was the dream of every girl in the
Training or Campus
School to be the Spirit of Christmas in the annual
Christmas Pageant. Year
after year this extravaganza, with much pomp and
circumstance, was
witnessed by adoring children who dreamt about the roles
they might have in
junior high. Each year the same costumes were pulled out
of the magical
closets of third and fourth grades teacher Agnes Breene,
who had yards and
yards of donated velvet and tapestry remnants to wrap
around the children.
Musical direction was by Olive B. Place, music teacher for
both the school and
college.
Every class participated in the pageant, marching in with
lit candles while
"Come All Ye Faithful" was played by the college orchestra
under the
direction of Thomas Annett. Later, when safety concerns
prevailed, lighting
was by flashlights. Lenses were removed so the tiny bulbs
inside gave the
illusion of candles, although none of the kids was fooled.
Kindergarteners vied
to be angels singing "Away in the Manger," while other
grades performed
songs between scenes. The boys of the junior high school
portrayed the
Christmas story while the junior high girls sang special
songs. The first scene
involved the three wise men studying their scrolls for
references to the Advent
of Christ. It was followed by a pantomime in which the
star first appeared to
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CHAPTER 6
The Christmas Pageant was a tradition for many years, with
students watching and waiting
until junior high for the prize parts. Surrounded by a
choir of angels in 1948 are the wisemen,
portrayed by Bob Thoeny, Joe Longfellow and John Bibby;
Elizabeth Spangler as Mary and
Dick McKinny as Joseph. The shepherds are Roger Fuller,
James Mack and Dan Bowman.
1949 Training School Album
the shepherds. The third scene took place in Herod's
Court, where Herod
received the three wise men. The fourth showed Mary and
Joseph at the
infant's cradle with shepherds coming to worship. The wise
men offered their
gifts in the fifth scene. In between, the audience sang
Christmas carols.
The Spirit of Christmas, dressed to look like an angel,
wore white cheese
cloth with tinsel crisscrossing her bosom. The secret of
being named the Spirit
of Christmas was understood by one of those given the
honor - her singing
abilities, or rather lack thereof. "Miss Place didn't want
me singing," Signe
Gundersen Schroeder said with a laugh. Instead, she read
the Christmas story
from the Best of Literature.
Peter was the first of the Pappas boys to portray King
Herod. His purple silk
costume, made by his mother, was handed down to his
brothers and others
assigned to the prized role over the years. He, too, had
the feeling he was
named to the role because of his singing ability. "Miss
Place felt that I was
deliberately singing poorly. Then she became convinced I
couldn't sing and
was interested in keeping me out of any singing group."
75
RECOLLECTIONS
In later years, the Christmas
Pageant was replaced with less
religious performances, often
written by students. In the
1960s, Ken Spirduso, Jane
Bedessem and Gina LeRoy
were reindeer.
The Christmas Pageant had the greatest turnout of any
production in the
year. Family members and college students packed the Main
Hall Theater
and later the Little Theater in Morris Hall. The
extravaganza left lasting
impressions on the pupils, who say nostalgic memories
still surface around
the holidays.
In 1956, the pageant went the way of many such productions
when
schools became concerned about the need to make these
events more
secular. Instead of Christmas vacations, students had
winter vacations. And,
instead of Christmas pageants, they participated in
holiday programs.
Students, including the one Jewish student who also hoped
for a starring
role, were unhappy about the change.
If there is any disappointment that Linda Schleiter
Sherwood had in the
Campus School it was the change in the Christmas program
the year she
would have been eligible for a major role. From the time
she was tapped as a
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CHAPTER 6
first grade angel, she dreamt of a starring part as a
ninth grade student. "We
understood why they made the decision, but we thought it
was really stupid
because nobody knew anyone who objected to it," Sherwood
said of the
religious program.
When music teacher William Estes joined the Campus School
staff in 1959,
the changes had already occurred. While there may have
been concern about
people of different religions, Estes said each music
teacher wanted to have his
or her mark on the program. So did the students, who wrote
their own
Christmas programs. One script explained Christmas to the
extraterrestrials
who happened to arrive on earth at the holidays. "It gave
the kids a chance to
say what is important about Christmas and what our customs
are," Estes
said.
The later programs brought all of the children on stage
for the proud
parents to see, including one boy who told his parents he
and another boy had
"the most important job" in the play - holding up a
three-dimensional
snowman. When his partner was ill, the boy proudly held
the frosty fellow by
himself, completely blocking his parents' view of him.
Drama
Drama was important practically from the school's
beginning. A 1912
Pilgrim play given just before Thanksgiving, was said to
include a "genial
jollification in which Indians, Pilgrims and children of
modern times appeared
and entertained with songs, dances and drills." In 1916,
young Hubert
Schleiter gained the "absolute attention" of the audience
in making the "lusty
announcement" of the dramatization of The Sun and the
Wind. The play
"brought forth peals of laughter as did Hubert's
presentation of the
'Ellygator.'"
For many years, students portrayed the story of
immigration through The
Spirit of La Crosse. Dressed as though they were "right
off the boat," children
portrayed a variety of scenes, beginning with a ship bound
for America from
Scandinavia. One scene depicted a Scandinavian-American
home of 1885,
another an immigrant family of 1918. The final scene was
of La Crosse in
1930, a demonstration of what was to become America's
melting pot. "We
were celebrating diversity," Marian Ramlow said. "We just
didn't know it at
the time."
Elementary grades had their own classroom productions.
Joseph Lieder,
George Wittich and Samuel Fellows were dressed to portray
three Humpty
77
RECOLLECTIONS
Students portrayed the story of immigration in The
Spirit of La Crosse. This 1930 photo was labeled with
names, from left to right without indication of rows:
Catherine Michel, Jane Melby, Gretchen Simmerling,
Janet Kircher, Ralph Peters, Emily Fairchild, James
Stone, Betty Persons, George Wittich, Margaret
Marshall, Earnest Lupie, Sam Fellows, Betty
Larson, Anne Erickson, Elinor Waminger, Billy
Rooney, Jean Harnwell and John Hundredmark.
Dumpties one year and "caused much laughter from the
audience." Among
other plays in the lower grades were Hansel and Gretel and
Hi, Ho, Come to the
Fair.
Sally Cremer played Wendy in a 1934 production of Peter
Pan. How could
she forget? "In the last scene, I was trying to get up
gracefully when - r-r-rip
- the hand-made, paper costume split in half. One of my
friends hastened up
to me with her coat and relieved me momentarily, but it
was just ages before
the second grade boys did cease their teasing," she
recalled.
It was a ninth grade class tradition to give a play each
year, including The
Return of Rip Van Winkle which cast Jane Mitchell Aarstad
in the part of the
sharp-tongued Dame Van Winkle. "I yelled and yelled,"
Aarstad recalled. "I
loved that part." The 1942 production of Rip Van Winkle
was notable, too,
because there were incentives to selling tickets. The
student who sold the
most tickets won a dollar in defense stamps. The second
highest seller won
50 cents in defense stamps.
A look at the college student newspaper over the years
shows many
productions and annual junior high plays, including The
Dyspeptic Ogre, Ten
Minutes by the Clock, The Teeth of the Gift Horse, and The
Hole in the Wall. One
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CHAPTER 6
unofficial play, A Typical Day with the Ninth Grade or Why
Teachers Get Grey,
was written as a graduation skit by students who took on
roles of various
teachers in the school. One teacher took their satire
personally. During the
performance, the teacher in question got up and walked out
crying. Pat
Johnson Robinson, who had practiced a lot for the part,
felt terrible.
If college students were the frequent - and ready -
audiences of Campus
School productions, pupils also were called on to play
parts in college
productions whenever a child was needed. 'They were always
dragging
Campus School kids to play before the college students,"
Robinson said.
In 1962, the ninth grade performed the operetta Tom
Sawyer, which
included Roy Campbell as Injun Joe, Tom Nustad as Black
Rat, Warren
Loveland as Huck, and Tom Sleik as Tom Sawyer. During a
dress rehearsal
with an audience of Campus School children, Campbell and
Nustad hid canes
and straw hats just off stage in a spot where they knew
Sleik and Loveland
would look during a dramatic scene. Campbell and Nustad
stationed
themselves for action as Sleik and Loveland crouched
behind gravestones. At
SALLY
CREMER
PHOTO
Sally Schwanzle Cremer's performance of Wendy in Peter Pan
in 1934 remains memorable.
Her paper costume split in the back during the show. In
addition to Cremer, leading
characters were Mary Jane Young as Peter Pan and Betty
Bayer as Tinker Bell.
Barbara Ramlow and Cindy
Voight were in the same
production.
80
CHAPTER 6
just the moment that Tom and Huck looked off stage,
Campbell and Nustad
pulled out the hats and canes and performed the old soft
shoe. "Warren and I
started to laugh and couldn't give our lines," Sleik
recalled.
Drama was part of the school in less formal ways as well.
For Halloween,
an all out celebration included an annual costume
competition. Rick Wing
and Adolf Gundersen took top honors in the late 1930s.
Wing dressed as a
robot, covering himself completely with a series of boxes
painted silver, while
Gundersen, dressed in bowler hat and bright colors, was
the freak show
barker. All would have been fine had the barker not lit
and smoked a cigar.
"Inside this damn thing, I could see him turn green as a
snake," Wing recalled.
"He looked worse and worse and ran out, leaving the robot
unable to go
anywhere. He was sick as a dog in the locker room."
Thankfully, the illness
occurred after the team accepted first prize.
ART AND MUSIC EDUCATION
Campus School had art and music specialists working with
children when
most public schools relegated those subjects to regular
teachers with limited
training. The art and music teachers tried to weave their
lessons in with the
regular curriculum. If a class were studying dinosaurs,
William Estes would
Halloween is an
exciting holiday at
any school, including
the Training School,
where students were
given prizes for the
best costumes. Photo
from 1950s.
Hopefully, the old shirt-turned-smock
prevented paint spots on this boy's
clothing.
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CHAPTER 6
teach music theory through songs about dinosaurs. In the
junior high, when
students studied local government, they also looked at
local music tastes
using radio personality Lindy Shannon and his La Crosse
Top 40 listing of
popular songs. "When they studied what makes city
government work, we
studied what makes a song work. We had them find out how
many records
had to be sold to get on the Top 40 list in La Crosse,"
Estes said. "We built on
the interest that kids had in the classroom work and
translated it into
teaching about music."
Avant-garde teaching usually was accepted at Campus
School. However, in
the late 1960s, a minor scandal occurred in the art room.
The art teacher,
known for her creativity, had the children fill the room
with toilet paper.
They stood on tables, throwing toilet paper over pipes and
stringing it from
ceiling to floor and from one end of the room to the other
until no one could
enter without becoming entangled in the white stuff. "It
was meant to be
expressive, a beautiful 3-D sculpture," Gretchen Cremer
Brant said. "Suha
Kleif was a wonderful, eccentric art teacher." Parents
apparently were less
impressed with the sculpture and "raised the roof," not
because it was a
non-traditional art experience but because of the waste of
paper.
LIBRARY
It was a familiar sight for many years after 1947 to see
Alice Hagar moving
quickly through the library to find books for children.
"She would bustle
around," said Bob Seaquist, "but she knew what everybody's
interests were
and she would head you toward that." Christine Midelfort
remembered Miss
Hagar "would take someone like me who was an avid reader,
but only read
animal stories. Instead of criticizing or fussing, she led
me to all the best
animal stories. She led me to historical fiction, civil
rights fiction and then
ancient history fiction. She led me right through the
library."
This small woman with a huge dedication to children and
reading had been
the children's librarian at the George Peabody College for
Teachers
Demonstration School. She came to La Crosse as the first
full-time,
professional librarian for the Campus School because it
gave her an
opportunity to work directly with children and to teach
children's literature
to college students. "That was the heart of Campus School,
the children and
the training of teachers. It all dovetailed together," she
said.
Alice Hagar's library encouraged children to think,
analyze and research.
She worked with teachers by providing materials that
corresponded with
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RECOLLECTIONS
A view of the
Campus School
library, circa 1970,
with Alice Hagar at
right in the back of
the room.
classroom units. She helped individuals and groups of
students locate
information for research projects. Her library also was
the home of state of
the art audio-visual materials. "She was early in
developing a library media
center or instructional materials center," Paul Neman
said. "She recognized
the importance of alternative technology."
The second floor library was entered through large double
doors. Archways
in the ceiling and stained glass windows with scenes of
reading made the
room inviting as did the shelves filled with good books.
The library had
4,000 volumes when it opened in the new school building in
1940 and grew to
9,700 books, 3,000 pictures, 64 periodicals and many film
strips, recordings
and pamphlets by 1968. Up a small flight of stairs were
two more library
alcoves that allowed youngsters to read at tables, browse
for more books or
peer down on the main floor. Children came by class once a
week and
individually or in small groups as needed. "It was a joy
to assist them in their
research," Hagar said. "The faculty stressed reading and
research and use of
the library. It was used constantly. The library prepared
children for
research."
To encourage children to read books, the librarian
frequently gave book
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CHAPTER 6
talks, displayed different kinds of books, often organized
to parallel lessons in class, and read stories to them.
She
used a variety of lists and review services to select
books
for the library. She also relied on her master's thesis
research on children's reading. Hagar had reviewed
reading records of all junior high students at the
Peabody Demonstration School Library.
Linda Schleiter Sherwood remembered Hagar "doing a
very subtle, but good job of directing me toward better
literature. She got me into biographies, which led to my
interest in history, which was my first master's." Later,
when Sherwood returned to the university for a second
master's degree, she took a class in children's literature
from Hagar. She flinched momentarily when Hagar
announced that she and little Linda had started together
at the college in 1947. Recovering quickly, the student
grew to appreciate the new relationship with her
librarian.
After Campus School closed, the library became the
Alice Hagar Curriculum and Instruction Center. Today the
center is used by
education students studying children's literature.
SCIENCE/ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
Even in the 1920s and 30s there was an emphasis on science
and the
outdoors at the Training School. Students hiked around the
campus to
identify trees and spring flowers. When a rare North
American songbird
- the scarlet tanager - was noticed outside the first and
second grade
classroom there was great excitement.
Outdoor education became more formal under Pauline Abel's
direction
when sixth grade students spent a week camping at the Boy
Scouts' Camp
Decorah, in Trempealeau County. The children had an active
role in planning
the week. As part of their math lessons, they planned
meals, figuring out how
much food would be needed and what the cost would be. At
least one student
received a practical lesson in makeshift cooking. A boy
who had the
responsibility of cutting cheese for his classmates was
puzzled about where to
rest the cheese. "He was used to a nice formica counter,"
Abel said with a
smile. "I told him to spread wax paper on a log. He found
out you could do
things outside."
Librarian
Alice Hagar
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RECOLLECTIONS
Campus School students working on what appears to be a
lake water quality study while at
Clam Lake. 1971.
Years later, outdoor education was replaced by
environmental education.
The last year the junior high program was in existence,
the entire junior high
spent a week at Clam Lake in the Chequamegon National
Forest in Northern
Wisconsin. In advance, the program was dubbed "Schein's
Folly" for science
teacher Norm Schein, but the environmental week was
anything but that. In
May 1971, seventy six students, teachers, parents and
volunteers left the
school in two buses with signs saying, "Clam Lake or
Bust." During that
week, students experienced both snow and rain. "It was
miserable, but we
had a marvelous time," Neman said.
Every subject was geared toward the outdoors. Students
were so busy they
had no time to get into trouble. When their heads hit
their pillows, they were
out. Each night, teachers planned the next day's
activities. Each morning they
met with students to discuss what would occur. Students
tapped silver maple
trees with the hope of boiling down the sap to make syrup.
Unfortunately,
the sap was burned by the students in charge. "I was one
of the people who
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CHAPTER 6
burned the maple syrup and ruined it," confessed Schein's
daughter, Laura.
To practice first aid, each person was assigned a role in
a mock plane crash,
from the person who panicked to the ones responsible for
rescuing victims.
The camp had a radio station, the Voice of Clam Lake, and
a newspaper, the
Clam Chatter. Rick Davis' short wave radio picked up 19
different countries
using the International Code taught to him by Schein.
Students also
participated in soil sampling and lake surveying. A water
quality group took
tests on 10 different lakes, sending their results to the
state Department of
Natural Resources. The DNR responded that the students'
findings were
comparable to those of their own biologists.
Led to believe they would spend the night on an island,
one group of
students planned what they would need to do to survive.
The survival
techniques actually were used when one of the teachers got
lost taking a
group of students on a hike. Eventually the lost group
found its way by
stopping to listen for cars and then moving towards the
sounds. Within
minutes after the group found the road, Schein drove up in
a bus and took
them back to camp.
The environmental experience was just one way the Campus
School was
advanced for its time. First under Ken Fish and Bobby
Gowlland and later
under Schein, the emphasis in science education was
hands-on. uThe secret
was to let kids discover on their own. We didn't tell them
very much. We let
Students constructing a space capsule as part of a science
unit, circa 1970.
87
RECOLLECTIONS
them think. We taught them to reason and we taught them to
think," Schein
said. Students experimented and then explained what they
learned. If they
did not come to the correct conclusion about an
experiment, he let them
Usleep on it and led them to their own discovery." He also
allowed students to
demonstrate what they knew rather than simply take tests.
Instead of grades,
which can become ends in themselves, he gave the students
evaluations. "I
didn't give exams. I evaluated them on their portfolios
and their
performance." Sometimes, he would leave a term on the
board before class
began. When students saw "Bernoulli," for example, they
used classroom
resources to discover the day's lesson would be about
unequal air pressure.
At the time the space program was evolving, the class
built a space craft.
With $100 in materials, they used quarter-inch plywood to
build a
17-foot-long by 8-foot-diameter craft that contained two
contour seats. They
carried it to the roof where students took turns sitting
in it, first for an hour,
then a half day, then a full day and a couple even stayed
overnight. An
electrical system --"mission control" - allowed students
in the spacecraft to
hear lessons from the classroom.
SCIENCE FAIRS
The ultimate in hands-on science was the science fair. The
projects these
youngsters did over the years were downright unbelievable.
Students made
radios, electronic scoreboards, and computers out of
materials they could find
at home. One girl tested mouthwash to see which brand was
the most
effective in killing bacteria.
Tom Sleik recalled his science projects were nothing in
comparison with
those of his good friend, Daniel Gelatt. "Dan always did
state-of-the-art
things that the rest of us couldn't figure out." Among
them was Gelatt's
centrifugal force machine, which taught him a bit about
trial and error in
science. The plan was to study how higher gravitational
pulls affected the
ability of fertile chicken eggs to hatch. He "begged" an
old bicycle wheel from
Smith's Bicycle Shop in downtown La Crosse and did some
rudimentary
calculations about how fast the wheel would have to spin
to reach twice the
pull of gravity. He then put eggs in boxes attached to the
wheel and set the
wheel spinning vertically with an electrical motor.
"Later, I discovered it was
spinning ten times too fast, or 100 times gravity," he
said. "The eggs broke
and I had a thin yellow line of yolk across the floor, up
the wall, and across
the ceiling. It was like taking a brush and painting
yellow across the ceiling,
floors and walls."
88
CHAPTER 6
His second generation centrifugal
force machine had a horizontally
spinning wheel. No chickens were
hatched the first year of his experiment,
so he kept trying, becoming "one of the
better customers for the Sears farm
department" in its old downtown
La Crosse store. Among his errors was a
burned out heat lamp, the source of
heat for incubating the eggs. Instead of
102 degrees, he discovered the eggs at
room temperature one day. On another
occasion, the family smelled something
similar to angel food cake. This time the
thermostat had failed and the eggs were
cooked. "I learned about redundancy,"
he said, "the need for two thermostats
and two lamps."
In the second year, he actually had
chickens hatch. "It was exciting to
finally have some come out alive. We
had gotten to the point where they
would peck at the shell, but they didn't
have the energy to get out. We helped
them get out of the shells." The experiment did show that
the eggs that were
not spun - of course he had a control group - hatched more
often, although
it was difficult to tell them apart because the chicks
pulled off the strings that
indicated whether they were in the spun or unspun
categories of life. Gelatt
gave the chickens to a farmer, who reported they laid a
lot more double yolk
eggs than he had ever seen.
Sleik's own science fair experience was studying the
effects of junk food
and healthy diets on guinea pigs. The pigs, like their
human friends, loved the
ham and chocolate chip cookies fed to them. Any dietitian
could have
predicted the results. Instead of lasting several months,
the project was over
in a few days. "They truly loved the salt, but it killed
them," he said.
A Campus School science fair led to a major change in
lifestyle for one
young student, Lincoln Gundersen, who still sucked his
thumb in fourth
grade. The change occurred after Carole Loveland decided
to mix a little
homework with baby-sitting for the Gundersen children. She
asked young
Lincoln to stick his thumb in a petri dish filled with a
growing material. A few
Construction of
a DNA molecule
was the science
fair project of
Linda Edwards.
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RECOLLECTIONS
Dennis Brault's science fair project on the "New Horizons
of Rocketry"
included information about successfully launching a
rocket.
days later she returned and showed him what had grown from
the germs on
his thumb, "ogres all over the place." He recalled "a huge
mound of mold and
junk. It was bacteria, mold and other microscopic
material, bugs that were on
my thumb. That day, I quit sucking my thumb."
Gundersen had his own science fair projects during his
junior high years.
Among them was an attempt to make a home-made x-ray
machine using
instructions for young scientists on the back of an
edition of Scientific
American. He used an old Model A generator from the
Shiftar Brothers
junkyard, a vacuum tube from the back of a television set
and an old electrical
engine from a store on Third Street. Workers at that store
helped him make
an armature, which involved wrapping wire around plastic
tubes to change
the current from low voltage to high. "The dumb thing
never worked as far as
I could tell," he said. "Of course, I may have gotten
radiated up the wazoo and
not known about it." He and his radiologist father, Gunnar
Gundersen, tested
the device at Gundersen Clinic. There, in a dark closet,
they turned it on
behind a fluorescent screen where any radiation would have
been illuminated.
"There was sparkling and crackling," he said, "but nothing
else. I realize now
that we could have gotten radiated. But Pop was interested
in doing unusual
things."
During the first of Laura Schein Johnsrud's science
projects, she tried to
90
CHAPTER 6
demonstrate the theory of imprinting. In place of their
mother, Johnsrud
planned for a red ball to be the first object the dozen
chickens she hatched
would see. "Instead, the first thing they saw were my
shoes," she said. "They
used to follow me around when I wore those shoes or when
they saw the red
ball." The science project provided another lesson for
her. "That is when I
discovered chickens stink." In another project, Johnsrud
and Lynn Cordiero
tried to teach a college laboratory monkey to distinguish
between textures,
color and shapes. On one occasion, the monkey got out and
a frightened
Johnsrud ran from the lab, leaving her friend "in there
screaming."
Norm Schein was not a big fan of science fairs because he
believed more
work was spent on posters than actual science. Instead, he
incorporated the
idea of science investigations, which were to be done
whenever students had
free time. To go beyond posters, he established science
progress day, monthly
discussions by the students about progress in their
science investigations. He
remembered one boy working in advanced math asking for
additional time
during class to explain his work. The boy then used
Einstein's theory of
relativity to prove the amount of energy in a common
pencil eraser could
blow up the city of La Crosse. "The kids were lost. I was
lost," the teacher
said, adding he sent the boy's report to a theoretical
physicist at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, who confirmed his
findings.
Peder Arneson used solar cells from a catalog to build a
car run by solar
energy. Scott Davis showed how sound waves could be
conducted on light
waves, which led to a demonstration before the Wisconsin
Association of
Teachers of Science and a variety of awards from the
Junior Academy of
Science.
After Campus School closed, Schein helped develop the
local Wisconsin
Junior Science and Humanities Symposium. Twenty high
schools brought
four or five students each to the symposium to describe
their investigations.
The top five went on to a national symposium, where eight
could be selected
for an international science meeting. Two former students,
Sylvia Van Atta
O'Brien and Sara Edwards, went on to the national event.
Now a physician,
O'Brien traces her interest in science to her Campus
School years, where she
had the resources of campus faculty and the greenhouse for
her study of how
radiation affected the growth of tomato seeds. The science
investigations not
only forced her to think and read in order to do the
research, they also
prepared her for major science projects in high school.
The science classroom did have a bit of an uproar when
Randy Beers and
David Rolnick reported the disappearance of a fictitious
electrical part - the
"Double Pole Triple-Throw Hydrobrometer." For months,
there were earnest
discussions with students about who might have taken the
equipment and
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RECOLLECTIONS
who would pay to replace it. The item was recovered nearly
20 years years
later, in 1989, when Beers received a wedding present from
Rolnick. Inside a
box labeled "Double-Pole Triple-Throw Hydrobrometer" was
some sort of
electrical device. "I finally found it," Rolnick's note
said. Beers roared. "It was
funny. We were scared to death at the time," he said. "A
couple days after we
reported it missing, Mr. Rasmussen, our principal, came in
and announced
somebody had stolen a valuable item and that somebody had
to return it. But
there was no such thing."
MANUAL TRAINING
To this day, Sam Fellows remembers the manual training
classes he had as a
student in the early 1930s. "I made a lot of ash trays for
my mother," he said.
"I learned a lot of woodworking. I'm a little handier now
than I would have
been had I not had that earlier training."
In the time of Merton Lyon and of Lester Steinhoff, manual
training
involved the use of hands and mind. It was more than ash
trays and
woodwork, according to Steinhoff, the last manual training
teacher at the
Campus School. His students worked in woods and newer
materials as they
became available - metal enameling, felt, and plastics.
Manual Training, later called industrial arts, was a class
and a club at the Training School in
1949. Shown here are club members, from left, Newell
(Hank) Holley, Jim Erickson, teacher
92 Lester Steinhoff, Franz Schubert and Tommy Thompson.
1949 Taining School Album
CHAPTER 6
Initially, the shop classes were for seventh through ninth
grade boys. But,
as time went on, boys and girls as young as third grade
learned a variety of
crafts. "Curriculum was never dictated to you," Steinhoff
said. "When I
wanted to start something new, I went ahead and ordered
the materials and
started teaching plastics, metal enamels or whatever it
was." He also worked
with stage productions. With low budgets, the children had
quick lessons in
creative invention. They learned to fashion trees for a
South Sea island from
carpet roll tubes. To create a big storm, they used a
large fan for wind and a
sheet of metal for thunder.
One example of the ability to make use of the hands and
the mind occurred
when junior high students Robert Seaquist, Dan Gelatt, Tom
Nustad and
Mark Temte were working the stage crew. "For some reason,
we decided we
needed a telephone to communicate between the Little
Theater and the shop
on the opposite end of the building," said Seaquist. The
resourceful boys
begged and borrowed bits and pieces for the project. The
telephone company
donated handsets and Northern States Power provided the
wire - wire heavy
enough to carry 2,000 volts. One summer they spent several
weeks pulling the
cable through the utility tunnels under the school. Of
major concern was
whether anyone would turn on the steam while they were
working.
Custodian Myron Berg knew of their efforts and apparently
kept things cool.
The major event was when Tom Nustad got stuck in one of
the tunnels. "We
tugged and pulled on him and he squeezed through the south
end of the
building," Seaquist recalled. The end result was the
ability to call back and
forth between the stage and the shop plus a tremendous
amount of pride.
Those wires, incidentally, were still in place the last
time they checked.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Because the La Crosse campus had a physical education
emphasis, physical
education majors were involved with Campus School
throughout its history.
For young boys, these student teachers were absolute
thrills, particularly
when the college's star basketball or football players
worked with them. "We
got along very well with the college students. In fact,
when we had recess a
lot of the college football players would come out and
help us with football,"
said Robert Schilling, who attended the Training School in
about 1919 or 1920
as a sixth grade student. "They would help us with
baseball, too."
"I enjoyed gym class because we always had fabulous
student teachers, all
the best athletes," said Rick Wing of his experiences in
the 1930s. Because of
93
Rope climbing was and is a time-honored physical education
tradition. The four girls climbing ropes in
this 1949 photo of the Girls Gym Shoe Club are: Tinka
Crosby, Alice Engelhard, Dana Ruediger, and
Barbara Gryphan.
1949 La Crosse Training School Album
those close relationships, Campus School students felt the
college/university
teams were their own and rarely missed games. In fact,
kids could attend for a
dime in 1921, reminded the Racquet. uThere are five home
games, kids, and
they are going to be knock-outs, so get your dimes
together and see the
maroon and grey team in action every time you can."
In an era when physical education was considered a frill
in many school
districts, Campus School students had the subject daily,
including swimming
once a week. "Friday afternoons swimming in Wittich Hall
... that was
something really special that no other school had," Sleik
said. Boys swam
nude in the pool, apparently because school officials
believed it was more
sanitary. It was a major interest of the pre-pubescent
boys to learn whether
girls swam in the buff as well. They did not.
Boys were not the only ones to take an interest in
developing bodies.
94 Swimming lessons provided an opportunity for young
girls to learn more than
CHAPTER 6
the crawl or butterfly. "We learned the facts of life in
swimming lessons," said
Jane Horner Stuckert, a student of the 1930s. With college
students changing
in the same room, they had a glimpse of body changes to
come. And Signe
Schroeder filled in her classmates on where babies came
from. "We went to
her house and got out her father's medical books,"
Stuckert said with a smile.
The Campus School's physical education program focused on
a different
type of changing body, one that was changing toward
health, strength and
self-confidence. The program was based on "movement
education," or
teaching children how to control their bodies. Rather than
teaching them
competitive sports, children were taught to throw, run,
dodge, catch. Physical
education teachers, including practice teachers, developed
individual contracts
with children that included their personal goals and how
they would
accomplish them.
At times children took equipment home to use with their
parents. Not only
did learning these skills give them better control, it
helped them feel better
about themselves.
Liza Ramlow, a 1963 graduate, said the physical education
classes "made an
enormous difference" in her life. While there were gifted
athletes in the
school, everyone participated in sports, skilled or not.
This total involvement
of all children in activities established an "I-can-do-it"
attitude. Children
learned all sports, including lacrosse, which was played
with homemade
sticks. While her own children today would be appalled by
equipment that is
not regulation, Ramlow said the makeshift sticks served
them well.
ATHLETICS
While the emphasis was not on team sports, Campus School
did at times
field a boys basketball team and a football team, major
achievements
considering the size of the classes from which the teams
were picked. The
1939 graduating class had barely enough for a basketball
team if everyone
played. "We were terrible, absolutely awful," Adolf
Gundersen said of the
team composed of himself, Sibley Felton, John Hahn, Robert
Rolfe and Jack
Brindley. His junior high football team was somewhat more
successful,
particularly the year he was in seventh grade and there
were great athletes in
ninth. He was particularly lucky in practice one day to
tackle a player
20 pounds heavier than himself and 5 to 6 inches taller.
So impressive was his
play that his coach put him into a real game with
Central's B team.
Gundersen remembered "getting clobbered. We were out of
our element. I had
no business being there."
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RECOLLECTIONS
After years of discouraging seasons, the Campus
School boys basketball team was 10-0 in 1965-66.
FRONT ROW, from left: Jeff Jansky, Dave Nockels,
coach/teacher Orv Brault, David Schwandt and
Bill Vickroy, Jr.
BACK ROW: Dennis Brault, Hunter Frederick,
Tom Schmidt, William Menke, Bill Peterson
and Mike Wille.
Terry Witzke photo taken by Robert Kerska.
The Campus School basketball team struggled to maintain a
perfect record
of losses for three years in a row from 1958 to1961. So
tough was it for the
team, in fact, that Coach Orville Brault used "Sweet
Georgia Brown" as its
theme song. The inside joke referred to the Harlem Globe
Trotters, who had
the same theme song and a somewhat different perfect
record - all wins.
In 1962, when Tom Sleik, Dan Gelatt and Roy Campbell were
in ninth
grade, the team's luck changed. They lost the season's
first game by a
heart-breaking 2 points. But "Big Daddy Roy and the Midget
4" went on to
win seven out of 10 games that year. At 6'3", Campbell was
the leader on the
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CHAPTER 6
team, which had no one else taller than 5'10." The1965-66
team actually went
10-0, a perfect record watched and admired by a group of
girls who followed
them from junior high to junior high.
Campus School truly had the home court advantage. Visiting
teams had
difficulty playing on the not quite regulation size court.
Competing teams
would be flustered during a full court press. Also, the
home team knew the
location of dead spots in the floor created by loose tiles
and was used to the
fans' feet on the out of bounds lines.
"We had some talent, but not a lot of talent," said Paul
Robinson who
learned one lesson about fans who take their sports
seriously. After one away
game, he was waiting in a taxi cab for the ride back to
school when an
opposing fan opened the door and punched him in the mouth,
causing heavy
bleeding when his braces cut his lips. "It was my first
exposure to kids in a
sporting event doing nasty things to each other," he said.
SCOUTS
For many years, every boy was in Boy Scouts, and
practically every girl was
enrolled in Girl Scouts. "Every boy at least in my class
was in Scouts," said
Bob Seaquist, a student in the 1950s. The troop performed
public service
indicative of the times, such as putting March of Dimes
labels on envelopes
for the fund drive against polio. That particular service
project hit close to
home because the brother of a troop member had polio.
In later years, under the direction of physical
education/math teacher
Brault, the troop performed another public service. The
boys performed as a
lip synch version of the comedy band Spike Jones. Dressed
in strange
costumes, they pretended to play instruments and sing
songs such as "You
Always Hurt the One You Love." The boys actually earned
money for their
entertainment - $35 for an evening, which was thrown into
the troop
treasury. The highlight of their career as the Spike Jones
Review was playing
the Davis Fair in Brault's hometown, Davis, Illinois. "We
played every song
we knew," Sleik said. "They wouldn't let us go."
Brault truly loved kids. He was the kind of fellow who
gave rides home
after meetings, stopping on the way to treat Scouts to a
malt. On one of their
many overnight camping trips, the boys would not quiet
down. Brault didn't
get angry. Instead, he started the day with a big
breakfast at 3 a.m. Seaquist
remembered a performance of Swan Lake in which he broke
his foot coming
97
RECOLLECTIONS
off the stage. Because he could not participate in
physical education classes, he
spent time in Brault's office. When a practice teacher
took over Brault's class,
he took young Seaquist to a downtown cafe for a hot beef
sandwich before
running (or hobbling) through errands.
"Orville Brault was very out-going, a generous human being
and a lot of
fun," said Terry Witzke. "The kids followed him like the
Pied Piper." So loved
was Brault by the children in his classes and in his Boy
Scout troop that, at an
appreciation dinner for him, an "amazing amount of money"
was put into a
cash purse.
The La Crosse Tribune caption for this photo credited the
Campus School's Pack 2, Den
1 Cub Scouts, with "helping in the fight againt polio by
pasting identification stickers
on envelopes for the Mothers March on Polio." From left:
Steve Mewaldt, Mark
Temte, Tom Nustad, Warren Loveland, Bob Seaquist and Paul
Schilling.
BOB SEAQUIST PHOTO
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CHAPTER 6
SALLY CREMER PHOTO
Members of the Training School's Girl Scout Troop 4 won
first prize at the Girl Scout
Banquet in the 1930s. Left to right: Patsy Schillings,
Jane Greer, Charlotte Miller,
Josephine Colman, Sally Schwanzle, Mary Gundersen and
Marie Wenzel.
The Campus School's Girl Scout Troop 72 performed its own
show, Our
Gentleman Friend. Sally Cremer, who continued her mother's
tradition of
being a Girl Scout leader, called upon troop member Liza
Ramlow, who had
written plays since she was little, to write the show. The
play, based on a
surprising woodsman the family met while on vacation, was
presented in the
Campus School's Little Theater on January 27, 1961. The
girls earned the
players' badge for their efforts in producing a play -
from auditions to ticket
selling to scenery to costumes. They also earned enough
money for a field trip
to Minneapolis. And, because they planned their entire
itinerary, the girls also
earned the Scouts' travelers' badge. uThese kids had so
many advantages,"
Cremer said, "we had to knock ourselves out to make it
interesting enough for
them."
Making it "interesting enough" for these children was what
Campus School
extras were all about.
It is one of the ironies of teacher education that the
least amount of training
was required for the toughest job - the jack-of-all-trades
country school
teacher. Considering the tremendous differences in the
social, emotional,
physical and intellectual development of children in any
one grade, the idea
of teachers balancing six or eight grades in a country
school is downright
amazing. But country teachers did it all - every subject
in every grade plus
art, music, and physical education. They had to be
teacher, specialist,
counselor, parent and even caretaker for the school
building. Topping it all,
for many years young teachers could receive certification
with as little as one
or two years of education at state or county-run normals.
In fact, when the
La Crosse Normal opened in 1909, students could enroll in
the rural course
with only an eighth grade education. By 1927, when La
Crosse was a
teachers college, the rural course still was for only one
or two years beyond
high school. In 1937, a minimum of two years of education
beyond high
school was required to be licensed as a rural teacher.
Even a year or two of education was an improvement over
conditions in
country schools in the early years of statehood. "During
the first decade after
Wisconsin became a state, country school teachers were for
the most part
wretchedly incompetent," according to the Educational
History of Wisconsin.
"Almost anyone who cared to teach could do so.
Examinations, it is true,
were conducted by town superintendents, but they were
farcical in character
and anyone who had but a passing acquaintance with
reading, arithmetic,
geography, writing and spelling could secure a
certificate." Parents and school
officers were indifferent to the qualifications of
teachers and the "opinion
was prevalent that ignorance was a valuable aid in
imparting knowledge to
young people."
Country school teachers literally served thousands of
districts in
Wisconsin prior to 1965 at which time the state ordered
consolidation of
districts so all would be connected with high schools. La
Crosse County had
70 districts in addition to those operated by the cities
of La Crosse and
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Onalaska. Unincorporated towns operated their own schools,
most of which
had eight grades in one room or were "state graded,"
meaning they had two
rooms, usually with four grades each. In Vernon County
there were
116 districts when Gale Wanless became county
superintendent of schools in
1957. The county consolidated into less than a dozen,
including some with
territory spread over parts of two counties.
As John S. Beath, director of the Rural Department at La
Crosse Normal,
put it in 1934, "Teaching in a rural school is the biggest
and most important
task that any teacher is called upon to undertake. It
should demand the
best-trained teachers because no other type of school
presents so many
important problems within the school room."
Prospective country school teachers were expected to be
more than simple
teachers. They were to teach such subjects as geography
and arithmetic as
they related to rural life and agriculture. These valiant,
hard working country
school teachers had other challenges as well - limited
resources, limited
incomes and, often, isolation from their colleagues and
from academic
resources. "If this department is to flourish and send out
teachers each year
who will strive to awaken country schools, re-direct and
encourage them,
there must be in this course a body of students who love
the country
sincerely, who will be willing upon graduation to go back
to isolated
one-room schools, far from city conveniences and
recreations," a 1913 Racquet
annual said of the Country School Department. "They must
believe in the
honest worth and solid enjoyment of plain living in the
country."
As the 1914 Racquet annual described these experiences,
not only did
practice teachers do regular classroom work, they also
prepared lessons in
different kinds of construction, such as basketry, mat
weaving, and various
kinds of work in paper, dolls, furniture, and millinery.
"This kind of work is of
great practical value to country school students because
it embraces the very
things that they will have to do when they go out to
teach. It gives them a
chance to apply the psychology which they have learned, to
get away from
books, and to use original devices. The greatest lesson
for the country school
practice teacher, the article added, is "appreciation and
understanding of
country school life."
It was because country school teaching was different and
posed its own
challenges that the college's rural education department
suggested
development of a model school for country teachers. The
Rural Room, as it
was called, was located in Room 107 of the Campus School
from 1947 to
1958. After two years of participation and observation in
the Rural Room,
students in the two-year rural education program did ten
weeks of practice
teaching under the supervision of a teacher in a country
school.
102
CHAPTER 7
MARIAN HAMMES PHOTO
Early Rural Room students in grades one to four are:
FRONT ROW, left to right: John Spah, Betty Ekern, Terry
Morehouse, Penny Campbell
and Susan Sauer.
BACK ROW: Jerry Ekern, Walter Schieche, Marian Hammes,
teacher, Ingvald Moen,
Moen and Thomas Stroeh.
It would be a mistake to overstate the problems in the
country schools.
Children were not necessarily shortchanged because they
were in country
schools. They received excellent educations from dedicated
teachers. In fact,
students in rural rooms may have benefited from learning
from each other. "I
am sure a lot of good things took place in the one-room
rural schools and a lot
of fine education went on there and that the people who
came out of those
schools have gone on to become outstanding citizens,"
Wanless said.
Among the dedicated country teachers were two who helped
to train
hundreds of teachers in country and, later, elementary
schools - Marian
Hammes and Alta Johnson. These teachers knew first hand
what country
school life was like, from the moment teachers lit the
school fire in the
morning until they swept up and cleaned the school at the
end of the day.
Hammes earned a two-year certification and, later, a
bachelor's degree at
La Crosse, plus a master's degree from Northwestern
University. Her early
teaching experience included eight years at the former
Medary School, where
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RECOLLECTIONS
MARIAN HAMMES PHOTO
Students in grades five to eight are:
FRONT ROW, from left: Jack Glendenning, Carolee Morehouse,
Rachel Burke, Sonny
Campbell, Karen Moen and Robert Schieche.
SECOND ROW: Marian Hammes, teacher, Janet Burke, Barbara
Schieche, Valerie Peart,
Mary Lou Stroeh and Lois Ekern.
BACK ROW: Don Schieche and David Glendenning.
she taught grades one through eight, and then the former
two-room Elm
Grove School at Losey Blvd. and Highway 14. She taught in
the Rural Room
from 1947 until she joined the Elementary Department in
1955 to teach
methods courses and to supervise student teachers.
Victoria Holford, Lilian
Wall, and Dorothy Krause taught the rural students before
Johnson joined the
Rural Room for the last few years. Johnson earned her
two-year certification,
then her bachelor's and master's degree at La Crosse. She
brought 17 years of
experience in rural and state graded schools to the Rural
Room.
Prior to the opening of the Rural Room, practice teaching
was done at Elm
Grove, Neshonoc, Wilson and Fauver Hill schools in La
Crosse County.
Students spent four to six weeks at a school, not only
teaching but also
attending at least one community meeting. In addition,
practice teachers were
assigned to study a problem in the school, such as the
amount of reading
material available in the community. Practice teachers
also were expected to
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gain "knowledge of rural problems and
tact and poise in meeting parents." Even
before the practice teaching period
began, students, who could enroll in
two-, three- or four-year programs, were
encouraged to attend college forums on
farm problems. They also were
encouraged to visit a school in their
home county every four to six weeks.
Hammes and others established
demonstration rooms for rural
education students to visit during
La Crosse State Teachers College
summer sessions. The busiest summer
sessions occurred early during World
War II when women returned to college
for recertification to fill positions left
vacant by male teachers who had joined
the military. "One hundred ten people
came to observe one day," Hammes
recalled.
It was in 1947 that Alice Drake, head
of the Rural Department, asked
Hammes to start the Rural Room. Drake was a magnificent
teacher,
according to Campus School kindergarten teacher Lenore
Wilson who noted
that "two rural people had great impact on my life.' One
was an unnamed
teacher in Winona and the other, Drake, who taught her
what it meant to
"really teach. ... We know we must teach through play, but
Alice Drake
showed me how to teach through play. ... For that I am
very grateful to
her."
The Rural Room was to be as much like a one-room school as
possible.
First through sixth graders, brought from the Elm Grove
School, were taught
together in Room 107. Not only did they learn every
subject from Hammes
(although later there were provisions for specialists in
art and music and
swimming in the Wittich Hall pool), they also prepared
their own meals.
First on a hot plate and later on a stove, Hammes, with
the assistance of
older students and later a college student, cooked a hot
meal as part of the
Federal Lunch Program. Until the "bugs were worked out" of
the system and
a kitchenette with garbage disposal was installed, Hammes
also took home
the garbage from the meals.
Alice Drake,
Director of
Rural Education
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RECOLLECTIONS
ALTA JOHNSON PHOTO
Because the experience was supposed to be as close to a
country school as
possible, children in the Rural Room had a separate
playground and recess time
from other Campus School children. Shown here are, from
left, Pauline Combs,
Valerie Nudd, _ Lokken, Steve Kabat, Steve Russell and_
Oertel.
She turned meal preparation into a learning opportunity.
Children used
math to figure out how much food was needed and how much
it would cost.
Older students even shopped for some of the food and
cooked it. uWe tried to
make use of a lot of surplus food from the government,"
said early Rural
Room student Barbara Schieche Frank. Jack Glendenning said
boys and girls
took turns with the responsibility of cooking and cleaning
up afterwards. "I
sure remember doing dishes," he said. "I can remember
having salmon loaf on
Fridays because I hated salmon loaf. We always had to have
fish on Fridays."
Because the Rural Room was designed to model a country
school, the
25 children in Room 107 did not regularly associate with
others in the
building. Their schedules kept them separate so the
student teachers could get
a better sense of rural teaching. "They had the big
playground and we had
ours. We were segregated from them kind of like we were
the black sheep,"
Glendenning recalled. "We had a few confrontations in the
swimming pool."
Linda Schleiter Sherwood was intrigued by the Rural Room.
As a first or
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CHAPTER 7
second grader, she thought it was called the World Room.
"We thought it
was a mysterious room where people went in and
disappeared." There was
one occasion when her class went into the Rural Room to
watch the Shirley
Temple movie, Heidi. She turned back to look at the
children "to see if they
were different. You knew they were somehow different, but
you didn't
understand how." The only difference, she realizes now,
was they were
bused to school and stayed there for lunch.
For Hammes and later Johnson, work in the Rural Room was
hard and
intense but enjoyable. "Alice Drake had high standards,"
Hammes said. "She
wanted us to be an excellent example of what a rural
school should be, one
that the rest of the rural schools could emulate. It was a
model, more of a
role model than a demonstration school."
Because children were busy at work at their desks while
the teacher was
working with a small group, children who attended the
Rural Room and
country schools in general developed independence and
self-reliance. "They
worked independently. It made a lot of work for the
teacher who had to
provide something stimulating and challenging for them to
do," Hammes
said. Barb Frank agreed, "It seems like so much of what we
did was on our
own. We had our teacher as a guide, but we also had
autonomy and were
encouraged to do our work."
Children learned to help each other. Older ones, in
particular, took on
maternal and paternal roles. They listened to a young
child read or dried his
or her tears. The Rural Room and country schools
encouraged students to
help each other as they worked in small groups. Johnson
remembered one
occasion when she was late to school on a bitterly cold
morning - minus
32 degrees - because her car ran off the road and into a
ditch. When she
finally arrived, she was thrilled to find the country
school in session. "I had
left work on the board the night before. The big kids
started the little ones on
the lessons. It was a cooperative family."
Certain subjects like social studies were taught in
two-year rotations so
children grouped in third and fourth grades or fifth and
sixth would not hear
the same subject twice. But "they were not wasting time if
they were
listening in on another class," Hammes said. Eavesdropping
on lessons gave
children a second chance to pick up something they might
have missed when
it was their own turn. The Campus School Rural Room
children made use of
the school library. Alice Hagar knew the interests of
these children as well
and suggested books to them.
Among the benefits of country school life were the special
bonds created
between teacher and student who were together throughout
their
elementary school years. "There are feelings in those
situations that you
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RECOLLECTIONS
don't have in any other situations," Johnson said. "You
have those kids for
years."
Frank's "very fond memories" of the Rural Room extend from
fourth
through eighth grades, although she skipped seventh.
Previously, she and her
brothers had walked to the two-room Elm Grove School and
back from their
home just beyond the Highway 14 overpass. Attending Campus
School's
Rural Room was a natural progression for them because they
had attended
summer sessions at La Crosse State, traveling there in
cabs. The taxis were
absolute treats for children, Glendenning said. "I thought
it was the neatest
thing and the cab drivers were absolutely great. We always
wanted to get a
certain cab because that driver was funnier than the other
guy."
Families were part of the rural room experience. "We had
brothers and
sisters of different grades," Frank said. "The fact that
we were all in one room
meant we had a family feeling. The bigger kids always
helped the little ones.
We might listen to their reading or take them to the
library."
Hammes was a "superb teacher," she continued. "I never
figured out how
Marian Hammes was able to keep all these hoops in the air
and keep us ever
growing and thriving. She took a very personal interest in
all of us. Anyone
who has taught school has to be impressed with how anyone
could juggle
their particular grade level, all the different ages, and
interests and abilities
plus the subject matter, but she did it very well." In
addition to the basics, she
managed to include the arts and music. Not only did she
play piano and teach
songs, she encouraged the children in art work. Bulletin
board designs had to
be three dimensional to meet Hammes' expectations. "She
was not satisfied
with ho hum. She always said, 'Did you think of ... ?' or
'How about ... '"
remembered Frank.
Glendenning said Hammes "was a unique teacher who had a
unique ability
to relate to rural children and teachers." It also was
helpful to have Alice
Drake and Mauree Applegate Clack there "looking over her
shoulder and
making it somewhat a model situation," he added. Having
student teachers
available and most likely fewer children in the Rural Room
than in a country
school helped make the situation more ideal. Part of the
juggling that
Hammes did was managing rural education observers and
practice teachers in
addition to the pupils in the Rural Room. Demonstration
lessons were done at
the request of college instructors.
Teaching in the Rural Room was a challenge but an
excellent learning
experience for her and for her students, Hammes said. "I
learned a lot. I just
kept on learning all the time I was in it." While Frank
said she had good
teachers throughout her school years, she said Hammes was
the best.
"Everyone ought to have a teacher like her. One of the
reasons I went into
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CHAPTER 7
teaching is because I had a teacher like
her. She made teaching children seem
like a very challenging and worthwhile
career."
Marilyn Michaels' children were part
of the last years of the Rural Room,
which was helpful to their mother who
was then earning her teaching degree.
One of the strengths of the Rural Room
was its teacher, Alta Johnson. "My
children had a marvelous, lively teacher
who did all sorts of interesting things
with them," she said. "Alta is just
enthusiasm from her little feet to the
top of her freckled head. She is a lovely
person."
Johnson was sad when the Rural
Room closed in 1962, "I had spent my
life in rural education." Despite the
support of children and their parents,
both Johnson and Hammes recognized
changes were occurring in education
that meant the end of rural schools. The
Wisconsin Legislature already had ordered consolidation to
eliminate districts
without affiliations to high schools. By 1960, in fact,
the number of school
districts in the state dropped from roughly 3,600 to about
440. In addition, all
teachers had to have four-year degrees. The two-year rural
program was not
sufficient to maintain their licenses.
Rural teachers were among the many teachers returning to
La Crosse State
for the Curriculum B program. Normally, basic courses came
first and then
methods classes followed by a variety of clinical or
practice experiences.
Teachers with two-year certification already had the
experience since they
had been teaching for years. What they needed was the
basics, which were
provided in Curriculum B.
There were tradeoffs when country schools were phased out,
Wanless said.
"When you had the same youngster for several years, you
knew just what to
expect. There was a little closer knit group of teachers
and students." But the
need for better teacher preparation also was recognized.
"People continued to
realize you needed more than one year or more than two
years and eventually
more than three and as much as four years of education to
be a good teacher,"
It was a turbulent decade, both inside and outside Campus
School. The post
World War II era of apparent stability, so characteristic
of the Eisenhower
Administration, was shattered by the assassinations of
John F. Kennedy, his
brother Robert, and Martin Luther King and by the battles
over civil rights
and Vietnam.
Inside the school, Miss Abel's fourth grade classroom
offered two
life-changing experiences for Paul Robinson. One was
classmate Pam
Hancock's announcement that the Beatles would be on The Ed
Sullivan Show
that Sunday. Robinson had no idea what the Beatles were
but assumed they
must be another juggling group or circus act frequently
seen on the TV
variety show. The mystery was solved because Hancock had a
copy of a
Beatles record, which Miss Abel willingly played for the
class.
The other life-changing incident was more serious. A
somber Miss Abel
gathered the class together on a November day in 1963 and
told her students
that there were crazy people in the world and sometimes
they did crazy
things. Some students cried when they learned President
Kennedy had been
assassinated, while others were happy to have a half day
off from school. "I
remember walking home and then being glued to the
television," Robinson
said.
The years that followed seemed to be a time when everyone
was mad at
everyone else. The nation was polarized - for civil rights
or against; for the
war in Vietnam or against; for the establishment or
against. Christine
Midelfort, a 1965 Campus School graduate, recalled the
time John Howard
Griffin spoke on campus. The author of Black Like Me
talked about changing
his skin pigmentation to experience life as a black
person. It was like a call to
action for her and her classmates. Suddenly, they
recognized the "injustice of
civil inequities." Her thoughts and those of other
students were encouraged
by social studies teacher Howard Fredricks, whom she said
"loved to get
people angry" and then point out the errors in their
reasoning.
If there was an innocence to life of Campus School
students, it was gone by
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RECOLLECTIONS
the time Midelfort attended the school. Her class was
known as a "bad class"
because members frequently were involved in vandalism and
other destructive
acts. "We were coming through at just that time. There was
a spirit of
rebellion in the 60s," she said. "I don't know how many
times we got lectured
to about our bad attitudes. We were cocky, sassed back."
In 1969, two former students were invited to address the
junior high
graduating class. One, a college graduate, came in a
three-piece suit and closely
cropped hair. His message was traditional, encouraging
students to make the
most of their future education. The other was Midelfort, a
freshman at
Grinnell College, who showed up in blue jeans and long
straight hair, with
guitar. She sang protest songs, including "The Times They
Are a Changing."
Her off-the-cuff talk urged students to "get in there and
turn society around
and 'up the institutions.'" She can still remember her
shocked teachers
listening to and watching her with eyes and mouths wide
open. At the
reception afterwards, teachers were polite enough to say
it had been an
"interesting" presentation. Since those confrontation
years, Midelfort has had
several pleasant conversations with former teachers, many
of whom she
admired then and now. "It's amazing how they forgive you
for your
childhood," she said with a smile.
SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND HEALTH ISSUES
Campus School students were taught to think creatively
about problems
and about themselves, according to Gretchen Cremer Brant,
who graduated
with the last junior high class in 1971. One student
teacher, Peggy Roark,
conducted an exercise in which each student was assigned
the personality of a
person stranded on a life raft. Together, they had to
decide how food would be
shared until they were rescued and if any on the boat
would be thrown
overboard as provisions ran out. They pondered such issues
as whether the
oldest should go first because they had lived their lives
or if it should be the
youngest who perhaps had the least to offer the group
because of inexperience.
"It really stretched your mind," Brant said. "Creativity
was really stressed
in Campus. It was very valuable to me that academics were
done in a creative
way and that they emphasized the individual and self
expression." She also
remembered the intensity of discussions in the social
studies classroom of Paul
Neman in the late 1960s. "I felt like we were all more
politically aware than a
lot of kids are today," she said. On the first Earth Day
in 1970, students spent
the day picking up litter on the UW-L campus and talking
about the
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CHAPTER 8
The sign on the buses to Clam Lake indicated Campus
School's
consciousness about the environment in 1971.
environment. When Martin Luther King was assassinated,
Brant wrote a
poem about him. When four college students were shot by
National
Guardsmen on the campus of Kent State University during an
anti-war
demonstration on May 4, 1970, some Campus School students
wore black
armbands to protest the killings.
Because of the growing drug problem in the 1960s, the
Campus School
junior high devoted two full days to drugs. Each teacher
took a different
aspect, such as the legal or health ramifications of drug
use. Two days may
not seem like much today when drug education begins in
grade school, but it
was innovative at the time. "It was extremely new," Brant
recalled. "It didn't
always mean that you didn't try something, but you got
information and I
think information always helps."
Parents also were invited to share their expertise to help
develop different
aspects of the curriculum on controversial topics, such as
sex education.
Despite the intensity of feelings about a variety of
issues, Brant said there
was tremendous trust in the school. No one considered
cheating when
teachers left the room or skipping school. "We were aware
that we were
different than other schools in town. It was not a private
school, but we were
set apart."
The era started long ago
For this our Campus School
Reading, writing, 'rithmatic,
And the Golden Rule.
Campus, so grand, the best in all the land.
The teachers taught us everything
That we would need to know,
To think and care about our world
So that our minds would grow.
Oh, Campus, so bold, we hail the Black and Gold.
The spirit of our Campus School
No one could ever alter
Though years go by, and it grows old,
Our school will never falter.
Don't close it, don't close it, it's such a waste to lose
it.
And now they're going to close our school
And we will all regret it;
But after all it's done for us
We never will forget it.
Oh, Campus, so strong, for you we sing this song.
composed in honor of the junior high closing ceremony by
Sylvia Van Atta, Kristine
Cleary, Sara Edwards, Karen Hagen, Laura Rolnick, and
Eleanor Waterman.
Concern about whether the number of practice students at
La Crosse
Normal could be served by the Training School was first
expressed in 1911,
two years after it opened. An alumni survey reported one
proud graduate
promoting the Normal School slogan, "Enrollment of 400 for
opening day
1912." But that same graduate went on to note the Training
School already
had difficulty providing practice teaching opportunities
for a class of 100. He
wondered what would they do when there were even more
students.
Over the years, college enrollment grew to the point when,
in the 1960s,
there were 70 students in methods classes that earlier had
less than 20. More
students made it tougher to arrange for observations in
Campus School
classrooms. As a result, more observations, practicums and
formal practice
teaching were moved to the public schools. However, campus
faculty were
concerned whether these teaching experiences would be
meaningful. While it
was easy to request a Campus School teacher to offer a
specific lesson to
illustrate a methods class assignment, that was less
practical in public schools.
Compounding the problem was the growth of the campus in
general. It
was because of seemingly uncontrolled growth in enrollment
and
construction at public colleges across the state that a
study group, the
Coordinating Council for Higher Education (CCHE), was
formed in 1955 to
study the roles of all state public schools beyond high
school. After the CCHE
recommended the merging of the WSU and UW systems, which
occurred in
1971, the committee turned its attention to campus
schools.
As early as 1959 there were calls for the closing of
campus schools across
the state. Among concerns were the cost of operations and
the fact that
laboratory schools no longer could accommodate the needs
of education
students. In response, the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee issued a
statement saying it had a "firm conviction that good
laboratory school
facilities are absolutely essential for an effective
teacher-training program
operated in a University context. Laboratory school
facilities in a University
are to teacher education what research and teaching
laboratories are to
chemistry and engineering, or what an experimental farm is
to agriculture."
In 1967, WSU deans of education, CCHE members and
directors of the
laboratory schools met in Racine at the Johnson
Foundation's conference
center, Wingspread. There, they decided an analysis was
needed to find out if
"campus laboratory schools really play a pertinent part in
education of
teachers." After the study, the CCHE concluded laboratory
schools no longer
115
could fulfill the functions they were designed for - to
accommodate student
teachers and demonstration lessons. The Council also felt
the universities
would have closer links to public education without the
campus schools
because so much more would be moved to the public schools.
"It was quite the opposite here," Richard Rasmussen said.
"We had
wonderful relationships with public schools. We did a lot
together because we
were more partners than we are now. We had an articulated
curriculum with
the public schools so our kids would fit in in high
school." Kathryn Cappelen,
retired supervisor of curriculum of the La Crosse public
schools, agreed. "We
had very good cooperation with the university. We had to
work together.
They needed us and we needed them."
THE CLOSING DEBATE
Initially, the CCHE proposed the closing of the campus
schools by 1975,
but the schedule was advanced to 1971 for junior highs and
1973 for
elementary schools. CCHE member and La Crosse lawyer John
Bosshard
obtained a 60-day reprieve for the school to justify its
continuation in terms
of significant research or unique functions that the
university and the state
needed.
Bobby Gowlland, then chairman of the secondary education
department,
believed the closing would affect the preparation of
teachers more than the
young children attending the school.
In a letter to the editor, education student Mary C.
McDonald wrote,
Having this laboratory available right on campus is ideal.
If
Campus School is discontinued, would La Crosse public
schools
be willing or able to handle the hundreds of education
students
desiring to observe or micro-teacht And would students at
La Crosse State be able to reach the public schools
without great
inconvenience to their classes?
English department faculty member Paul Manter suggested in
his letter to
the editor,
The local system is already under-staffed, under-budgeted,
and
overcrowded. Clearly, if the present students are absorbed
into
the community school system, they would be forced into a
difficult readjustment. The parents too would be forced to
adjust
their attitudes toward and expectations of their
children's school.
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CHAPTER 8
The junior high graduating class consisted of: Theresa
Gundersen, Kim Goodwin, Sara Edwards,
FIRST ROW, from left: Laura Rolnick, Kris Cleary, Nancy
Peterson, Astrid Slungaard, and Kurt
Frank Barnabey, Liza Bergman, Lydia Carter, Schroeder.
Eleanor Waterman, Gretchen Cremer, Karen Hagen, THIRD ROW:
Andy Arneson, Drew Dedo, Jim
Mark Robinson. Loeffler, John Schroeder, Rick Brindley,
John
Second ROW: Science teacher Norm Schein, Jean Maney, Mark
Hansen and Scott Van Maren.
Strorlie, Lincoln Gundersen, Sylvia Van Atta,
The Campus School Parent-Teacher Association sponsored a
petition drive
urging the school to be kept open. Signatures were
collected from 94 families,
401 students and 56 faculty members. According to Bernard
Young, who by
then was dean of the college of education, parents wanted
"me to do
something about it. But the Board of Regents made the
decision and that was
it. In a sense, the Campus School was a public school
supported by public
funds. It was not the private school some parents
perceived it to be."
After the 60 days, the CCHE said the La Crosse junior high
program, which
then had 76 students, was neither unique nor unusually
innovative enough to
warrant continuation after that 1970-71 school year.
Rasmussen, who had
been assigned to the CCHE by the university to help
develop the report on
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RECOLLECTIONS
campus schools, said the harsh words about the school not
being experimental
likely were in response to the college's efforts to fight
closing. "We were the
only school in the university system to fight it," he
said.
At the time of the closing order, some viewed him as a
"turncoat" for not
being more aggressive. "The decision was made despite the
reasons we had
built for continuing the lab schools. We couldn't turn
back the tide. We
defended campus schools to the degree that we could. I
didn't see how they
could expect people to teach full time, carry on the
responsibility of teaching,
administering college students and do research. A research
center had to have
research-oriented staff."
Describing those final years as both "tumultuous" and "the
high point of the
school," he recalled only one time when he was infuriated
by the deliberations
over the school's fate. That was when an independent
evaluator, Bob Comoll,
criticized the junior high for not having a wood shop,
home economics kitchen
or guidance program. Ironically, industrial arts and home
economics had been
discontinued to reduce costs. Rasmussen was so angry he
tore up the report.
"We were highly academic. We'd never had a complaint
because we didn't
have a home ec or a wood shop," he said. "We had the
ultimate guidance.
Every teacher knew every kid and followed them through
high school and even
college."
While unaware of the argument at the time, one former
student said he has
never felt deprived. "I don't think stuff like home
economics or industrial arts
was needed," said Randy Beers. "They taught you to read,
write and do math
really well. If you wanted to go on to trade school to
learn a trade, you could
do it."
Cost was one factor in the closing of Campus School. The
bulk of its
$250,000 final budget came from state taxes. Tuition
remained $35 a year,
primarily fees for materials. The most significant reason,
however, was the
inability of Campus School to supply the teaching
experience needed by the
growing university. Initially opposed to the closing,
Young came to the
conclusion that Campus School "couldn't begin to take care
of the needs in
terms of being a good laboratory." Using the public
schools for student
teaching did make sense because the mission of UW-L was to
train public
school teachers. The prevailing thinking at the time also
was to make public
schools the laboratories for student teaching.
Julia Steinke Saterbak said the closing did improve
relationships between
university teachers and public school teachers. "It got us
university teachers,
those of us who were supposedly good teachers, out into
the other schools. It
got our students out into the schools," she said. "It
helped make good public
school teachers better when we got out into the public
schools. It made the
school district better."
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CHAPTER 8
TERRY WITZKE PHOTO
At times, students advanced beyond the classes offered by
the Campus School. Then
arrangements were made for them to take classes at Central
High School or through
the university via this closed circuit television system.
Shown in an advanced math
class are Rolv Slungaard, Paul Robinson and David Rolnick.
When it was obvious Campus School would close, many
teachers were
invited to join the UW-L Education Department faculty.
Some retired; others
were absorbed about two years before the closing, at a
time when the
department was undergoing tremendous growth.
Saterbak felt that there was a "gentleman's agreement" for
the education
department to take in the Campus School staff. Without a
doctoral degree,
she was given the rank of instructor and began teaching
the introduction to
teaching classes, as well as fine arts methods. Because of
her workshop in
Rochester, she also taught classes that were the
forerunner of special
education.
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RECOLLECTIONS
Although Pauline Abel didn't take the closing personally,
she never agreed
with the idea that the Campus School was an artificial
situation and,
therefore, could not provide the kind of practice or
observation teachers in
training needed. She felt students early in their teacher
education needed to
see what they were taught put into practice, rather than
waiting until their
formal practice or student teaching periods. "Experience
with children is so
essential," she said. uYou can't teach a methods class
unless you can work
with live bodies who ask questions. It's just not the
same. When freshmen
have observation with a psychology class and sophomores
have observation
with a methods class, they gradually get exposed and see
what it is to be a
teacher. They need it to make a final decision about going
into teaching."
Still, Abel realized it was the trend in the 1960s to
close campus schools.
Rasmussen tried to show how often the school was used by
visitors and
college students by having each teacher make a hash mark
on the door
whenever there were observers. "He tried to show how much
Campus School
was used and to justify having a campus school, that we
were not only
serving the needs of children, but university students
attending there. But it
didn't do any good," she said.
Junior High faculty pose outside the Campus School: from
left, Bernard Young,
Alice Hagar, Howard Fredricks, Meta Leibl, Lester
Steinhoff, Marian Granger,
Bobby Gowlland and Theresa Leithold. 1957.
A variety of ideas were proposed for continuing the
philosophy of the
school, if not its actual operation. Among them was a
Center for the
Education Professions which was funded by money that
otherwise would
have been saved by the closing. The center's purpose was
to bridge the gap
between the university and public schools with efforts
such as teacher
exchanges. An early example was when a Central High School
math teacher
taught math methods, while the university methods' teacher
taught at
Central. "The two fell in love and left their positions
and families,"
Rasmussen recalled. uThat diminished some of the interest
of the public
schools. They lost a good teacher."
A more successful, but still short-lived, undertaking was
the Area
Movement for Educationally New Dimensions. The network,
which linked
26 schools in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, funded
speakers, release time
for teachers to participate in continuing education and to
work in different
schools, conventions and a newsletter.
PARTING THOUGHTS
Gregory Wegner, a 1971 education graduate and now an
assistant professor
at UW-La Crosse who did his earliest teaching at Campus
School, is still sorry
that the school closed. He remembered his microteaching
lesson on Native
American culture that was videotaped so he could be
critiqued later. The
advice to slow down, to try not to cover too many points,
to focus on one or
two concepts, rather than four, has stayed with him for
two decades. uI
would be a better teacher if I could teach teenagers," the
education professor
said. "I would be more in touch with the people we are
trying to prepare to
teach if we had the advantage of Campus School."
Although former student David McDonald has always hated
school - any
school - he does have a sense of loyalty to Campus School.
He was the third
generation to attend there and thinks it would have been
nice for his son to
have continued the family tradition. But the school closed
the year before the
fourth generation started kindergarten.
Adolf Gundersen, now a University of Wisconsin Regent,
believes the
school was closed in part because of the misconception it
was a school for the
121
RECOLLECTIONS
A pennant made for the
last junior high
graduating class in 1971.
The elementary school
continued until 1973.
elite. Most people in education today "want it back for
teacher education,"
Gundersen said. "Because of the location and distance of
the schools, the
capacity of students to observe teaching has diminished."
Today, signs remain of the activities that once filled
Campus School, now
called Morris Hall, although the takeover of the building
by big people, college
students, is obvious as well. The glassed-in bulletin
boards have eclectic
collections of messages about teaching jobs and workshops,
rather than
orderly displays of children's artwork.
The Little Theater is now the Robert Frederick Theater and
houses speech
and theater department activities. The kindergarten room,
subdivided into five
offices, serves as the teacher certification suite. All
other first floor classrooms
have been carved into offices as well. When Saterbak moved
to the elementary
department, she was assigned an office in the precise spot
where first grade
teacher Rhea Pederson sat at her desk each morning
planning what to read to
the children that day. "I felt her presence for months,"
Saterbak recalled.
Fifth through ninth grade rooms on the second floor now
serve college
classes. The classrooms' wooden parquet floors have long
since been covered
by carpets. The buff colored tiles on the wall and
terrazzo flooring remain, as
122
CHAPTER 8
do the oak, built-in storage areas in the work rooms. Gone
are the yards and
yards of fabric used in those old Christmas programs. The
"Boys" and "Girls"
signs have long since been changed to "Men" and "Women,"
and the
equipment replaced for adult-sized bodies. Water fountains
also have been
raised to adult level.
The room that once housed physical education activities
has been broken
into two levels. The basement area is used for storage;
the upper floor, for
computer science department offices. The books in the
library, renamed the
Alice Hagar Curriculum Resource Center, are used by
education students in
children's literature classes. A mobile of pioneering
characters still hangs in
the library, left over from the time when no one thought
twice about the
image playing cowboys and Indians might portray.
Most of all, the joyous voices of children are silenced.
"The closing was really difficult," said Rasmussen. "The
loss of a good
school should be mourned, whether it is a private school
or a public school, a
city school or a rural school. When you lose a good
school, the world is a little
bit worse off. And, we had a good school."
1909 Model or Training School of the La Crosse Normal
School opened, on
September 7, to provide practice and supervised
observation for teacher
training candidates of the normal school and to teach
children
140 students enrolled in kindergarten through 7th grade
Tuition of 25 cents per week for kindergarten and 15 cents
per week for
other grades
William H. Sanders, director
Model School gave first program presented in the
building's auditorium,
in December
1910 75 Training School children presented program of
musical drills and
exercises at the normal school's first commencement that
Spring
Eighth grade added for the school's second year
1912 Manual training added
Traditional Christmas Pageant instituted
1924 Director Sanders retired
Dora Carver served as intermediate director
1925 Emery W. Leamer named new director
1927 200 students enrolled including the newly added ninth
grade
1929 Nearly 200 children enrolled in Training School
summer classes
1951 Board of Regents gave approval for a new training
school but did not
present its request for funding til 1938
1954 75 Training School children participated in
historical pageant celebrating
the twenty-fifth anniversary of the normal school
Swimming classes made available for kindergarten, first
and second
grades instead of just third and higher
Individualized reading program initiated in second grade
Outdoor education program established
Foreign language instruction reduced from German, French
and Spanish
to German which was offered only to the ninth grade
Shop and homemaking classes eliminated
1963-64 Algebra offered for exceptional eighth grade
students
1964-05 Geometry offered for ninth graders who had
successfully completed
algebra
1965 Richard E. Rasmussen named new director
1966 Campus School experimented with an ungraded program
of learning
centers for summer school
1966-67 556 university students used Campus School for
their preparation for
teaching
Campus School teachers gave 359 demonstration lessons
during the
academic year and 55 during summer school
Campus School offered nearly 3,000 learning-teaching
opportunities
26 student teachers assigned to Campus School plus 8 to
summer school
1968-69 Waldo R. Widell served as acting director during
Rasmussen's one year
leave of absence
1970 Coordinating Committee for Higher Education
subcommittee suggested,
in a report made public on May 1, that campus school
junior highs
should be discontinued by June 1, 1971, and that all
elementary campus
schools be closed by June 1973
The following are names of the Training School Faculty,
including members of
college/university faculty who taught part time at the
Campus School.
The years indicate their service to the campus as a whole.
Some moved to the
college/university staff midway in their careers.
Pauline Abel, 1943-1982
Rena Angell, 1912-1951
Mabel Barnett, 1918-1921
Margaret Bartheld, 1936-1946
Frank Joseph Beck, 1968-1970
Louis F. Best, 1911-1913
Lillian Bettinger, 1909-1915
Ellen Bigley, 1924-1927
Eve Billsburg, 1918
Dorothy Blatter, 1920-1928
Edith M. Boughton, 1914-1916
Alice V. Bradley, 1916-1917
Orville E. Brault, 1946-1969
Agnes T. Breene, 1924-1959
Gabriella Brendemuhl, 1926-1954
Velma Brown, 1929-1932
Jessie E. Caldwell, 1924-1958
Leila M. Carper, 1918
Dora Carver, 1911-1931
Geneva Marking Clarke, 1943-1946
Huberta Clemens, 1931-1934
Catherine Conoboy, 1928-1929
Milford Cowley, 1933-1974
Maybelle S. Cross, 1919
Mabel L. Culkin, 1917-1919
John Darling, 1939-1945
Lottie L. Deneen, 1909-1917
Luella Dolan, 1920-1921
Florence Eddy, 1920-1922
Susan Erickson, 1971-1973
Cordella Essling, 1920-1921
William Estes, 1959-1991
Margaret Farnam, 1916-1917
Helen Kay Felber, 1930-1935
Kenneth Fish, 1951-1978
Greta W. Forte, 1915-1916
Howard R. Fredricks, 1945-1979
Marjorie Harker Frost, 1943-1947
LaVerne Garratt, 1909-1914
Floyd Gautsch, 1939-1969
Alice Gordon, 1912-1940
Bobby Gowlland, 1956-1990
Marian Granger, 1949-1971
Fay E. Griffith, 1922-1924
Teresa Anne Gritzner, 1956-1960
Velma Gunning, 1951-1969
Alice Hagar, 1947-1982
Alice G. Hammes, 1950-1951
Marian Hammes, 1947-1979
Ann Hanratta, 1928 and
1930-1933
Emme C. Hemlepp, 1920-1924
Clara D. Hitchcock, 1909-1914
Arthur Hoff, 1932-1946
Elizabeth White Hoff, 1931-1947
Veronica Holford, 1957-1958
Harriet Howard, 1916-1917
Alta Johnson, 1959-1982
Carla Manke Johnson, 1971-1973
Meta Jonas, 1929-1932
Mabel Thorpe Jones, 1920-1922
Hazel Kolcinski, 1972-1973
129
RECOLLECTIONS
Dorothy Krause, 1958-1959
Lydia Kreutz, 1922-1924
Carol Krieg, 1959-1962
Ella Lambert, 1924-1925
Emery Leamer, 1925-1952
Meta Leibl, 1946-1960
Theresa Leithold, 1956-1959
Frank C. Lewis, 1913-1916
Mame Lewis, 1928-1929
Ferd Lipovetz, 1920-1933
Merton J. Lyon, 1916-1946
Minnie E. Marshall, 1911-1912
Katherine Martindale, 1920-1921
John McLain, 1962-1965
Marian Mieden, 1970-1973
Paul Neman, 1967-1970
Rita Newberry, 1971-1973
Robert Norton, 1972-present
Eileen Orr, 1956-1962
Florence A. Foxwell Otten, 1920-1930
Rhea G. Pederson, 1947-1973
Alex F. Perrodin, 1947-1950
Amelia Louise Peters, 1918-1921
Josephine Pettis, 1918-1921
Phyllis A. Pirner, 1958-1969
Olive B. Place, 1927-1943
Jennie Mae Pratt, 1917-1918
Florence A. Prybylowski, 1947-1956
Mary J. Read, 1935-1937
Janet L. Renwick, 1914-1915
Inez J. Richards, 1935-1939
Marge Richardson, 1945-1951
Frances Rodger, 1933-1934
Jean F. Rolfe, 1923-1956
Joan Clements Ross, 1967-1989
Elizabeth Saenger, 1930-1934
William Sanders, 1909-1926
Julia Steinke Saterbak, 1960-1989
Norman Schein, 1962-1989
Maybelle Schmachtenberger, 1912-1913
John Swickard, 1962-1971
Alta Snyder, 1949-1958
Margaret Spence, 1909-1916
G. Lester Steinhoff, 1946-1977
Henry Etta Stone, 1933-1935
Ida M. Taylor, 1916-1917
Susan Trane, 1915-1916
M. Grace Tripp, 1926-1943
Lilian Wall, 1956-1957
Rosa Lee Walston, 1932-1933
Sam Weintraub, 1953-1954
Rose Wesley, 1920-1922
Emma Lou Wilder, 1921-1956
Mary M. Williams, 1923-1924
Winifred J. Williams, 1914-1918
Lenore Wilson, 1935-1943
and 1948-1957
Minnie J. Wilson, 1917-1921
Edith Irish Wing, 1928-1961
Terry Witzke, 1965-1970
Jessie L. Wright, 1909-1916
Bernard Young, 1953-1974
Frances Youngberg, 1944-1946
Elsie C. Ziese, 1917-1918
October 1, 1991
Stan Rolnick
December 6, 1991
Sam Fellows
December 9, 1991
Julia Steinke Saterbak
December 10, 1991
Pauline Abel
December 11, 1991
Sally and Bill Cremer
December 12, 1991
Kenneth and Peg Fish
December 13, 1991
Jane Mitchell Aarstad
Alice Hagar
Patricia Johnson Robinson
Signe Gundersen Schroeder
Jane Horner Stuckert
December 15, 1991
Adolf L. Gundersen
December 17, 1991
Norm Schein
December 19, 1991
Marian Ramlow
January 2, 1992
Helen Brieske
Betty and Gunnar Gundersen
Martha Ellefson Hansen Minor
Richard Rasmussen
January 3, 1992
Marian Hammes
Alta Johnson
Merrick Wing
January 4, 1992
Laura Schein Johnsrud
January 6, 1992
Terry Witzke
January 7, 1992
Kathryn Cappelen
Barbara Shieche Frank
Sylvia Van Atta
January 8, 1992
James Rog
Christine Nelsestuen
January 9, 1992
Thorolf Gundersen
Robert Seaquist
January 10, 1992
Roy Campbell
Richard McLoone
Paul Neman
Tom Sleik
January 11, 1992
Liza Ramlow
Gale Wanless
January 13, 1992
Gretchen Cremer Brant
Jerome Gundersen
Linda Schleiter Sherwood
January 14, 1992
Jack Glendenning
Richard Rasmussen
Gregory Wegner
January 17, 1992
Lincoln Gundersen
January 20, 1992
Peder Arneson
January 21, 1992
Dan Gelatt
Bruce Walters
January 26, 1992
Christine and Helga Midelfort
February 5, 1992
Sandy Gordon
February 27, 1992
William Estes
February 28, 1992
Margaret Merman Holley
March 2, 1992
Paul Robinson
March 6, 1992
Randy Beers
March 31, 1992
Dave McDonald
Floyd Gautsch, 1969 Marian Hammes, 1980
Margaret Merman Holley, 1976 Eugene McPhee, 1973
Helga Gundersen Midelfort, 1971 Robert Schilling, 1977
Jean Rolfe, 1971 Bernard Young, 1979
Lenore Wilson, 1970
Publications
Berthrong, Donald John. "La Crosse, A Case Study in Social
History, 1900-1910."
Master's thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1948.
Blair, Lois C.; Curtis, Dwight K.; and Moon, A.C. The
Purposes, Functions and
Uniqueness of the College-Controlled Laboratory School.
State Teachers College, Lock
Haven, Pennsylvania. Bulletin No. 9. The Association for
Student Teaching, 1958.
Board of Regents of Wisconsin State Teachers Colleges.
Proceedings, 1908-1910.
Cremin, Lawrence A. Traditions of American Education. New
York: Basic Books, Inc.,
Publishers, 1977.
Gilkey, George R. The First Seventy Years: A History of
the University of Wisconsin-
La Crosse, 1909-1979. The University of Wisconsin-La
Crosse Foundation, 1981.
Greenleaf, Barbara Kaye. Children through the Ages: A
History of Childhood. New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1978.
La Crosse Tribune, from 1905 to 1973.
McKenny, Charles, ed. Educational History of Wisconsin.
Milwaukee State Normal
School, 1912.
Miller, Stanley N. "A History of La Crosse, Wisconsin,
1900-1950." Ph.D.
Dissertation, George Peabody College for Teachers, 1959.
Patzer, Conrad E. Public Education in Wisconsin. Milwaukee
State Normal School, 1924.
Richter, Troy. "A History of the Campus School at the
University of Wisconsin-
La Crosse from 1909 to 1973." History paper, University of
Wisconsin-La Crosse,
1988.
Sanford, Albert H. and Hirshheimer, H.J. A History of La
Crosse, Wisconsin, 1841-1900.
La Crosse County Historical Society, 1951.
