Scism School

I was a fourth grader when we moved from Oregon to Idaho, and March has to be a terrible time of year to transfer to a new school. But the other kids were excited to see a new face so late in the school year and quickly befriended me. So, even though I was pretty shy about being the new kid on the block, I soon felt like I fit in. And I was able to head into summer vacation already having friends throughout the area.

Scism School was a three-room country school a couple miles north and west from our farm. Grades 1, 2, and 3 were in the same room. Grades 4, 5, and 6 in a second room. And grades 7 and 8 in a third room. After that a student had to travel into Nampa to attend the ninth grade in one of the junior high schools before going on to high school.

I came to Scism in the final months of my fourth-grade year. Sylvia Jones was the teacher. The next school year (1959–60) I was in the fifth grade and got to move over into the middle two rows of the same room. Mrs. Jones was still my teacher. The next school year (1960–61) I was in the sixth grade and got to move over into the two rows closest to the windows. Mrs. Jones was still my teacher.

Had we not moved in the spring of my sixth-grade year, I would have gone into the next room for the seventh and eighth grades, where Herman Jones (Mrs. Jones's husband) would have been my teacher. He later transferred to teach at one of the junior highs in Nampa, and I happened to be in one of his classes my eighth- or ninth-grade year at Central Junior High School.

Looking back now, decades later, I am con­vinced that those years I spent in that little classroom with Mrs. Jones were among the best of my entire educational experience. She was a master teacher who cared deeply for her students and inspired in us a love for learning.

She was also a deeply religious person, a Seventh-day Adventist, who loved the Lord deeply. In those days, before the Supreme Court ruled that prayer in public schools violated the First Amend­ment, an unfortunate ruling to be sure, schools in Idaho would begin each day after the Pledge of Allegiance with scripture reading from the Bible. It was probably supposed to stop there, but Mrs. Jones would often go on to expound on what she read and to share her beliefs and feel­ings. I often recognized, as a fifth or sixth grader, that her interpretations didn't always coincide with my own Mormon beliefs, but never once did it occur to me that anyone could be offended or harmed in any way by what she taught us.

The rever­ence she gave the Bible and other sacred things, including the names of Deity, are an inspiration to me to this day. A simple illustration was her observation one morning that the scriptures were so sacred to her that she would never let them fall to the floor or ever place other books on top of them.