Annotation One- and two-room schools represent a paradoxical time in Texas history when school played second fiddle to family duties but still served as the focus of community life. Luther Bryan Clegg's The Empty Schoolhouse provides a direct link to the past through interviews with students who attended these schools and teachers who taught in this area between Fort Worth and Odessa and the Hill Country and Amarillo. Former students share stories describing Friday afternoon "literary societies, " dead snakes in desk drawers, pranks, fires, travel to and from school, and discipline. Drawing on historical and sociological data as well as interviews, Clegg presents intriguing accounts of rural life, preserving the uniqueness of the "olden days."
When the parochial school in French Grove, Louisiana is desegregated, 10-year-old Lullah Royall joined her red-haired friend Oralee at school, but one by one all the students desert St. Joseph's, frightened by phone calls and threats.
During her first year in a one-room school in the Kentucky hills, Bonnie has many exciting experiences, from getting her first book to playing an angel in a play.
Locals see an eyesore, but she sees a charming business opportunity... Becky Linden needs a fresh start. Her family is miles away. Her ex-husband is remarried. Her son is off to college. With an early mid-life crisis looming, Becky is at a crossroads: keep working dead-end jobs to survive, or take a leap of faith. During a visit home, she stumbles across the abandoned one-room schoolhouse where she played as a child and had her first kiss a teenager. With her family's encouragment, Becky decides to stay in town and find a way to save the historic building from demolition. As she works on her business plan, Becky begins to reconnect with her past. Her best friend, Maggie, is three kids deep into a dysfunctional marriage. The grandparents who raised Becky have aged exponentially, and her beloved grandfather is ill. Still, Becky finds herself enchanted by the small southern community where she was raised. What's more, her high school sweetheart, Ben Durbin, still lives in town, working for the school district and looking as handsome as ever. The stage is set for a sweet reunion for the former lovebirds, until Zack reveals crushing news: he's in charge of tearing down the historic building. Just before giving up, Becky uncovers a local secret: something that might compel Zack to save the past and give Becky a second chance. With flashbacks to her childhood play dates with Maggie and first kiss as a teenager, The Schoolhouse is a sweet, nostalgic, and romantic women's fiction. Head to Hickory Grove and see if Becky can bring the old schoolhouse back to life and help those she loves most overcome life's troubles. This is the first book in a standalone series about a southern small town and the people who live there.
A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An award-winning constitutional law scholar at the University of Chicago (who clerked for Judge Merrick B. Garland, Justice Stephen Breyer, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor) gives us an engaging and alarming book that aims to vindicate the rights of public school students, which have so often been undermined by the Supreme Court in recent decades. Judicial decisions assessing the constitutional rights of students in the nation’s public schools have consistently generated bitter controversy. From racial segregation to unauthorized immigration, from antiwar protests to compulsory flag salutes, from economic inequality to teacher-led prayer—these are but a few of the cultural anxieties dividing American society that the Supreme Court has addressed in elementary and secondary schools. The Schoolhouse Gate gives a fresh, lucid, and provocative account of the historic legal battles waged over education and illuminates contemporary disputes that continue to fracture the nation. Justin Driver maintains that since the 1970s the Supreme Court has regularly abdicated its responsibility for protecting students’ constitutional rights and risked transforming public schools into Constitution-free zones. Students deriving lessons about citizenship from the Court’s decisions in recent decades would conclude that the following actions taken by educators pass constitutional muster: inflicting severe corporal punishment on students without any procedural protections, searching students and their possessions without probable cause in bids to uncover violations of school rules, random drug testing of students who are not suspected of wrongdoing, and suppressing student speech for the viewpoint it espouses. Taking their cue from such decisions, lower courts have upheld a wide array of dubious school actions, including degrading strip searches, repressive dress codes, draconian “zero tolerance” disciplinary policies, and severe restrictions on off-campus speech. Driver surveys this legal landscape with eloquence, highlights the gripping personal narratives behind landmark clashes, and warns that the repeated failure to honor students’ rights threatens our basic constitutional order. This magisterial book will make it impossible to view American schools—or America itself—in the same way again.
Fifth-grader Ned Bradley knew the secret behind the strange accidents that had begun to occur at Victory School. And he knew the Board of Education's plan to close the old school was a very bad idea. Because now the evil that stalked Victory School would have only a few short months for its grisly revenge!
Ted Hammond learns that in a very small town, there's no such thing as an isolated event. And the solution of one mystery is often the beginning of another. Ted Hammond loves a good mystery, and in the spring of his fifth-grade year, he's working on a big one. How can his school in the little town of Plattsford stay open next year if there are going to be only five students? Out here on the Great Plains in western Nebraska, everyone understands that if you lose the school, you lose the town. But the mystery that has Ted's full attention at the moment is about that face, the face he sees in the upper window of the Andersons' house as he rides past on his paper route. The Andersons moved away two years ago, and their old farmhouse is empty, boarded up tight. At least it's supposed to be. A shrinking school in a dying town. A face in the window of an empty house. At first these facts don't seem to be related. But...
Discusses how school choice, misapplied standards of accountability, the No Child Left Behind mandate, and the use of a corporate model have all led to a decline in public education and presents arguments for a return to strong neighborhood schools and quality teaching.
A Real Simple Best Book of the Year A deeply moving story of an epic home renovation in the Pacific Northwest—from New York Times–bestselling author of The Scent Keeper In this mesmerizing memoir-in-essays, Erica Bauermeister renovates a trash-filled house in eccentric Port Townsend, Washington, and in the process takes readers on a journey to discover the ways our spaces subliminally affect us. A personal, accessible, and literary exploration of the psychology of architecture, as well as a loving tribute to the connections we forge with the homes we care for and live in, this book is designed for anyone who’s ever fallen head over heels for a house. It is also a story of a marriage, of family, and of the kind of roots that settle deep into your heart. Discover what happens when a house has its own lessons to teach in this moving and insightful memoir that ultimately shows us how to make our own homes (and lives) better. “ . . . for anyone who has wondered where home is and how to find it, fix it, love it, and leave it for later as well.” —Laurie Frankel, New York Times–bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is
