Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: The one-room schools, once the cornerstone ofAmerican education, are fast becoming dim nostalgia. Before they are completely forgotten, we ought to honor them and the extraordinary teachers who made them work. The last one-room school in Monongalia County, West Virginia, was permanently closed in 1982, victim of the modern trend of consolidation . Though a welcome change to many outsiders, it was a sad loss to the community it served and to Mary Bordinat, the teacher who made the school such a live, vibrant part ofthe community during its last ten years. Sarver School sat on the flat top of a mountain so high that a stranger feels like he has reached the top of the world. Built in 1880, the school was a frame building with white-painted lapped siding, with two outhouses in back on the edge of the bluff. For ninety-one years Sarver served the mountain community for grades one through six. In 1971 consolidation moved the elementary pupils to another school and Sarver became an early childhood development center, with Mrs. Bordinat as director during its ten-year existence. There were no complaints about the outdoor toilet from Mrs. Bordinat or the children or the parents—many of them had outhouses at home. But the school board ordered its destruction and replaced it with an indoor toilet and septic system. Mrs. Bordinat lamented the demise of the outhouse. "It was a great old John, " she says wistfully. Mrs. Bordinat did not confine her teaching to the inside of the building. Outside was another classroom, nature's own treasure house. A few yards behind the school a steep, wooded bluff dropped down a hundred feet. Zigzag trails led to several caves near the top and a pond at the bottom. The outdoor classroom contained the caves, the pond, trees, flowers, rocks, brush, rhododendron thickets, animals, birds, insects, moss, toadstools—all of which Mrs. Bordinat used in her programs. Although she developed well-planned teaching schedules, she readily altered plans to take advantage of opportunities. One morning while 20 driving to school, she spotted a freshly killed possum on the road. She stopped, picked it up, and took it to school, where it was used as a fascinating object of discussion. On another occasion a little girl missed the bus and her mother brought her to school on horseback. The horse immediately became an impromptu teaching subject. One year the school was given a duck. The county agriculture agent, addressing the class, told the children that a duck's sex can be determined by the stand of its tail feathers and he declared the duck a male. The duck was named Mac, until he began laying eggs, then he was renamed Maxine. The children had a great time taking Mac—or Maxine—down to the pond. The duck went home with a different child each day and with Mrs. Bordinat on weekends. In addition to the indoor classroom and Mother Nature's classroom, the children were taken on many field trips that added to their learning experience, such as picking apples, making applesauce, and dried apples. And early each spring a maple tree behind the school was tapped, sap collected, sugar water cooked in the tiny kitchen addition, and enough syrup produced to make a tasty meal of pancakes and syrup for the children. Though the children were only five years old, one year there was a little boy in the class already addicted to swearing when he became angry. Mrs. Bordinat, of course, could not allow that in school. She told him that if he really had to swear to go outside, to the farthest boulder along the cliff, and swear at the rock. During the next few days she received several inquiries from parents about the "cussing rock." Mrs. Bordinat's enthusiasm for education carried beyond the school. One little girl's mother mentioned that her husband was making good money with his repair business. Mrs. Bordinat told her that the little girl was very smart and would certainly go to college, and suggested they start putting away some money for it. The mother, one of six sisters...