Ribbon cutting for one-room school is April 14

March 7, 2007

Did you attend a one-room school? Did you teach in a one-room school?

If the answer to either of those questions is yes, plan to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a Bulloch County’s renovated one-room school at 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 14.

The school is located on Bowen-Rushing Road, off Sinkhole Road just south of I-16. The ribbon cutting and the celebration to follow are free and open to the public. The event will include special recognition of those who attended or taught in a one-room school.

The historic Oak Grove School, moved to Bulloch from Tattnall County, is a gift of alumna Jan Brown Anderson to Georgia Southern University on the occasion of the University’s Centennial. Anderson had the site for the school prepared and leveled, and she has furnished the school with slates, desks, books, games, and other historical items.

Thanks to Statesboro’s Averitt Center for the Arts, hosts for the day will be in period costumes. Hosts also will be available to speak about the history of the one-room school.

‘This ribbon-cutting will be a day of celebration, but it’s just the beginning of the uses we will have for the one-room school,” said Cindi Chance, dean of the College of Education at Georgia Southern University. ‘This school is a catalyst. It will lead to faculty members conducting scholarly research on teaching methods in a one-room school, and to creating video and Web pages about one-room schools for use as classroom teaching devices both here and internationally. It will lead to kids learning about their own past.”

Anderson sees an additional benefit: school field trips.

‘I’d like children in Bulloch and the surrounding counties to visit and understand what school was like for students a hundred years ago,” she said. ‘I hope this one-room school reminds us to enjoy today and to remember and value our past.”