Spencer Elementary Third Graders Get a Taste of Pioneer Life

This week, students were blasted to the past when they traveled to Lyon School - the one room school house in Brighton Township built in 1885.

Students dressed in period costumes, many boys wearing suspenders and many girls in flowery dresses and pigtails. Even the parents got into the action, pretending to be high school students, who spent time in the classroom when they weren't working on their family farms.

Spencer Elementary has been taking field trips to the school for about 12 years now as a part of the third grade curriculum, studying about pioneer life in the early 1800s.

Roseanne Burns, one of the third grade teachers at Spencer, said she thinks the field trip is both fun and educational for her students.

"It's like putting them back in the 1800s," Burns said. "It's so different from the way things are today. Afterwards, they make venn diagrams comparing Spencer to Lyon School."

Before the trip to the school house, students learned about how kids traveled to school by horse, buggy or sometimes walking far distances; how pranks were played and punished with chores or a dunce cap; how woman teachers couldn't be married and how writing left-handed was unacceptable.

"You were not to write left-handed," Burns said. "It was one of the things I was kidding around with at Lyon School. They would not hire you (as a teacher) if you were left-handed. Also If you were naturally left-handed you had to relearn how to do it right-handed. I think you were looked at as a little bit handicapped if you were left-handed in those days."

Jenny Kogler was one of the parents with Burns' class on Wednesday. She had actually been on the trip before with her older son.

"I love it," Kogler said about the field trip to the school. "It's enlightening for the kids to see the way it was. And I think with the visionary stimulus  - seeing the simplicity of the way it was - helps them learn."

Kogler said her third grade son, Tegan Kogler, was really excited to dress the part of a student from the 1800s.

"We looked up old pictures online," she said.

The Brighton Area Historical Society runs the Lyon School. There are two educational liasons who prepare the school for field trips visits. It costs $3.50 per student for the day, according to Historical Society President Jim Vichich.

"The money goes to operate the school, it's not a profit," Vichich said. "It helps take care some of the costs because if it's a day like today, the furnace is running, if it's in the summer, the air conditioning is running. Those are turned off unless somebody is there to use them."

Vichich said he believes there are several benefits for kids to visit Lyon School.

"It's kind of like going to a museum, you see how things once were, it doesn't mean that they were better, it's just he way it was," he said. "When kids come to the Lyon School, they can see a one room school house, which they've never seen before.Once upon a time, they used to go to Greenfield Village (in Dearborn) for that, but it doesn't happen anymore. So they can see it locally. When they come here they're learning about community - the Brighton community years ago."