Cotton-patch Schoolhouse by Susie Powers Tompkins

Cotton-patch Schoolhouse by Susie Powers Tompkins

Step back into 1920s Alabama, where grit, laughter, and the red clay roads of the Black Belt shape one young woman?s unforgettable first year of teaching

Cotton-Patch Schoolhouse follows 18?year?old Susie Powers Tompkins as she takes on a one-room school with eight children, zero experience, and a Model T that?s always one mud puddle away from disaster. With warmth and wit, she discovers that the real curriculum is written not in textbooks?but in the faces, fears, and fierce hopes of her students.

In a world of cotton fields, nature walks, homemade art supplies, and potbellied stoves, Susie learns that teaching is as much about heart as it is about lessons. She navigates runaway love affairs, surprise pets (including an opinionated mouse), the hardships of rural poverty, and the extraordinary generosity of neighbors who have little but give much.

As contemporary readers grapple with educational inequities, rural depopulation, and renewed conversations about community, Cotton-Patch Schoolhouse feels strikingly fresh. It reminds us that creativity blooms under constraint, that relationships matter more than resources, and that small schools can make a big difference. Tompkins' memoir will delight lovers of Southern history, educators, memoir readers, rural studies enthusiasts, and anyone who enjoys heartfelt stories of resilience, community, and the transformative power of teaching

Susie Powers Tompkins, writer and award-winning artist, received her bachelor's degree from Alabama College, Montevallo, in 1928. Later she and her husband moved to Tuscaloosa where she owned a private school for speech and art for a number of years until World War II. During the war and the resulting teacher shortage, she began teaching at Verner School. She taught there for more than fifteen year while raising her two children.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780817305635
ISBN 10	0817305637
Title	Cotton-patch Schoolhouse
Author	Susie Powers Tompkins
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	The University of Alabama Press
Year published	1992-05-30
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable