Word: pined
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...appearances are deceiving. The country school is no educational idyll, but the centerpiece of a complicated social arrangement and a daunting challenge for a lone teacher, who may have to juggle pupils in as many as nine grades with creativity and coherence. At Pine Grove, which has a total of nine students in eight grades, first-grader Becky Stanton meanders through a paragraph about American Indians while sixth-grader Nicole Phipps, sitting inches away, considers the difference between a kilometer and a hectometer. Their teacher, Elaine Savage, moves smoothly from one girl to the other. "They're growing corn...
...isolation of the one-room school leaves many students starved for greater contact with peers and more extracurricular activities. "I was bored out there," says Wendy Stanton, 15, who attended Pine Grove and now boards in Jordan as a high school freshman. "You miss your friends...
...curriculum at Pine Grove is as spare as the decor. There are no foreign- language classes or organized sports, virtually no music or art. Current events receive minimal classroom attention. Savage is the first to concede that she has not yet figured out how to operate the Apple computer that Ronnie Stanton, Wendy's father, donated to the school a few years back. But no . matter. "We want the basics, and it's working," says Stanton. "Our kids come out of the country school into the town high school way advanced. It's the one-on-one attention." This...
...these kids living in a rustic time warp? Yes. Not far away from the Pine Grove schoolhouse sit two wooden outhouses and the old pickup Cal Phipps drives to school. He is only 13, but there is no school-bus service. Jordan -- nearby by Montana standards -- is the seat of Garfield County, 4,500 sq. mi., where the cattle outnumber the 1,600 humans and the flatlands are ribboned with cliffs called the Missouri Breaks. No one from Pine Grove in recent memory has ventured so far as Chicago for college, and Los Angeles might as well be Pluto...
...Pine Grove students know about Saddam Hussein, Milli Vanilli and crack? Not much. Do they care? No. "There's no great interest around here in going to New York City," says Don McDonald, 15, a sophomore at Garfield County High School in Jordan. Many graduates major in agriculture at two-year colleges around the Big Sky State and then return to family ranches if they have them. Otherwise they must look for work elsewhere...