Plains Elementary School
photos & story by Camillia Lanham
The smell of split pea soup wafts
There are two first grade classes at the school. She teaches her class a little differently.
This year, the class has a student who is hard of hearing and communicates through sign language. Montgomery decided it would be a great opportunity for other students to learn, so that they can communicate with one another.
She teaches her class in units. One of the first units of the year is on frogs. It involves a trip to the Holland Ranch in Plains, where first graders get to sift through pond muck for creatures big and small, search for roots and wildflowers, and learn about ecosystems.
Students will go on two more learning trips this year. They will go to a dairy farm in Charlo and Country Foods pasta factory in Polson.
Field trips are an important part of the curriculum. Montgomery said if learning is fun a student is more likely to actively participate. She uses units because she wants to leave each student with good memories and a desire to learn. School is about making memories and building trust, she said. Her goal is to take each student as far as she can in the education system.
"If you can show them you care, if you can create a loving, safe, non-threatening environment," she said, "the doors open wide."
She said she likes to teach life skills. Some are historical, such as the Native American and Thanksgiving units. Some are general education, such as the penguin and weather units. Some of the units Montgomery teaches have to do with food and the way that it's made. These include pumpkins, apples, Thanksgiving foods, and the trip to the dairy farm.
Montgomery said she loves to cook in the classroom; it gives students a chance to try things they wouldn't normally know about or want to try.
For the pumpkin unit, Montgomery said she bought all the students mini-pumpkins, which they cooked in class. She brought her toaster oven to school to cook the pumpkins, because the elementary school doesn't have a cafeteria.
Around 120 students in kindergarten through second grade fill the Wild Horse Elementary six-room schoolhouse that was built in 1938. It was built with the help of a $20,000 bond initiative and is on the same property as the original Plains schoolhouse that was built in 1878.
For lunch, music and physical education the students are bussed to the high school campus less than three blocks away.
They walked the blocks until safety concerns led to the change two years ago. Principal Jim Holland said concerns had to do with the proximity of highway 200, winter conditions and general child safety.
"You just can't be too careful, if it's not our kids in this building it's someone else's," Montgomery said. "When we see a strange vehicle in the parking lot, everyone is on alert."
Being in a small town, everyone knows who you are or knows of you, Montgomery said. It's one of the things that makes it unique. Teachers know their students intimately, with only15-18 students per class. They know their students parents, if they are divorced, and which days each parent has the child.
Montgomery said that the teachers really care about the students and with the budgets shrinking "teachers are doing more with less."
"In this school, we have teachers who will work hard no matter what," she said.
Montgomery and Holland said that Plains is a relatively poor area, with one of the lowest incomes per capita in the state of Montana. It helps that we have a local bank and a local church that are connected with us, Montgomery said.
Montgomery said the food bank runs a backpack program with the school where food is tucked away in low-income students backpacks at the end of the day. The local church donates clothing, she said. With winter coming students in need of warmer jackets can get them from the school.
She said that people really come together in the town to help each other out, and that's one of the things that make teaching in Plains so great. "I've always had a really good feeling about this town," she said.
A project by the University of Montana School of Journalism