Joyce Gingerich Zuercher began reading at age 3 when she had to stay in bed for an extended time after a leg injury, and her teacher father decided she might as well learn to read. She began her formal education in a “district school” (one room) in rural Iowa before attending Grades 2-5 at another small school, Green Center, out in the country between Parnell and Kalona, Iowa. She taught for two years, starting at age 19, in a one-room school in western Nebraska, and returned to teaching decades later, after raising children, at a three-room school in Appalachian eastern Kentucky. She is still a volunteer reading tutor at Hesston (Kan.) Elementary School.
July 2, 2020
Issue 2020, vol. 74
Review of Yoder School: A Memoir, by Phyllis Miller Swartz (Cascadia Publishing House, 2019) Memoirs have been produced and enjoyed for centuries, but until the digital age, only handwritten or […]