History 21 The Podcast - 1.08 Anna Gorham
Anna Gorham taught classes of students at Franklin Elementary School for 26 years. In 1989, she sat down to record some of her experiences with education starting with describing the one-room schoolhouse she attended in Burns, and then what Franklin Elementary was like when she started teaching there in 1946.
Note: This recording is digitized from the original cassette tape. The recording has been enhanced where possible, but for clarity an edited transcript of Anna’s interview is also provided below.
Hosts Rebecca Desens, ACHS Executive Director, Sara Given, ACHS Volunteer Coordinator and Erin McBrien, ACHS Archivist.
Page in the 1922 Anoka High School yearbook featuring Anna Gorham and three other graduating seniors. Anna’s nic-name “Ann” and school quote: “She’ll never trouble trouble ‘til trouble troubles her.”
Anna Gorham
Oct. 29, 1903- Sept 29, 2002
Born into a farming family in Burns Township [current day Nowthen] in 1903, she started her journey in education as a student at District #36 one-room schoolhouse. After graduating from Anoka High School in 1922 she planned to become a nurse until friends in North Dakota persuaded her to take a teaching job in that state. She taught for 18 years in various schools in North Dakota before moving back to Anoka County in 1941 following her brother’s death. She took a teaching job in Spring Lake Park and then moved to the Anoka District in 1946 as a teacher at Franklin Elementary school. It’s in this school that she taught until her retirement in 1972.
ACHS remembered Gorham after her death in their newsletter. “Anna is best remembered at ACHS for her hundreds of hours of volunteering at Colunial Hall Museum. She was a tradition in the dining room at Christmas time and many visitors were treated to Anna’s special kind of hospitality. Anna loved people and chatting with them as they came through the farmhouse at the Anoka County Fair and she especially enjoyed children. She could hold spellbound a group while she told them stories of lie in Anoka County, something she continued to do until she was, quite proudly, the "‘oldest volunteer’ at ACHS. Anna was still actively volunteering when she was 90 years old!”
History 21: The Vault Extras
Listen to Anna’s Full oral History Interview or read the transcript
Anna Gorham giving her Oral History interview at the Anoka County Historical Society in 1989.
Franklin Elementary Staff photograph, 1967-1968. Anna Gorham standing second from left in the front row in a teal skirt suit.
First Grade class of Franklin Elementary School, 1930-1931 sitting at desks similar to those Anna Gorham had in her classroom when she started teaching at the school in 1946.
Second Franklin School Building, built in 1915 at 215 West Main Street, Anoka, MN. Undated.
Anoka County Library Minute
Further Reading:
General
Becoming a Teacher by Melinda D. Anderson - 371.1 AND
Acclaimed journalist Melinda D. Anderson writes about the classroom of Master Teacher LaQuisha Hall, a Baltimore-based teacher whose achievements have earned her teacher of the year awards and helps her students succeed. If you want to know how to not only become a teacher, but a wonderful one that inspires, this is the book for you.
Memoirs
Shannon Reed never thought she wanted to be a teacher but has fallen in love with the profession through her twenty years in the teaching trenches. In this collection of essays, Reed addresses everything from working with students with special needs to dealing with incompetent administrators, and everything in between.
Go See the Principal: Tales from the School Trenches by Gerry Brooks - 371.1 BRO
Gary Brooks is an elementary school principal and YouTube celebrity known for getting a chuckle from K-12 teachers, parents, and administrators. In this book of essays, he talks about his experiences as a school principle and the ups and downs of the job – including discussion of school assessments.
Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning by Tom Vanderbilt - 153.15 VAN
Tom Vanderbilt’s book Beginners moves us out of school and into the realm of lifelong learning. Many of us stop actively learning when we are out of school, and Vanderbilt was no exception – until he found himself with a young daughter who felt she needed to know absolutely everything. Inspired by her, he spent a year learning for learning’s sake, and this book records his experiences.
The Freedom Writers were a classroom of students in Long Beach who had been deemed “unteachable” and whose rough lives were bleeding into the classroom environment. With the help of Erin Gruwell, a first-year teacher with a plan, all 150 of them went on to graduate, and learned to express their feelings through writing. This book details Gruwell’s experience while offering instruction to teachers interested in her teaching philosophy.
Learning By Heart: An Unconventional Education by Tony Wagner - 370.9 WAG
A former two-time college dropout and high-school expellee, Tony Wagner struggled to find his way in a world that constrained him with conventional schooling. He did find success, however; now he is a world-renowned teacher and motivational speaker. Wagner tells how he did so in this book, explaining his unconventional approach to teaching and how it helped benefit himself and his “unteachable” students.
A highschool English teacher, Stephanie Jankowski’s essay collection explores the highs and lows of teaching in a straightforward and often hilarious way. Jankowski addresses the funny questions that come up while teaching as well as the tough lessons, and suffering alongside her students as they suffer losses and hurts.
Programs
COMPAS is a Minnesota-based non-profit focused on the arts and education, and sends out COMPAS Teaching Artists to help teens, students and teachers, and others learn through creative works. This ebook comprises the collaborations between seventeen COMPAS Teaching Writers and their community in an anthology edition and was a finalist in the 2020 Minnesota Author Project: Communities Create contest. Find it in our Indie Minnesota ebooks database!
This book by Newberry Award-winning author Kwame Alexander is a must-have for teachers wanting to teach a writing workshop in today’s classroom. The book is broken down into three parts - writing, publishing, and presenting – and encourages student publications of their work.
Fiction
Loudermilk, or, The Real Poet, or The Origin of the World by Lucy Ives - FICTION IVE
Lucy Ives’ book traces the experiences of Troy Augustus Loudermilk and his friend Harry Rego, who lacks Loudermilk’s charm and classic good looks. They are both attending The Seminars, the nation’s renowned creative writing program, to which Loudermilk has just been accepted. Only… Troy Augustus Loudermilk has never written a poem. Satirical and cerebral, Loudermilk pokes fun at higher education, creative writing programs, and the ascription of value to people who look like they deserve it.
Evening Class by Maeve Binchy - FICTION BIN
The Italian class at Mountainview College, a small secondary school in the seedy part of Dublin, is about to find their lives changed forever. Aiden Dunne is a Latin teacher whose marriage and career are failing, and who finds his life turning around with the help of the Signora, a teacher with a mysterious past whose nursing of the spark that attracted Dunne to Italy revives not only him but his classmates as well.
Straight Man by Richard Russo - FICTION RUS
Russo’s book stars William Henry Devereaux, Jr., a long-suffering chairman of an English department of a tiny college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Suffer and laugh with him as he tries to manage a deeply divided department, all with his characteristic satirical wit, that lands him in trouble as often as not.
Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett - FANTASY PRA
Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals stars the wizard teachers of Discworld’s Unseen University. When a wealthy family threatens to withhold their endowment unless the university starts a football team, these bumbling-yet-brilliant administrators find themselves reworking the rules of the game to ensure that no one dies, football up to this time being a very violent game indeed. Hilarious as always, Pratchett satirizes not only football culture but silly academic rituals in this addition to the Discworld series.
Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher - FICTION SCH
Jason Fitger is a creative writing teacher at a small and unremarkable liberal arts college in the Midwest. Year after year, his department suffers through harsh budget cuts as the economics department flourishes just a floor above them, and Fitger has about had enough. This epistolary novel is comprised of the letters that Fitger is implored to send by his students and colleagues, full of sarcasm and low morale. Schumacher is a professor of creative writing and English at the University of Minnesota!