Radcliffe College was the women’s college of Harvard University. It has nothing to do with this tale. My first teaching experience began in January of 1971 at Neosho Junior High. When May came, I was not ready to quit, having only taught half a year.

My friend Mary Longwell had a rural schoolhouse on her farm. It was the old Reagan School. She told me that if I could think of a way to use it, I could. I was determined to have my very own summer school program. I sent letters to some graduated eighth graders whom I thought might be interested in a curriculum that would prepare them for feeling comfortable outside the city limits of Neosho.

How does one come up with an idea like that? By traveling Europe with my Dad who refused to see an art gallery, a museum and only one cathedral. As I began to travel abroad, I would ask Daddy, ‘Why don’t you ever ask me any questions about these trips?” “I don’t know what to ask,” he replied. While Daddy was happy to stay always in Neosho, I could see he was missing a lot of life just because he was uncomfortable outside the city limits. It is not a legacy one should pass on.

Fifteen students, mostly 15 years old, signed up and paid me $15 for a two-month course meeting three days a week for half a day … out on the farm. Mothers helped with the car pooling.

The first order of business was to clean up the place. The outhouses had to be cleaned. The schoolhouse was a dream of a place with an old pot-belly stove, wood floors, large windows all around and a few tables.

The first day of class we explored the farm with its streams and trees and picnic places.
I had told the kids to note the different signs of life they observed. Mostly, they just ran in the open air, except for Bob Shoemaker, who carried a notebook and actually took notes. My little daughters hereafter called him the “Note Man.”

The next classes exposed the students to Aaron Copland music and Martha Graham ballet. Janet Weidman lectured on the athleticism of ballet dancing. I tried to base the lessons around the idea that art in all its forms is really just a reflection of the culture that produces it. I showed them paintings and took them to museums in Tulsa. To prove my point, I bravely went into a gallery I had never been in and told them to each stand by a painting. I stood in the middle of the room and said I bet I could name the country of origin of the artist. No one was more surprised than I was that I actually achieved that. But it proved a point that when one travels, one can only learn about people and their culture if you look at the culture they produce.

It was during this crash course on American culture that my Dad jokingly called my summer school “Rural Radcliffe.” The kids liked that and even made a sign.

What the kids most enjoyed was snack time. I knew they needed to know more than what Neosho offered in the school lunch program. I knew this because when I had gone to college at Tulane in New Orleans, I had a very embarrassing experience with food. A girl who sat next to me in political science class had been the queen of Mardi Gras. Her family asked me to dinner to tutor her the night we needed to study for a final.
Their butler asked me if I wanted my consommé hot or jellied. I had never heard any of that. Her father helped me by saying he thought I would enjoy the jellied. It is still a favorite. Therefore, I taught those kids how to eat artichokes, escargot and consommé and caviar. Had the Lady in Red had Rural Radcliffe, Julia Roberts would have known how to handle that snail griper and fork. When I buy artichokes at the grocery store and the clerks have to ask what it is and what I do with it, I think ‘Ah, you need Rural Radcliffe.’ My daughters used it for show-and-tell at Central School.

A not-so-popular snack was the caviar. We had had a lesson on Communism and the composer Prokofiev, so caviar seemed the best to serve that day. I prepared it on crackers and passed it out to the kids. They took one bite and ran to the door to spit it out in the schoolyard. One mother told me that when she asked her son what happened in class that day, he replied “Mrs. Buwalda tried to poison us.”

When graduation time came, I made reservations at a French restaurant in Joplin. I brought home the French menus and taught the kids what to order and how to order it and how to figure the tip. I also taught them how to dress for a nice evening out. They loved it. All afternoon the boys were calling to ask advice on what tie to wear. At dinner most of them ordered escargot (That is snails in garlic butter served in their shells and it is pronounced es-car-go).

The mothers and I sat at another booth and ignored the students. They performed perfectly and we knew they could travel anywhere and be able to carry on a conversation with confidence and they could handle a foreign menu. I gave each of them a diploma that read “This is to certify that (student name) has dearly and successfully completed the first Reagan School Enrichment Program and is now an authorized conversant on the American Fine Arts. Signed Judith Buwalda, Teacher.”

It is a sad footnote that neither Radcliffe nor Rural Radcliffe exist anymore.