This book is a memoir of one-room school life in 1929. In his day, Cratis D. Williams (1911-85) was America's foremost scholar on the Appalachian experience. This book is the story of his first teaching assignment at age 18 in a one-room K-8 school on Caines Creek in Lawrence County, Kentucky. Williams details his classroom practices and innovations and describes his students, his own and students' daily lives, and special school events and holidays. His teaching philosophy was unique. He assumed that all children were capable, eager, and industrious. Proceeding on that assumption, he laid down no rules. Rather, he referred to the desire of everyone to be thoughtful and considerate of others and to have others return thoughtfulness and consideration. Williams' keen sensitivity to other people's feelings and his compassion and appreciation for others became personal trademarks. His good will and spirit of tolerance were the foundation stones of his "educational statesmanship," and he claims that his success as a public person was due to his having accepted himself with confidence as an Appalachian. Includes two short autobiographical statements, photographs, and an index. (TD)