I keep my card collection at my office in El Paso at Heartland Bank. My phone number at the bank is 527-4400. If you know of anyone who is interested in trading, give me a call at that number or e-mail me.

Click here for Ruth Ann's pictures of wildflowers next to her rural property.

The girls have also worked hard this year and had numerous fundraisers. This included a car wash, bagging groceries and selling Fieldcrest items. It doesn't matter how many girls are out there cheering cause we parents and kids have helped pay for everything that you see.

But be sure to remind folks that only some of our public education problems are caused by lack of money....good management and good teaching and great learnings have been found in many environments that are resource limited.

My career included 5 yrs. in a public school that was resource limited and then 33 yrs. in a variety of training related jobs at Caterpillar in Peoria, East Peoria, Milwaukee and Aurora.

Education is expensive...but so is the price of ignorance....has been said and printed often. Compare the price of one year of public school to the annual cost for one prisoner in our state.

Gerry Schmidt

My great grandparents came to Minonk in 1885 from County Durham, England. The first photo is of Grandpa William MacIlwrath ready for work in the coal mine in Minonk about 1925 or so. The second photograph is of what I believe is the Sweet Shop in Minonk where my Grandma Jennie MacIlwrath (their daughter) worked prior to her marriage in 1920. She is the dark haired girl on the left. I don�t know anyone else in the picture. The next photo is of my Grandma Jennie (on the left) with three of her friends in downtown Minonk (Schlitz Opera House in background?) taken sometime prior to 1920. I don�t know who the other women are in that photo. The last photo is of my Great Grandma Maria MacIlwrath in her backyard in Minonk with my Aunt Dorothy Shaffer (Jennie�s daughter). The older girl is Lillian Stowkowski, who is another grandchild that grew up in Minonk. I wonder if she is related to the �Blackie� Stowkowski who is in a photo of coal miners in the history section. One other note that may be of interest regarding Minonk history�when the MacIlwraths came to Minonk my great grandma�s sister Hannah Nelson came with them and married Ernest Hewitt. I think he ran a lumberyard in town at one time. Anyway, they also raised their family there. When I was in town I noticed an old building on the main street called Hewitt�s Store and wondered if there might be a connection there (photo attached). One day I�ll have to come back when I can spend more time exploring.

I hope that the above wasn�t more info than you needed!

Again, I have really enjoyed your site! Please feel free to share the photos, maybe someone will recognize a person or something in them.

Thanks-

Steve Tate
Lake Worth, FL

Thank you, Jerl Martin
Charles City, IA

Click on picture below to enlarge.

I have no idea what most of these plant were ( if anyone does, it would be great to hear their description) but judging from the color descriptions given the prairie must have been a splendor to behold.

When La Salle and his men were entering the prairie they found that the vast prairie of tall grass had been burnt. The Miamis as a buffalo hunting technique set huge fires. La Salle wrote, "the Indians set fire to the grass around the herds except at a few places where they stationed themselves with bows and arrows. The buffalo in trying to avoid the fire, are obligated to pass in front of the Indians, who sometimes killed two hundred in a day."

When looking at your picture the term 'breaking sod' takes on new meaning. The grass in your picture was the sod our fore fathers had to plow under in order to plant their first crops. I would guess a farmer needed an exceptional plow and plenty of them. Thanks for your picture, and to Eldon Folkerts for keeping the bit of prairie history, and to all of those who tamed our prairies.

I work in a district and my children went to another school where there is a pay-to-play policy. It is a flat fee, no matter your financial condition. It doesn't bring in much revenue either. There are also "parking" fees purportedly to repave the parking lot -- it would take about 100 years to raise enough money to do that. I don't expect my child to ride the bench if I am paying for the privilege of being on this team! That was my feeling and it is the feeling of many parents who have paid these fees.

I don't know the sizes of the classes in the Fieldcrest District, but I do know that teaching and dealing with students is not the same today as it was even 20 years ago. Many times aides are hired because of a special education IEP (Individual Education Plan) -- the district has no choice but to provide this service. I also know that I will be teaching a class on computer skills to 20 students where one of the students is legally blind and two of the students have a BD (behavior disorder) label with no one to help me. I will tell you that I am very concerned about how I am going to help all of the students in that class develop their skills when I know that three of the students will be requiring most of my time and attention during the class period of 40 minutes. When I taught language arts, more than once I had students in middle school who had severe reading and writing deficits. For two years I had the opportunity to have an aide in some of my classes, and I believe that with her help we were able to assist those students in becoming more capable readers and writers. Sometimes we feel that because we live in small towns we don't have the problems that larger schools have. That is not the case -- we have neglect, abuse, poverty, hunger, drugs, and all the problems that can be found in the cities. (I live in a town of 900 and work in a town of less than 2000.)

As far as the use of substitute teachers, that is a contractual issue. I know that I have only used one sick day, 3 bereavement days, and 2 personal days in the last 10 years. I have the same number of sick days each year as my mother had when she taught at Minonk Grade School. Teachers are no different than any other employees, some use most of their sick leave days and some don't. Professional development has become a part of renewing teaching certificates in the state of Illinois so there may be teachers attending workshops and training sessions for that reason -- this is not any different than professional training in corporate America. I am not so sure it is for anyone to question if my absence is really necessary as long as I still have days that can be used.

The suggestion of year-round school is certainly a popular one today. First of all, from a personal standpoint, as a mother, I would have hated to have lost all those wonderful days I had with my children when they were out of school for the summer. (I was not employed as a teacher when they were small, I was a homemaker.) Now as a teacher, you are presently paying for 180 days of work, do you intend to pay for more, or are you just going to change the arrangement of the days? Most schools that have gone to year-round have done the second. From the maintenance standpoint, when will the buildings be cleaned and the summer maintenance be done? I think you will find that you will need to hire more personnel in those jobs. You will also increase your bussing costs because you will run the buses more, if you actually increase the number of days. My husband is a school administrator who works eleven months -- there are many administrative jobs that are done during the "vacation" because there are so many fewer interruptions. Will traditional community summer activities like summer baseball be changed so that students are not out late in the evening? I know where I work the schools are not air conditioned -- it would be unbearable to be in the buildings many summer days. I know this because I worked an entire summer year before last for the princely sum of $1500. From an educational stand point, I am not convinced that learning is improved by this rearrangement of the calendar. I think that more time is spent restarting and wrapping-up each quarter.

Unfortunately, the State and the Federal governments frequently make policy that causes great expenditures for the minority of students. I personally feel that the No Child Left Behind policy may be just one more of those things. All the testing that is done in schools has to be paid for by the district. Many times the state will change funding after staff hirings have been completed for the following year -- that costs the district. I would imagine that Fieldcrest is like many rural districts, it is growing older and therefore has fewer students.

I think that the revenue from gambling and the lottery probably would help a great deal if the state hadn't taken a like amount out as it added this funding. It was counterproductive to add funds from gambling only to decrease funding for education that came from the general fund. Part of the loss of revenue has come from decreasing farm assessments at the rate of 10% a year over 3 years for a total of 30%. (I know that this is a touchy subject in a farm community, but it is a reality.) I was living in Minonk the last time this was done by the state -- it created major funding issues then too. I would like to see the state move to another way of taxing for education, but I don't think that is very possible.

Marg (Gardner) Robertson

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"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." --Henry Adams