The Results Are In!

Thanks to all of you who took the recent survey. We posted several questions to try and get an idea of what our project followers would most like to see in a book about Cherry Road School. The majority of respondants said they would most like a chronilogical history of Cherry Road School and also a history of the Westvale neighborhood.

I'd like to encourage anyone who may have any historical documentation or general information to share with the project, to please contact us. And again, thanks to those who took the survey.

And, it's not too late to get in touch! Actual writing on the book will not begin until January, 2010.

Traits of a Good Teacher

What does it mean to be a "good teacher?" Marion Parsons was the kind of educators who, more than 30 years after her death, still inspires former students and people whose lives she touched.

This morning I was reading our introductory piece about the Cherry Road School project on the Historical Society page, about how Miss Parsons embodied the kind of teacher that students never forget, about all the cards and letters she would receive from former students years after her retirement. Then I began to reflect on what is a good teacher? We hear so many stories in the news about what's not working in education today.

If you are visiting this blog, there was probably something about Cherry Road School that affected your life in a positive way.

Please share. Please click on the "Comment" following this post and share what you believe are the characteristics of a "good teacher." We want to hear from all of you! No answer is wrong. Every response is a contribution to this online community of people who were touched by a special school in a unique American neighborhood.

Martha Parsons Remembers-Part II

When the fire started, we three Parsons girls were at the little one room school on Terry Road. One of the boys thought he saw 'something' and got permission to sharpen his pencil so he could go to the window, enabling him to report a fire to the east. At first it was thought to be Babcock's barn on fire, Babcock's being the only buildings between the school and the Parsons farm at that time. The children begged to go to the fire and after much persuasion the teacher, Miss Allen, agreed, providing the children would promise to stay back from it. However, as soon as they saw it was the Parsons barn, the older boys, my cousin Herbert Parsons among them, raced to the fire, and my sister Grace followed. When Miss Allen tried to call her back, she said, with great emphasis, "I'm going home to comfort my mother."

Our Grandmother Parsons brick house about a quarter mile to the west [today, this is the Jim & Susan Jerome place...still in the family] was vacant, so our family lived there for the winter while the new house and barn were built on practically the same foundation as the old ones.

In the 1930s the old barn was demolished to make way for the houses on newly built Parsons Drive. The house still stands. [Corner of Parsons Drive and W. Genesee.]

Where there were open fields and orchards when I was a girl and young woman there are streets lined with houses, changing the whole area from farmlands to a Syracuse Suburb called Westvale.

Dear Readers~ If you have any knowledge of events or people around this time in Westvale, we would love to hear from you. Send your stories privately to the list moderator, or post as a comment to this posting, or any of the other postings that may jog your memory. Again, we would love to hear from you.