Kids Still Ride Horses To This One-Room Wyoming Schoolhouse

It’s a scene that feels like it belongs in a sepia-toned, black-and-white movie, but it’s living color at Slack Elementary School near Parkman, Wyoming. 

Students there begin and close out their school year by riding their horses to the one-room schoolhouse on horseback.

Picture a dozen or so kids, legs swinging in sometimes too-big stirrups, strung out along a narrow ranch road. 

For the last day of school in May, the Bighorn Mountains might still hold a streak or two of snow while ahead a tiny, white schoolhouse awaits. 

The horses plod along at a slow walk — by strict family decree — helping create a moment of what feels like suspended time. 

“If you let one horse start trotting, then you’re going to have a horse race on your hands,” ranch mom Jill Kerns told Cowboy State Daily with a chuckle. 

Three of her four children have been young enough to participate in the tradition. 

“It usually takes about 10 to 15 minutes,” she said. "Honestly, it takes longer to catch the horses and saddle them than it takes to ride down there.”

One-Room School That Still Works

The end point of the horse parade is the historic Slack Elementary School, one of about a couple dozen remaining one-room schoolhouses in Wyoming. 

The Slack School opened in 1890, giving it 136 years of history in this ranching community. The present building was buildt in the 1930s, after the original schoolhouse burned down. 

Although no one is quite sure when the first- and last-day horseback rides began, they are a cherished community tradition, one that honors the school’s heritage in a ranching community and salutes the history of the American West.

Teachers at Slack use the activity to throw open a window to local history and lifestyles, pointing out there was a time when the ride wasn’t ceremonial at all. 

Jill’s father-in-law Krayton Kerns remembers when the school used to have an old barn for people to put their horses in during the day.

“It was pretty well used up by the time we got here in ’65,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “And I’m not sure when it got torn down the rest of the way, but prior to my time at Slack School, the generation before, they rode to school because that was their only transportation.”

Krayton, meanwhile, walked to school every day. 

“Dad mentioned to me that he always walked to school,” he said. “So I decided I was going to do that, too, even though we had a bus driver who ran a Suburban van that hauled a bunch of kids to school.”

Big Brother, Big Sister Teaching Method

Slack might seem on the surface like it’s some kind of throwback. But there’s more value in this old-fashioned approach than people realize, and parents say they see their children earning a leg up in key areas like reading.

“The teachers have told me when the Slack kids get to Tongue River, they tend to be a little bit ahead,” Jill said. “By the time they leave Slack, they’re very well prepared, if not ahead.”

Jill’s son Henry, who had one year at Slack, told Cowboy State Daily he was able to work at his own pace, which meant he didn’t have to wait on learning new material. 

“You get to just keep going if you’re ahead on stuff,” he said. “You learn a lot more that way.”

In a classroom with just a few kids per grade, there’s also no hiding in the back row. Everyone is going to get called on, and that means everyone better be on their toes.

Older students also help the younger ones, and everyone has chores to do around the school. Those things have made the students more tightly knit together, more like family than a typical school. 

'Great Way To Grow Up'

Krayton, who is a veterinarian, believes Slack School gave him the best possible foundation for his future career. 

He never felt, as he was pursuing his doctorate, that the one-room school had disadvantaged him in any way. 

Part of it, he believes, was how the older students were quietly absorbing lessons meant for the grades below them, retraining their minds on past materials, ensuring there were never any gaps in their learning. 

“The teacher would have the attention of the first graders and get them lined out on a job,” he said. “Then she’d go to the next grade. … You could sit there and kind of absorb it all.”

The sixth graders, meanwhile, often helped the younger students with schoolwork if they were having some issues, which further helped them become experts at the material.

“The teacher couldn’t be involved with everybody at each instant,” he said. “So the older kids were always willing to help us if we had a question on something. 

"These were upperclassman, but they were still just your friends, and you were interacting and playing with them at recess.”

Socially, it gave the younger students a sense that they had big brothers looking out for them. On the flip side of that coin, the older students felt a certain responsibility to look out for their younger classmates.

“It was a great way to grow up, learn, and mature,” he said. “You soon realized that you had not only classmates but an entire community who knew who you were, and you were expected to be on your best behavior at all times. 

"If you weren’t someone would catch it, and you would get it once you got home.”

Krayton has seen the one-room school in Slack have positive effects on his grandchildren’s attitude toward school.

“The eagerness to go to school is pretty high down here,” he said. “They started out in Billings, so they were going to classrooms that had 30 and 40 students. But when they moved down here, all of a sudden you’re one of 10 in the school. It’s just a totally different perspective.”

The eagerness is something Jill has also seen playing out with her own children.

Connor, her youngest, started Slack in kindergarten and is now in second grade, while her daughter Nora just finished fourth grade this spring and heads to Tongue River Elementary in the fall. 

Henry had a single year there, while her oldest son never attended Slack at all.

The differences have been noticeable to her in both academics and attitude.

“It just kind of speaks to that one-on-one nature,” she said. “When they get to Tongue River, they adjust, and are able to fit right in with their classmates without any issue.”

She credits the social skills they’re learning thanks to the closer-knit environment.

For Nora, this spring’s last day ride was her last to Slack. Connor, though, still has two more years of first and last-day horseback trips ahead of him.

Ranch-Style Recess

Recess is another memorable part of the Slack experience. 

The playground, for example, grows larger on really hot days, taking in a shallow swimming hole the kids know by heart. 

“There’s a rope swing and you swing off of it,” Jill’s daughter Nora told Cowboy State Daily. “But it was never really deep enough, so you have to like belly flop on it before you actually land.”

The playground also includes a few nontraditional items, like roping dummies, which the children can practice during recess. 

“The para (a teaching assistant) who is there right now, her name is Ashley, and she is working with the kids on roping and things like that,” Jill said. “Things you just won’t get to do at a school in town.”

Nerf gun wars sometimes break out during the 45-minute recess, too, with kids dashing around the old schoolyard like they’re in a Wild West movie — minus the real bullets, but plus streams of really cold water to shoot at each other.

Krayton remembers similar recess experiences growing up, like playing hockey on a makeshift skating rink.

“If the snow was really good or the slough froze up, we could play hockey,” he said. “It wasn’t a fourth the size of a basketball court, but we’d go out there and bang a can around like we were playing real hockey.”

Playground equipment then was more unforgiving than now, though.

“This was the good old stuff that you could fall off of and break an arm,” he said with a chuckle, recalling a tall metal slide and other relics. “It had a little adventure to it.”

The lessons learned on a playground like that went far beyond the lessons of today, Krayton believes. Students had to learn to improvise on such a playground, using imagination to create their own fun.

How Long Can It Last?

As wonderful as the whole experience is, Krayton observed uneasily how much the world is changing around the school, and he can’t help but wonder how long it will last.

Where once there were dozens of small cattle outfits up and down the creek sending kids to school, now there are just a few large operations here and there.

“Most of the ag country around here has been bought up by two or three large, big-money landowners,” he said. “We’re hitting a point where the generation that’s raising children isn’t out here anymore. That generation may be dying out.”

That’s part of what makes the little horse parade to Slack feel larger and more important lately. It’s a bittersweet moment that’s more than a photo-op. It’s a link to a vanishing way of life, one that nurtured generations of Americans.

Still, all is not yet lost. The number of children may be dwindling, but there are still children left who are ready to catch a horse and tighten a cinch and head down the narrow road at a slow walk. 

They will have the chance one day to help keep Slack what it’s always been. A small, sturdy place where children can grow up with a sense of all that America once was, and, if they have their way, will continue to be.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.