Mary raised her hand again. “Yes Mary?” Stacy asked while trying to mentally process which students belonged to each of the three families.

“Are you wearing make up?” Mary asked quietly, almost in a whisper.

“A little bit, yes, Mary.” Stacy answered.

“Wearing makeup is a sin!” Mary whispered. “The devil will take you right down to hell for that.”

“Oh – leave the teacher alone,” big sister Martha said to Mary. “She’s English. They don’t believe in the devil.”

“Well, actually I do believe in the devil, and in God.” Stacy said. “I’m a Christian. I just didn’t know that wearing makeup was a sin. I won’t wear it anymore.”

“Then you had better wear dresses too if you’re a Christian,” William informed Stacy. “It’s not a sin to wear a hat in class, but I know it’s a sin for ladies to wear men’s clothes.”

Stacy got through the rest of the school day relatively unscathed. One down, only fifty-three left to go.

Just eight months ago Stacy was worried that she wouldn’t find a teaching job this year. After graduating from university with her teacher’s degree last spring, she had sent resumes out to every school division in Manitoba, even the Frontier division up north. Not a single division even invited her to interview. Five of her resumes were returned unopened.

Then, just as she thought her savings were going to run out and she would have to get a waitressing job or something, Stacy got a call from Jenny Reynolds. Jenny was a senior during Stacy’s freshman year. They had only met once or twice in the dorm that year, so the call was totally unexpected.

“Is this Stacy Stubinsky?” Jenny had asked. “I’ve been teaching at a Hutterite Colony near Brandon. I’m going on a maternity leave in April, and the school board has asked if I could recommend a replacement teacher.  I thought of you because you were kind of religious, and they are a bit fanatical about religion here. Would you be available to teach until the end of June?”

So that’s how Stacy ended up teaching at the Klovenhoft Hutterite School. Being the only teacher for seventeen students in a one room school house felt like stepping into an Anne of Green Gables novel. Except that these students were real, and Stacy had to follow the Manitoba school curriculum to teach eight grades plus kindergarten.

-May be continued if you like the story.