NORTH WINDHAM – Manchester School in North Windham is celebrating its 40th anniversary on Saturday, Sept. 14, and all who worked at the school since its opening day in 1973 are encouraged to attend the reunion.

The plan is that fond memories will be shared by some of its staff members and teachers who taught there in 1973, said Bill Diamond, the first principal at the elementary school.

At 11 a.m., the reunion will begin with a tour of the school that, in the 1970s, was “open-concept” with few dividing walls. The school now contains walls separating the classrooms, Diamond said, built years after the school first opened.

The tour will end at the school’s cafeteria for a light lunch, he said, followed by an opportunity for staff members, including longtime teachers, custodians and lunch providers, to share their memories about working at the school.

One of the first teachers at Manchester School, Isabel Taylor, now 99 years old, will be recognized during the reunion, Diamond said.

A veteran teacher, Taylor began teaching in 1935 in the Oxford County town of Roxbury, in the same two-room school where she attended eighth grade, Taylor said Wednesday when contacted at her home in Windham.

“From the time I was a little girl, I wanted to be a teacher. Although it was quite different, I enjoyed Manchester School and the open concept. I enjoyed working with the other teachers and the closeness I felt toward them,” she said.

“I look forward to seeing the other teachers and to see the changes to the school,” Taylor said about attending the reunion.

Gail Small, a Raymond resident who was an intern at the school in 1970 while attending the University of Southern Maine, said she is also looking forward to the reunion and reminiscing with the other staff members and teachers.

“I wasn’t an actual teacher that year, but I went on to get a job there in 1975,” Small said about her experience.

Small retired this year after having taught for 37 years in the Windham school system. She taught fourth grade at Manchester School for 10 years, she said, and transferred to Windham Primary School teaching second and third grades.

“I loved it,” she said of Manchester School.

When asked whether any particular memories strike her about working there, she said, “I just remember being excited about it. I got to work with a lot of different teachers.” She especially enjoyed the “open-concept” style of teaching, she said.

“We taught with two or three teachers, together,” she said. “It was a great school. It was a very exciting time.”

Her husband, Bruce, was a first-year teacher at the school, where he and Gail also met. Bruce Small worked at the school for seven years, beginning in 1973.

According to Small, who helped plan the reunion, her husband saved an old newspaper clipping and pictures of first-year teachers that he will bring with him on Sept. 14.

“I started in fifth grade and moved down to fourth grade,” Bruce Small said, when asked about his time teaching at Manchester School.

“The focus was on individualized education,” he said. “With a team format, we shared a lot of kids … we would meet as a whole group with 50-75 kids and teach a lesson. Then the kids would go off on their own. The hands-on learning was very exciting for me.”

He, too, said he is looking forward to the reunion and especially seeing Isabel Taylor.

“There’s a number of people I’d like to see,” he said.

Significant

The one-story school, known as Windham Elementary School in 1973, had 22 classrooms divided among grades 3-5, but the most striking aspect of the school, Diamond said, was its open-concept design – meaning there were very few interior walls and no walls separating classrooms. According to Diamond, the school was one of three others in Maine that was open concept.

“It was a new learning and teaching technique,” he said, “kind of like a fish bowl. We continually had people coming from other states, colleges, universities and school districts to observe our methods, so it was a lot of pressure on the teachers, but they were the best of the best. It was a unique experience.”

As the first principal of the school, Diamond said the teachers and staff, though under pressure, were devoted to making the open-concept design successful.

“Windham citizens, especially the parents, were a little nervous” of the new design, he said, “but overall supportive of the new school. We were definitely under a microscope.”

The open-concept design of the school worked until classes became overcrowded and caused “unacceptable distractions for both teachers and students,” Diamond said.

In 1974, the Windham Elementary School was renamed to the Manchester School, Diamond said. It was named after the Manchester family in Windham whose ancestors helped settle the town, he said.

Diamond said he anticipates around 25 staff members to attend the reunion, although the committee organizing the event is still in search of Manchester Elementary employees who may have not received the initial invitation.

“We are having difficulty locating people as you might expect, but for the most part, we have a good core group attending,” Diamond said. “It should be a good time.”

Those wanting to attend the reunion and have not already been contacted, are encouraged to call Diamond at 892-8941.

Manchester School, seen above in a 1973 photograph, has served North Windham’s school children for 40 years.