Schools in Nodaway County had varied experiences due to the amount of districts, but there is a similar overlap in some experiences. This includes early on there being a lack of extracurricular activities such as music, athletics, and theatre. Most schools only went to eighth grade and beyond that, students had to take a test in the eighth grade to graduate from school. If the student passed, they could go to the high school or begin working with their family. If they failed, they repeated the eighth grade until they passed. Schools were also common meeting places for the community. Schools often had basket dinners on the last day of school, holiday celebrations, and general community meetings in schools. Additionally, they were used for extracurriculars like the 4-H club and women of the community putting on plays. The agricultural influence on the school system can not be understated. Often times, school years would be shortened with breaks for the harvesting season. If the school did not utilize these breaks, many boys would not attend school during harvesting season. This led to many older boys attending school, some even older than their teacher, compared to the little amount of girls attending school at older ages. 

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Teachers were expected to be model examples in the community they taught in. The following is a list of rules commonly applied to northwestern Missouri teachers in the 19th and early 20th centuries:  Each day teachers will fill lamps, clean chimneys, check outhouses daily, the teacher will sweep out the school once a week, the teacher will build fires and attend to the fuel for the school, the teacher will visit every home during the school year, the teacher is expected to attend church and perform other duties as requested, the teacher will not marry during the term of your contract,  the teacher must be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless attending a school or church function, the teacher may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores, the teachers may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless he is a father or brother, the teacher may not dress in bright colors, the teacher may not smoke cigarettes or may not use any other tobacco, the joining of any feminist movement is cause for immediate dismissal, the teacher who performs her duties regularly and faithfully, without fault for five years, will be given an increase of 25 cents a week in pay providing the Board of Education approves, and every teacher should lay aside a goodly sum for her benefit during her declining years, so that she will not be a burden to society. 

 

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