Talk about your old school teaching.

Judy and Mervyn Campbell remember having to do almost everything for themselves when they arrived in 1965 at the little two-room Riverside school south of what’s now Cambridge.

Those were the days before countywide school boards. North Dumfries Township ran Riverside and a scattering of other small schools across the township, like Little’s Corners and Branchton.

From special education classes in a storeroom to monthly car trips taking students to the old Galt library, it was a hands-on style of teaching that sounds alien in today’s world of oppressive regulation and overbearing parents.

“We never used to supervise the kids out on the playground. I’d just stick my out the window and checked on them … we had work to do inside,” said Mervyn, 70, who was principal there for a year.

The husband-and-wife teaching team hopes former students at the little school will drop by at a 50 anniversary reunion on Sept. 19. It will be held at the school, which is now the Orthodox Christian Reformed Church of Cambridge at 1510 West River Rd.

Former principal Bob Davis organized the reunion and the Campbells are spreading the word. All former students are welcome, but contact Davis first at 519-279-1000, 519-623-3375 or davis_perimeter@yahoo.ca. He needs to know how much food to order for a $20-a-plate buffet supper in one of the old classrooms.

Judy and Mervyn have fond memories of teaching at Riverside. They remember few problems with backtalk from students – or criticism from parents – in the rural area.

Even the students who today would be diagnosed with learning disabilities or medicated to keep them focused on bookwork turned out OK, said Judy, 67.

Judy remembers one boy who “was always into mischief” because he couldn’t concentrate and “gave me a run for my money” trying to teach in class. Some 20 years later, he walked up to her in the Eatons store in Kitchener to say he remembered – and now appreciates – all the attention she gave him.

“He was so polite and thankful. I guess you should never give up on a child.”

In 1966, the couple bought a house to west Galt. The same year, Mervyn left Riverside after a year to teach at Dickson, Tait and Manchester schools in Cambridge, then Ayr, and back to Cambridge at Ryerson and Blair Road, where he retired in 1995.

Judy stayed at Riverside and saw her workload grow. In 1967, she supervised 42 children in a Grade 1-2 class. Of the total, 20 Grade 1 students never attended kindergarten, so she had to teach them how to act in school along with teaching them the curriculum.

“It was a very taxing year and by the end of the year I had had it,” she said.

Judy quit full-time teaching to work part-time so she could raise their four children.

By 1975, she was back at Riverside, working four mornings a week until 1978. Then she returned to full time at New Dundee, then Country Hills in Kitchener and Grandview in Cambridge, where she retired in 1998.

Four Riverside public schools were home to students along the Grand River over the last century-and-a-half.

First was a one-room schoolhouse along river just south of The Footbridge, built in the wilderness of Dumfries Township before Canada became a nation in 1867.

Today, the footbridge is a two-lane concrete bridge for cars. Originally, cables carried a narrow wooden path over the water, giving children from the east side of the river access to school.

Last year, a 150 reunion was held nearby, at the site of the second Riverview School, just north of The Footbridge. That school – now a heritage building converted into a house – closed in 1949.

For a decade, all grades gathered in a one-room prefabricated steel building, just across West River Road from the original school. In 1959, a two-room building was erected just to the south — and the box went to become a kindergarten classroom at Mill Creek school.

That last Riverside closed its doors to students 1978, when it became a Waterloo County School Board storage site and workshop. In 1985, a third of the 1.2 hectare site was sold to the church. Township council bought the rest, to create Riverside Park.

The couple’s former students needn’t worry about any pop quizzes or exams awaiting them on reunion day, but Judy does plan to revive fun memories of her math classes. She used to slice up watermelons, move around groups of Cheerios on desktops and break up chocolate bars to teach addition, division and subtraction.

“If they got the answer I wanted, they’d get to eat them,” she said.

Former students should prepare for a sticky reception, Judy said.

“We’ll bring in some watermelons and do some lessons in fractions.”

kswayze@therecord.com