Because Vermont is a decidedly rural state it is a useful site for research into a particular aspect of the history of the teaching occupation: the transition from the easy-entry occupation of educating children in one-room schoolhouses to the more modern occupation of working within the structure of graded schools. The consolidation of public schools occurred very late in Vermont. Its geography (mountains, farms, isolated towns) and climate (snow in winter, mud in spring) worked in combination with a fierce tradition of local control to maintain small schools not only within each small town, but also within the numerous recognized subdivisions of these towns. In 1900 there were only ninety graded schools in the state out of a total of 2,410 schools; in 1939 there were still only 185 graded schools out of a total of 1,200 schools.1 Not until the 1950's did the movement to eliminate the country schools gain sufficient impetus to have a real impact on either the kind of education available to the majority of Vermont schoolchildren or the kind of occupational involvement available to those women (and men) who taught in the state. A process lost to oral history in more urbanized areas is still open to this methodology in Vermont where women are alive whose careers included time in both kinds of schools. These women can answer questions about the effect of this transition from country to consolidated schools on their own lives and on their attitudes toward the work involved.2 When I note that the methodology of oral history can be used for such a study, I understate the role of oral history in defining the issue itself. I began this research with a question from my own sociological training. I was interested in knowing whether the occupation of school teaching attracted different kinds of individuals in its two forms. A couple of interviews with the individuals themselves taught me that I was overlooking the now obvious fact that although the occupation might have drawn on essentially different populations at different times, some individual careers spanned the transition itself. Close study of the interview tapes further suggested a particular pattern about this transition. The majority of the women who had taught in both one-room and graded schools had unambivalent preferences for one occupational environment or the other. That is, rather than noting some positive and some negative features of each of the two kinds of jobs, the women were clearly divided into two groups: those who found the one-room schools the ideal work environment and those who far preferred the graded schools. In what follows I first describe my methodology for this study; I then turn my attention to two sets of questions raised by the interviews. The first set has to do with the different attitudes towards the transition itself: what aspects of the occupation do those who preferred the country schools stress? What did they feel they and the occupation had lost when they were moved from one-room to graded schools? And conversely, what aspects of the occupation are emphasized by those women who found the transition to be a positive experience? What do they feel they gained? The second set of questions has to do with understanding why the reactions to the transition are so neatly dichotomized. What differentiates these two groups of women? What can account for their very different reactions to the same event? I want to emphasize that I am looking at the satisfactions the occupation held for those employed in it and not at its effects on the