Amish Schools Slumber.....

By Kevin Williams

Summer in bucolic pockets of Amish country means that school closes for the summer. Literally closes.  At the public schools in my hometown, the schools never really close.  You pass by the parking lot on any summer day and there are secretaries, support staff, and students there for various reasons.  Getting paperwork ready for the new year.  Summer school.  Band practices, etc.  But, no, Amish schools when they are done for the summer, they're done for the summer.  On the last day of school, usually in May, the schoolmaster locks the door, the kids go home and the building sits unoccupied until a few days before school opens again the fall.  Then you'll some teachers and volunteers coming in to wipe down walls, mow the grass, get firewood ready.  But these photos capture the Amish schools in their summer slumber.

This is an Amish school in Sinking Spring, Ohio...It's Swartzentruber Amish school and it's tiny and closed for the summer and I just kept thinking how HOT that little building must get on a toasty July day like the one I stopped by on......whew...imagine it would be toasty!

I know pretty much every nook and cranny of southern Ohio but I had never heard of "Harriett, Ohio", a tiny smudge of a town in the middle of nowhere. There's an Amish school that's a bit bigger than the one in Sinking Spring...it , too is asleep for the summer...

I imagine this basketball hoops sees a lot of action during the school year, but it sits quietly outside the school in Harriet during the summer...a serene scene with the high corn behind it....