BOISE -- It's a scene straight out of a painting. A little red school house, in a setting that doesn't get much more picturesque.
“I never want to leave,” said Connor Davison, a sixth grader at Prairie Elementary School. “I want to stay up here in Prairie and I want to send my kids here to this school.”
For generations, children in the small ranching town of Prairie, Idaho, have learned to read and write inside these four walls.
"Well, right now there is six kids in school total," said Davison.
Once a year, for 40 years, the students welcome a very special visitor.
“As soon as they hear she's coming it's through the door, hey dad, Jennifer's coming next month,” said Jeremiah Cook whose son Stouffer goes to Prairie.
“The community too, everybody asks when is Jennifer coming?” said Carrie Markham, a teacher at Prairie.
Jennifer Williams first brought art education to this rural school house in 1976. She learned of the school while teaching high school art in nearby Mountain Home.
"You just don't get a better view than what's happening here,” said Williams. "We just call it 'Project Van Go' and essentially it's of course a play off of Vincent Van Gogh the artist, but we usually would come in a van, we'd get in a van and we would go!"
“We were very, very remote so we didn't get to see very many people. So when she came and taught art that was almost like Christmas to us as kids,” said Cook, who took Williams’ classes as a child.
Today, the school house is full.
"Four of my former students came with me today," said Williams.
Those students are now art teachers themselves.
"So many of the parent here were my students and now I'm getting the kids and the grandkids and that is mind boggling to me,” said Williams.
They have all come to celebrate Jennifer, the woman who has brought so much more to this community than just crayons and clay.
“It inspires me, it makes me want to think of something different. Makes me want to try something new,” said Davison.
“You know, it really is making them think outside the box and anybody that thinks art is secondary to everything, it's actually foremost to everything," said Williams.
Williams retired from teaching art full-time in 2004. But she says Prairie is a place where she'll continue drawing inspiration for years to come.
“They've given the gift to me,” said Williams. “They think I've given the gift to them but they've really given the gift to me."
The celebration is just getting started for Williams. In just a few weeks, she will become the first teacher from Idaho ever inducted to the National Teachers Hall of Fame. The story of her career will be on permanent display at the National Teachers Hall of Fame Museum in Emporia, Kansas.