WHEN WE WERE NORMAL
A Historical Augmented Reality Walking Tour
When Student Teachers Are in Charge
LOCATION: STAIRCASE BY THOMPSON 111
Learning how to teach can be a messy process, but for the first class of normal school teachers deployed in the practice schools, it was near chaos.
When John Thompson took on the position of Principal of the State Normal School, he also took charge of the observation and practice schools on Day Street and Highland Avenue from the Superintendent of School in Fitchburg, Joseph Edgerly. Normal School students watched master teachers in the observation schools and rotated teaching class in the model school on a thirteen week cycle.
Fitchburg Superintendent of School, Joseph Edgerly, wrote an annual report highlighting the educational concerns relevant to the events of the year. The 1896 report admitted that observation and model schools typically carry a positive bias in the minds of many parents, which school committees and superintendents everywhere should work to combat. As such, the pupils attending the Day Street and Highland Avenue schools were not selected in a manner different than that of other Fitchburg schools. Not only did this dissuade positive bias, it also gave normal school students an authentic experience teaching to the variety of aptitudes found in any public school.
Unfortunately, the 1897 Annual Report paints a less optimistic public opinion of observation and practice schools. During the 1896-1897 academic year, normal school students were put in charge of practice school classes despite knowing nothing of their pupils. While the practice school principals knew the children, they did not know the work of the normal students. The seven supervisory teachers and two assistants were equally unacquainted with the normal school students.
So what was the community’s response? Edgerly’s reports the transition as one where “[h]ostile criticism was rife in many directions”. Further, Edgerly describes the origin of the chaos, saying:
“A mistake was evidently made in releasing the entire corps of teachers employed by the city at Day street at one and the same time, and placing the schools of the entire building in charge of pupil teachers from the normal school under the direction of supervisory teachers who were unacquainted with one another’s methods. Satisfactory results could not be expected under such conditions.”
Edgerly hoped the resulting distrust and prejudice against practice schools would pass. Thompson encouraged such a change of heart by hiring the best teachers possible for the observation schools at $100-200 more than the City of Fitchburg would typically pay a teacher. In the practice schools, each supervisory teacher had 50 students charged to her, an average number for a public classroom of that era. Should the normal student’s lesson be inadequate, the supervisory teacher would teach the subject in the normal student’s place.
