Bridgewater State University - Alpha Yearbook (Bridgewater, MA)

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MISS FLORA M. STUART Miss Flora M. Stuart came to Bridgewater as a teacher in 1891. She was a grad- uate of the Bridgewater Normal School in the class of 1888, and had already taught in Ayer, Fairhaven, and Newton. Her coming was the beginning of a period which was marked not only for its length, but for the amount and quality of the service which she rendered to the School and to the people of Bridgewater. When M iss Stuart came to the School, there was no separate practice school direct- ly connected with the Normal School. Similar work, however, was carried on in a part of one of the town school buildings. Here Miss Stuart taught, and students were sent to practice. Soon afterwards, the new building was built, which included seven classrooms for a Model School of 175 pupils in eight grades. In 1894, a kindergarten was added, and later a ninth grade. At that time, Mr. Albert Gardner Boyden was principal of the Normal School, and Miss Lillian Hicks head of the Model School and Director of Training. On through the years, through the growth of the School to its present proportions and status, through the changes in the appearance of the campus and changes in the teaching staffs, the first grade in the practice school continued to be a place where little children were given the finest teaching and the most careful training by a teacher whose energy was unflagging, and who never allowed her methods to grow stale or narrow, for Miss Stuart studied constantly and offered to her children nothing but the very best of modern practice, and the very best procedures that her unremitting loving enthusiasm could devise. From that room also went young men and women who had gained in their practice period a vision of the possibilities of the real education of little children, --a vision that never left them, but influenced their whole lives, and through them, the lives of many hundreds of their pupils. lt is impossible to calculate the effect of the life and labor of such a teacher. Al- though M iss Stuart early established a wide reputation as a special ist in primary educa- tion whose room was visited by interested teachers from far and near, it is not as an expositor of method that she will be longest remembered. Men and women now in the thick of community affairs were started upon their school life by Miss Stuart, and have been the better and stronger all their lives for the lessons not in reading alone, but in self-control, industry, honesty, and unselfishness which they learned in Miss Stuart's room. Teachers and administrators are passing on daily in their own school contacts the educational ideals that were clarified and confirmed in Miss Stuart's room. And so,ito retirement, but not to a retirement of idlenessq for Miss Stuart has been for many years, and still continues to be, the tireless Secretary of the Alumni Association of the State Teachers College at Bridgewater. Here also, she serves the interests of graduates and of the College. We wish for her all the best that life can hold, and assure her of our appreciation.

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FLORA M. STUART

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CLASS ODE We've come to the end of four long years, Years that today seem short: We've harvested riches of knowledge, And now we leave the port. We've set our ship a-sailing On a yet uncharted sea, And the beacon light ever burning Shall guide us on for thee. Chorus Dear B.T.C., we leave thee, Our destinies unknown: But we shall always love thee Where-e're we chance to roam. We've rigged our great ship like those of old, Our sails are standards high, We'll teach thy true doctrines forever, Beneath the wide world sky. Then when our journey's over And the work we've done for thee, We will turn our ship For the home trip, And sail for B.T.C. Lillian M. Cleary. Music by Eleanor Hall