Fort Wayne Normal School - Annual Yearbook (Fort Wayne, IN)

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HISTORY N THE YEARS of reconstruction following the Civil VVar, the school officials of many cities felt a serious need for raising the professional standard of their teachers. It was in 1867, a few months before the founding of the City Normal at Indianapolis and the year before the founding of the State Normal at Terre Haute, that the school board of Fort VVayne, upon the recommendation of the Superintendent of Schools, James H. Smart, decided to establish a training school and to employ teachers for the school at a cost not to exceed S1,S00. The reasons for the founding of the school are set forth at length by Superintendent Smart, Dr. -lohn S. Irwin, secretary, and O. P, Morgan, president of the Board, in the Fifth annual report of the Board of Education published in 1868: The importance of profes- sional schools for the education of teachers is fully recognized by the leading educators of the country. The business of teaching, like any other, must be learned. Proficiency can be acquired only by systematic study and training .... VVe cannot depend upon other cities altogether, for our experience has shown that others can draw from us as well as we can draw from them. Our only recourse has been the establishment of a City Training School, in which graduates of our High School, and others who may be admitted, may have special instruction, training and practice in the business in which they propose to engage. lt is notable that because of the establishment of its training school Fort Wayne was able to secure teachers who had a high school education and were trained for teaching at a time when only a very small percentage of teachers had even so much as a high school education. How well the school authorities believed they succeeded is shown by the following state- ment by O. P. Morgan in the commencement address of 1868: The school is no longer an experiment, it is an institution that should be maintained as a part of our school system. Dr. ,lohn S. Irwin, later Superintendent of Schools, but at that time Secretary of the Board, in a historical sketch of the city government, wrote: The wisdom of the measure was rapidly manifested in the higher ability of the teachers, the broader, more accurate, and more solid character of their work, and in the rapidly growing reputation of the school amongst prominent educators. The school was continued until 1886, when, as Dr. Irwin stated, for pressing reasons then existing, -the Beard discontinued it forlthe- time being. So great were the advantages of the school in many ways that its reorganization is greatly to be desired. In 1896 ,lustin N. Study became Superintendent. He found the teaching body recruited from the High School graduates largely without any professional preparation. To convert the corps of teachers into a body of trained teachers was his first concern. He states ,Clleport of 1902J: He who manages a system of schools must get his results from a shifting, unstable corps of teachers, even under the best circumstances. Some years ago, I made a careful investigation of a certain city in this state. The investigation covered a period of twenty-five years. The result showed an average of less than five years, and yet in no place in the state perhaps are conditions more favorable for continued and continuous service .... This is the result reached by other investigators and five years may be considered a fair average of service taking the country overp and yet it is with this kind of a shitting force that the superintendent of schools must obtain his results. l'The corps of teachers might have been made professional by rigidly demanding as a pre-requisite to appointment a normal school diploma, but this had not been done, nor is a course practicable in a community as large as Fort Wayne. Graduates from the High School must form a large proportion of the teaching force in any large system of city schools. Many, who have natural qualifications for teaching, have not the means at com- mand to enable them to go abroad to take the normal school course of study. It is wise economy to furnish the professional training, absolutely essential to good work, at home, and then rigidly exclude from the elementary schools all untrained teachers by refusing to employ any one who has not completed the training school, or a normal course of study or who does not come with skill gained by successful experience elsewhere. In recent years the State of Indiana has increased its facilities for the training of all teachers so that conditions have changed from what they were when the Normal School was re-established. In the opinion of the school authorities the emergency requiring the city to train its own teachers no longer exists. Accordingly the school is to be officially closed in September, 1922. . The first school was located on the first floor of the building on East Wayne street which has recently been known as the Old High School Building. The entire High School was housed on the second floor, and the gymnasium was located on the third floor. This

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JVSTIN N. STVDY Sll1VCI'1l'lTCl'ldCl1t uf Schools, 1886-IQI7