This account draws almost exclusively on John Cumming, The First
Hundred Years: A Portrait of Central Michigan University, 1892-1992
(Mt. Pleasant, 1992).
| Central Michigan Business and Normal School, as it was first called, was founded as a private enterprise in 1892. From the beginning, teacher training was at the core of its purpose and function. The "normal" activities were given a proper home soon after the school gained State recognition and support in 1895; in 1902 the Training School was build, the second building on campus. Of the earliest years, Cumming writes: "[In 1899] perhaps the most important news was the report that Miss Margaret Wakelee of Galveston, Texas, had been engaged as the new director of kindergarten. Miss Wakelee was a graduate of Mrs. Treat's Kindergarten and Primary Training School of Grand Rapids. The new kindergarten would be started in a basement room in the Maple Street School. This school had served as the laboratory school for the training of teachers from the beginning years of the Normal until 1901, when the legislature appropriated $32,000 for building and land for a training school with a capacity of three hundred students. The city in turn agreed to furnish a sufficient number of students on the grade school level. The building was erected on the north end of the campus on land purchased from the Mount Pleasant Improvement Society. At the time Normal Avenue [nee Church, next College, then University] extended to Hopkins Avenue just in front of the main entrance to the original building." (p. 45) Cumming goes on (p. 61): "Under [President] Grawn's administration, which lasted from 1900 until 1918, Central State Normal School experienced many changes. A second addition to the original building was under construction when he arrived to assume the position of principal. Soon the size of the campus would be more than doubled when the block from Hopkins Street to Bellows was acquired for the bulding of a training school for teachers. The state had exacted its tribute from Mount Pleasant by requiring the city to purchase the additional land for the building. Up until this time prospective teachers received trainging and observed teaching methods at the Maple Street School in Mount Pleasant. In the summer of 1901 construction on the training school was under way. In November the [Mount Pleasant] Enterprise noted, 'The Normal training school building is looming skyward, and if the weather continues as favorable, ten days will finish the roof.' On August 31, 1902, the training school billed as one of the most modern and up-to-date school buildings in the country was opened on campus. The Normal boasted that its training school had special rooms 'fitted up for the departments of art and music.' There would also be a kindergarten and a manual training department. 'A thoroughly trained director of manual training has been engaged,' it was announced." | Cumming concludes his record of Training School
activities thus (p. 120): "Fire again visited the campus on Sunday, January
9,1933, when the Training School was destroyed in a fire of undetermined
origin. First noticed at 6:40 a.m., the fire, fed by fumes and an explosion
in the paint shop of the manual training area, was beyond control when
the fire department arrived on the scene. The state responded promptly
to the request for aid, and two days later approved the cost of tearing
down the standing walls and cleaning up the debris. Also approved was an
allotment of $8,400 for the purchase of new machinery for the manual arts
department, which would be set up in one of the temporary buildings which
had been erected following the fire of 1925. The contract for tearing
down the walls was awarded to contractor Lloyd Cole, who was faced with
150 needy applicants. The jobs were to be divided as evenly as possible
among the men, limiting each worker to three days work per week at a wage
of twenty-five cents per hour. Part-time jobs were also given to 36 male
students, who were employed in removing the cement from the bricks and
arranging the cleaned bricks in neat piles. The debris was to be trucked
to the athletic field, where it would be used as a base for the new running
track which was being built around the athletic field. The task of cleaning
up the site took ten days, four days fewer than had been anticipated. The
student workers had salvaged 125,000 bricks, judged to be worth five dollars
per thousand. ... The rebuilding of the training school was assured
when the state awarded the money out of the insurance fund. Building was
started in the fall of 1933 and was completed by the following June in
time for summer school, but the dedication would not be held until fall.
June 15 was set aside as moving day as the pupils of the elementary school
transported books, chairs, maps, and other light objects to their new building."
I have been unable to find any further history of the school, now renamed The College Elementary School. At some point the junior high was added in the "Sheepsheds," and then disbanded (I think about 1958). Elementary classes were held in the building on the Mall until moved to the new Rowe Hall, in 1959; the College El building was then turned over to the Business School, which continues to use it under the new name, Smith Hall. Classes continued to be held in Rowe until (?)1968, when the "Lab School" was closed permanently, having served the Normal--College--University for almost 75 years. |
Jack Anson writes the following about the early days of rural education:
| In the early days, the teacher training program included the training of two year certificate rural school teachers. Central had two sites for their training. Kate Farrington and Helen Stephens (Davis) were the staff. As the educational requirements were upgraded to four years, these schools were closed and staff was assimilated into other openings, or into the Education Department. |
| The Laboratory Experience was planned as follows:
College staff taught in the Lab School pre-kindergarten, kindergarten,
and grades 1-6. In a separate location, the College staff taught
grades 7 and 8. For high school, there never was a school run directly
by the College. Rather, at Mount Pleasant Public High School Critic
Teachers were used in grades 9 through 12 to train student teachers from
the College.
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Cutbacks occured when the State Legislature increased
requirements, thereby eliminating rural certificates, and passed more cost-effective
training procedures--the use of model teachers in the public setting at
greatly reduced costs. These changes greatly portended the eventual
demise of Laboratory Schools (a trend repeated in other state settings).
Soon Lab Schools became extinct.
The studies on costs were analyzed thusly:
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