The evolution of an innovative educator and a beloved campus building

For more than 90 years, students of Plymouth Normal School, Plymouth Teachers College, Plymouth State College, and Plymouth State University called Samuel Read Hall Residence Hall home. But after a 16-month renovation, the beloved residence hall—named for an innovative teacher educator who taught at Holmes Plymouth Academy in the late 1830s—is enjoying a new life as a center for STEM programming, housing the departments of Counselor Education and School Psychology (CESP) and Nursing, as well as the Center for the Environment and Center for Rural Partnerships.

“This project represents a truly creative solution to repurposing and preserving a historical building and making it genuinely work for twenty-first-century needs,” says President Sara Jayne Steen. “The building gracefully retains historic features while providing modern classroom and laboratory space. It’s now a lively home for talented faculty dedicated to helping students grow and succeed.”

It’s a transformation that the building’s namesake would have certainly approved.

An Educator’s Educator
For someone who ultimately became renowned as an innovative teacher educator and a respected author on education, Samuel Read Hall came from humble educational beginnings. When he was growing up in the early 1800s, schools in rural northern New England were few and far between. By the time he was 15, Hall barely had a year’s worth of schooling to his credit. His real education was completely self-directed, as he devoured his father’s small but excellent collection of books, his favorite being Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, one of the classic works of early-modern empiricist philosophy.

All that reading paid off for Hall, who was hired as a teacher in Rumford, ME, at the age of 19. He proved to be a visionary educator, teaching his students not only grammar and penmanship, but also how to write compositions—something that parents initially objected to as being too hard for young children. Hall won them over and soon composition was a weekly exercise, its value obvious to all.

In 1823, he founded the first training institute for teachers in the US, the Columbian School in Concord, VT, where he taught all key subjects, lectured in pedagogy, and operated a model school so his students could practice teaching. In 1827, his first book, A Child’s Assistant to a Knowledge of the Geography and History of Vermont, introduced a new approach to geography instruction by starting with the child’s own community and working outward.

His second book, a teacher’s manual titled Lectures on School-Keeping, appeared in 1829 and was a sensation, earning its author not just a national reputation, but also job offers from all over the country. After a stint at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, he accepted a teaching post at Holmes Plymouth Academy on the condition that he could start a co-educational teaching department. A strong supporter of female educators—most formal teaching was done by men in those days—his 1832 book, Lectures to Female Teachers, was surely the first book of its kind, and inspired more women to pursue teacher training.

In 1838, Holmes Plymouth Academy boasted 248 students, nearly half of whom were women. During his time in Plymouth, Hall broadened the educational scope of Holmes Plymouth Academy and earned an honorary master’s degree from Dartmouth College—a wonderful honor for a man who had not attended college himself.

After Holmes Plymouth Academy closed, Hall would teach for another six years before fully focusing on the ministry. In his final years, he pursued his passion for geology, assisting Vermont State Geologist Edward Hitchcock on geological surveys.

When Plymouth Normal School was established in 1871 as the first state-supported normal school in New Hampshire, it drew on a proud tradition of innovation in education forged by a national leader in the field, Samuel Read Hall. It’s a tradition that continues at PSU to this day.—Rebecca Noel

Rebecca R. Noel is a professor of history in the Department of History, Philosophy, and Social Studies Education. Her work has appeared in the books Children and Youth in a New Nation; Salem: Place, Myth, and Memory; and The Worlds of Children, 1620–1920. Her upcoming book, provisionally titled Save Our Scholars: The Quest for Health in American Schools, deals with the emergence of school health and exercise programs in New England before the Civil War.

 

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