Wisconsin Historical Society, Alfred Isaacson, Pub., Polk County Training School For Teachers, Image ID 39462.
May 4 - 8, 2020 is Teacher Appreciation Week. Today we honor and respect our teachers more than ever! During this school year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when teachers have to remotely educate their students online and school closings have resulted in cancelled graduations ceremonies, we thought to bring you a story of the Polk County Normal School and its 1919 graduation ceremony. So cheers to our teachers, who for generations have shaped America’s future one child at a time!
““The exclusive purposes and objects of each normal school shall be the instruction and training of persons, both male and female, in the theory and art of teaching, and in all the various branches that pertain to a good common school education, and in all subjects needful to qualify for teaching in the public schools; also to give instruction in the fundamental laws of the United States and of this state in what regards the rights and duties of citizens.” ”
The Polk County Training School was authorized by the Polk County Board of Supervisors in the fall of 1904 because there was a need for better qualified teachers. “The aim of the school is to increase the quality of teaching in Polk county rather than the quantity of the teachers”. At this time, the average student entering teacher’s training was 16 years of age.
In August 1905, construction began on the Polk County Normal School in St. Croix Falls on a bluff above the village, on Madison Street. The town contributed $5,000 towards building costs and the two acres of land were donated by the Comer brothers, John and Andrew, St. Croix Falls blacksmiths. There were six students at the first graduation in 1906 and that number increased over the years to an average of about 28 graduates by 1934.
The enrollment qualifications for potential students in the early years were for persons having a teacher’s certificate from another county, who were graduates of a state graded school or completed one year of high school, or had common school diplomas and were judged by the principal to be capable of a teacher’s education. The course of study was the Common School Manual and it was a one-year course until about 1939, when instruction increased to a two-year course of study. The teacher’s college certificate qualified the student to teach and also counted toward a bachelor’s degree.
School Bell from Polk County Normal (Old Manual Arts School), Polk County Museum
On June 21, 1919, sixteen students graduated to become teachers. E. E. Husband was the President of the Normal School Board and gave the commencement speech. Here are a few excerpts from his address:
“. . . The future is yours. The way is open, if not, it is yours to open. Great possibilities lie before you. It is, to use a popular expression, up to you. A world in full need of service is yours.
Tonight, you are thrown out upon your own resources, out upon a great sea of responsibility. Polk County is proud of you and congratulates you upon your attainments thus far reached, but you stand in the same relationship to Polk County that the young birdslings in the nest stand to their parent bird. You have developed to that stage where it is now time for your foster mother to crowd you out of the nest. You are now being thrown out into an atmosphere where you must rely upon yourself backed up by the opportunities offered you by the Polk County Normal and from the diligence and patience of a painstaking and interested faculty.
. . . Polk County has now done its best for you. You are now going out into the world to render service. And in that service, you must depend upon your own resources. You are to be congratulated upon the kind of service you have chosen to render. The teaching profession bears grave responsibilities. The rulers of future generations will come under your instruction, under your training, and the destinies of the future generations will in part depend upon the kind of service you render, upon the channels into which you train the minds that come under your supervision, upon the kinds of character you help to form in others.
. . . It is said that a lobster when washed upon the rocks has not energy enough nor instinct to even wiggle its way back to the sea, but waits for the tide to turn and wash it back. It frequently dies in this position when the least effort on its part would enable it to reach the waves that probably lie within a few inches of it. In the affairs of men, remember there are no back-tides.
So while I compliment you upon your attainment and extend to you the best wishes of the people of Polk County for your success, yet I conjure you not to be lobsters, be self-reliant, be character builders, be doers, and these diplomas which we present to you tonight as evidence of your accomplishments in this institution will then have some significance.
In closing, I wish you all that your efforts deserve and remind you of Emerson’s words:
“So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,'
The youth whispers, 'I can.”
Polk County Normal School – Class of 1919: Elsie Burch, Hazel Burch, Mabel Carlson, Signa Carlson, Mathilda Feske, Esther Gronlund, Clara Hanson, Gertrude Hanson, Gertrude Peterson, Nettie Lumsden, Myrtle Nelson, Clara Peterson, Anna Rogers, Celia Smith, Pearl Swanson, Mildred Will
In 1935, the original County Normal School was destroyed by fire reportedly started from a burn pile of leaves on the lawn on Arbor Day. The school was then moved to the Manual Arts Building (1885) on the corner of Adams and State Streets. That building was used until 1960, when the county board moved the school to Frederic. The Polk County Teacher’s College was relocated to the upper floor of the Frederic grade school building and hoped to make college more accessible to students from both Polk and Burnett Counties. The last class of the Polk County Normal School graduated in 1971.
Resources:
Braatz, Rosemarie Vezina. St. Croix Tales and Trails. Rosemarie Vezina Braatz, 2005.
Larsen, Gloria. I Heard the School Bells Ringing. Inter-County Cooperative Publishing, 1999.
E.E. Husband. “To the Graduating Class of the Polk County Normal School”. Polk County Historical Society, 1919.