While I am engaged in reading about various remarkable teachers, I often come across terms that describe schools I have never heard of before. Such was the case when I came across the term “normal school.”

I learned that a normal school is an institution which provided training for high school graduates who wished to become teachers. Today, these institutions are typically called “teachers’ colleges.” The normal school offered courses in subjects that teachers would be expected to teach to their students, and also instruction on how to organize and present lessons. The term derived from the intention of establishing teaching standards or norms.

The first public normal school in the United States was founded in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1839, pictured above. It operates today as Framingham State University.