Goergen, Dr. William part 2 (tape #28 side b)
Tape stock length: 60 min
Running Time: 24 min
Dr. Goergen recounts his youth spent in Danbury and his experience with what was then known as the Danbury Normal School. He also talks about how hatting has influence Danbury in many ways
Label Contents: 12/6/1976
1976
Friel, Jack
Goergen, Dr. William
Running Time: 24 min
0-10 Min: Ray Trippert was a classmate of Dr. Goergen; Sister Louise attended WCSU when it was Danbury Normal School; recalls no meals in school;
10-20 Min: The state was given the land where WCSU midtown is by Alexander White; stresses the importance of the hatting industry on Danbury
Goergen, Dr. William part 1(tape #26 side b)
Tape stock length: 60 min
Running Time: 30 min
Dr. Goergen talks about his childhood in Danbury, focusing mainly on school. He spends a great deal of time reminiscing about WCSU which was known as the Danbury Normal School when he attended kindergarten there in 1916.
Label Contents: 12/6/1976
1976
Friel, Jack
Goergen, Dr. William
Running Time: 30 min
0-10 Min: M.D. in orthopedics; Danbury local; streets around WCSU being renamed; most of the land that now makes up WCSU was a playground/park prior to the school's expansion; trolley system in Danbury; Old Main housed a kindergarten as part of the Danbury Normal School
10-20 Min: WCSU as Danbury Normal School enrollment numbers in 1916; activities Dr. Goergen remembers from being a kindergarten student at WCSU;
20-30 Min: various primary schools in Danbury and how they were funded;
Hull, T. Clark parts 1- 2 (tape #6 sides a/b)
Tape stock length: 90 min
Running Time: 51 min
Summary: Mr. Hull talks about boyhood memories of growing up in Danbury and explains how the Danbury normal school was viewed by residents at the time. He goes on to talk about how he and several others including Bill Ratchford and Francis Collins acted as advocates for WCSU on the state level
Label Contents: 09/27/1976
1976
Friel, Jack
Hull, T. Clark
Running Time: 51 min
0-10 Min: judge of the Superior Court of Connecticut; the importance of community; was always aware of WCSU as the Danbury normal school, and how it always confused the local children as to what went on inside its small campus; Ed Dawling one of the first men to attend WCSU; remembers his first impressions of Dr. Haas and how she worked to evolve WCSU;
10-20 Min: development of WCSU continued; realization among community leaders that WCSU was a very valuable asset to Danbury; the part that he played in getting funding to expand the midtown campus; states that he had the initial idea to rename the Danbury State Teachers College to that of Western Connecticut State College;
20-30 Min: the overall positive attitude of the student body at WCSU; west Side campus, need for it; reflections on Dr. Haas' personality; felt it was reasonable to impose a reasonable tuition as long as it cause any person to go wanting for an education; states that head had to hire a security guard to accompany him to meetings during the tuition debate; the familial regard with which most Danbury residents had for WCSU;
30-40 Min: community ties as they relate to the expansion of WCSU; another benefit for WCSU is its location in the center of a city;
40-50 Min: expansion and West Side campus talks continue; political talk about Mr. Hull's various positions in state government and what he accomplished while in office; praise of Dr. Haas' ability to charm the politicians
Isham, Dr. Charlotte parts 2-3 (tape #23 sides a/b)
Tape stock length: 60 min
Running Time: 30 min
Dr. Isham continues to reminisce about her days a a student at WCSU, drawing similarities and differences from when she was a student to her current students at the school.
Label Contents: 11/10/1976
1976
Friel, Jack
Isham, Dr. Charlotte
Running Time: 30 min
0-10 Min: normal schools were across the board based on educating students on how to teach the three basics (reading, writing and arithmetic);
10-20 Min: personal history,family ties to WCSU
20-30 Min: athletics program development; basketball being one of the first to be instituted; Dr. Higgins and what he taught at WCSU
30-40 Min: basketball court in Old Main; even as student teachers, the women were provided lunches when they went out to student teach; even though New Britain Normal School was established first, Danbury Normal School had the reputation of the best job placement;
Isham, Dr. Charlotte part 1 (tape #22 side b)
Tape stock length: 60 min
Running Time: 30 min
Dr. Isham talks about how she came to have three degrees from the same school, her various teaching jobs around the state, and how she first came to be employed by WCSU.
Label Contents: 11/10/1976
1976
Friel, Jack
Isham, Dr. Charlotte
Running Time: 30 min
0-10 Min: reviewing Dr. Isham's degrees; she got a two year degree from Danbury Normal School, as well as a three year degree and finally a bachelor's degree from Danbury State Teachers College; born in Woodbury; talks of her parents running a impromptu boarding house and Dr. Haas offering her a job as a house mother at WCSU;
10-20 Min: there was an interim dorm while Fairfield Hall was being built; the social life of the dorm life in the Danbury Normal School;
20-30 Min: Dr. Isham's time as president of the athletic association, as well as being on the basketball and softball team; her various teaching jobs in between getting her degrees, making $1000 a year in 1935 teaching in Harwinton, CT
Murphy, Gertrude part 3 (tape #10 side a)
Tape stock length: 90 min
Running Time: 21 min
She continues her talk of the specifics of teaching in the first half of the twentieth century.
Label Contents: 09/30/1976
1976
Friel, Jack
M urphy, Gertrude
Running Time: 21 min
0-10 Min: distinction between regular professors and teaching instructors at the model school; model school teachers were sometimes called on to give speeches at WCSU to explain the purpose behind their methods to students;
Murphy, Gertrude parts 1/2 (tape #9 sides a/b
Tape stock length: 60 min
Running Time: 60 min
Running Time: 60 min
Ms. Murphy begins with a very detailed account of what the curriculum looked like for the Danbury Normal School at the turn of the century, giving detailed accounts of what types of classes and what their focus was. She also talks about life as a teacher around the turn of the century and how an increasing number of men affected the school.
Label Contents: 09/30/1976
1976
Friel, Jack
Murphy, Gertrude
Running Time: 60 min
0-10 Min: Danbury Normal School graduate in 1912; returned as a teacher and finally retired in 1958; no dorms during her time there so all students were commuters; there were teachers in her class that had not achieved a degree already; the school focused on preparing students to teach grades 1-8; there was a focus on English composition; were 8 full-time teachers; and 16 model teachers which the students would study under in primary classrooms; several penmanship classes, with a focus on blackboard writing; music education consisted of teaching these women children's songs that they could then use in their future classrooms; gym class consisted of calisthenics, marching and simple activities they could then utilize in their future classrooms; the library was not lacking in material on the subject of teaching but all other areas were lacking; the second year of the program had a focus on learning by doing and placed the teachers in training in various schools throughout the city such as Locust Avenue and Roberts Avenue schools; throughout the second year the students alternated between teaching in these model schools and classroom work at WCSU;
10-20 Min: a student teacher's day started at 8:30, and the student was required to write reports on her observations of the classes she was assisting in; then teaching a few classes each day; after the school day had ended the student teachers were required to write out lesson plans for the following day; her entire class had secured jobs before they had even graduated from WCSU;
20-30 Min: does not remember buying her own books, feels that the books were provided by WCSU; Old Main was referred to as simply the Danbury Normal School because that one building comprised the entire school;
30-40 Min: day began at 9:00 A.M.; social life at WCSU;
40-50 Min: discuss the sole man that graduated with Ms. Murphy; the influx of men after WWII;
50-60 Min: the perspective that the returning G. I.'s offered to the profession of teaching; how they broadened the average primary school students' world view;
Tufts, Dr. John part 3(tape #26 side a)
Tape stock length: 60 min
Running Time: 19 min
Dr. Tufts talks about the impacts of the student body population explosion the WCSU experience throughout the 1960s and the various impacts it had on the school.
Label Contents: 11/15/1976
1976
Friel, Jack
Tufts, Dr. John
Running Time: 19 min
-10 Min: the growing student population creates a need for a larger full-time faculty staff; remembers that during his tenure he had to moonlight due to the poor pay at WCSU;
10-20 Min: the problems that the fast increase in student population has caused; the problems he faces in teaching classes as large as 80 students; the foundations of the writing lab; references a recent by-law that states that a teacher may withhold a grade until they feel the student has submitted work up to the college standard, in reference to the problem of student writing abilities at WCSU;
Vacha, Dr. Kathryn parts 2/3 (tape #14 sides a/b)
Tape stock length: 60 min
Running Time: 35min
Dr. Vacha continues her discussion of feminism and how she relates to and interprets the movement for her life. She talks about the impact of the expanding student population on the graduate program.
Label Contents: 10/13/1976
1976
Friel, Jack
Vacha, Dr. Kathryn
Running Time: 35min
-10 Min: stresses the point that she is not an ardent feminist, due to the fact that she is spearheading the push for more women's studies courses at WCSU; general discussion of the women's movement and how she interprets it personally; the role of both genders in the days of the Danbury Normal School;
10-20 Min: influx of male teachers helped to improve the salary scale for female teachers; more discussion about the gender roles at WCSU in the early years;
20-30 Min: discussion of maintaining the graduate studies catalog; m.a. in oceanology, m.a. psychology, and m.s. in social sciences were being added at the time; how the growing student population affected the graduate program; from 1968-1969 the graduate population doubled;
30-40 Min: origins of the multiple commencement ceremonies which started in 1972;
Warner, Mrs. Llewlyn parts 1/2 (tape #21 sides a/b)
Tape stock length: 60 min
Running Time: 60 min
Mrs. Warner recounts the experiences of being a teacher at 18 in the first half of the 20th century, as well as talking about being a resident of Danbury for such a long time and what changes she saw during that time.
Label Contents: 11/03/1976
1976
Friel, Jack
Warner, Mrs. Lewlyn
Running Time: 60 min
0-10 Min: first teaching job in Wilton; recalls taking correspondence classes in order to get her teaching certificate from WCSU; began teaching when she was just 18
10-20 Min: discussion of the teacher supervisors and their functions; how she got from Bethel to WCSU every day; remembers that when she got shifted from a 5th grade position to a 6th grade position that she demanded more money to teach the higher grade; remarks that she has lost respect for teachers due to their current day ability to strike, feels that they are losing sight of why they became teachers and doing a disservice to the children;
20-30 Min: Old Main was simply referred to as the Teacher's College, as that one building was the entire campus; all of her children went to WCSU; personal banter;
30-40 Min: personal banter about Mr. Friel's family; the location of Danbury High School was not originally White Hall but rather Fairfield Hall;
40-50 Min: personal banter about Mr. Freil's completion of his master's degree; discussion of Mr. Higgins personality and his abilities as a professor at WCSU; recalls him setting up a program for which rural area schools could get a kit with basic chemistry supplies and experiments for the children to do; she did her student training at the Locust Avenue School; during student teaching period the students did not report to the Normal School, with the exception of getting books from the campus; recalls the various penmanship courses and the fact that by the end of it a teacher had exquisite hand-writing at the cost of individuality
50-60 Min: When she began teaching children were legally obligated to attend school until fourteen years old; discussion of the ethics of skipping children ahead and sectioning children off based on academic abilities; discussion of the philosophy of methods of teaching and the discipline of students; became a teacher because she liked to learn, and that was one of the few ways she could pursue a higher education; recalls the possibility of a single man that graduated from the normal school with her, but cannot recall the name; possible name was Ralph Castleton;