Sources: Dewey, John & Evelyn. Schools of To-Morrow. 1915. E.P. Dutton & Company. Universal Digital Library.

Farma, William. “Speech Training in Progressive Education.” 1926. American Speech, Vol 1. No. 9. 484-489. Duke University Press.

Boyden, Arthur. The History of Bridgewater Normal School. Virtual Commons-Bridgewater State University. 1933.

Reyhner, John Allan. American Indian Education: A History. U Oklahoma P. 2006.

Bair, Mary Dorothy. Scrapbook 1924-1929. Bridgewater State University Archives.

Standing Bear, Luther. My People the Sioux. Bison Books. 2nd ed. 2006.

Even at the beginning of this letter, Marjorie is focused on discussing her travel plans. As seen in her other letters (e.g., February 23rd and February 29th) she enjoys documenting her travels especially the the people she meets. her travel logs reveal a particular sensibility that Marjorie holds: the role of a teacher was not only (if at all) a philanthropic expedition nor a missionary one (as far as the letters show) but an opportunity for her to explore in a socially acceptable way.

This demographic is common for both of Marjorie’s classes. Most of the boarding school children were young boys, with few girls; the absence of women in the adult primary class is also common.

Luther Standing Bear provides insight into the students perspective. While Standing Bear’s experience was over 60 years earlier than Marjorie’s time teaching in Fort Apache, his perspective is still relevant in providing a student’s understanding of what was happening. Standing Bear remarks that whatever the teacher did, he followed: when she “held the pencil in her hand just so, then made first one stroke, then another, and by signs I was given to understand that I was to follow in exactly the same way” (Standing Bear 138). This was the educational model that precedes (and too an extent still heavily influences the method in teaching the students at these boarding schools. 

In 1932 Helen Lawed wrote of her own experiences as a First-grad teacher at the Theodore Roosevelt Boarding School at Fort Apache, the same school Marjorie is teaching at. Lawed is opposed to the traditional object learning style for teaching English. She argues that students “should not be expected to learn to read English without first developing some oral English vocabulary” ( Reyhner 212). The students of Fort Apache would often read aloud the material, but would not comprehend the content. Marjorie, like Lawed, seems to be criticizing the children’s ability to mimic what is being done, and thus criticizing the traditional object learning style of learning.

The early twentieth century produced a shift in how educators understood teaching. This shift is the transition from a traditional model of teaching to the Progressive Education model. The noticeable shift came in the late nineteen-twenties and early nineteen-thirties, following the research of John Dewey. The most noticeable shift from Dewey’s research is found in his most famous dictum “learning by doing” (Reyhner 211). Dewey argued that the current method of education “puts a premium upon accumulating information in the form of symbols. Quantity rather than quality of knowledge is emphasized; results that may be exhibited when asked for rather than personal attitude and method are demanded. Development emphasizes the need of intimate and extensive personal acquaintance with a small number of typical situations with a vow to mastering the way of dealing with the problems of experience, not the piling up of information” (Dewey 13). This is where the shift is happening in the late Nineteenth century and early twentieth century—and the Bridgewater Normal School kept with this intellectual current. The shift in teaching-pedagogy spans throughout Marjorie’s time as a student at the Bridgewater Normal School as well as her tenure at Theodore Roosevelt Indian Boarding School. Her letters, while they do not explicitly comment on teaching methodology, how she discusses the children’s education as well as her own activities implies the growing sensibility towards a Progressive Model of teaching. The Bridgewater Normal School was very much at the front of this movement. The period between 1890-1909 were formative years that impacted the curriculum Marjorie received while a student. In 1899, the United States Commissioner of Education, Dr William T Harris, commented on the future of the Normal Schools. In his seven talking points in this address, the third is most important considering Marjorie’s teaching training: “The invention of devices of instruction is making the child more self active in the process of learning and not so dependent on the teacher’s power of illustration” (Boyden, 77). Even starting in 1880, an “arrangement was made with the two by which one of the schools was to become a school of observation and practice for the Normal School” (Boyden 59). So, Marjorie is being filtered through this new pedagogical movement while at Bridgewater, and we can see how she reacts to the “traditional method” of copy-and-repeat when she is at Theordore Roosevelt Indian Boarding School.

While at Bridgewater, Marjorie likely participated in the Bridgewater Normal School Glee Club. The Glee Club would perform at multiple times throughout the semester singing English, French, and Italian songs (Mary Dorothy Bair, Scrapbook 1924-29, Bridgewater State U Archives). She transfers these skills to multiple performances (impromptu and planned) while at Fort Apache.  

Just after Marjorie’s tenure at Fort Apache, there was a shift in administration in the Board of Indian Affairs. In 1933 John Collier was made the Commissioner of Indian Affairs by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and, by Collier’s authority, Willard Beatty was the Director of Indian Education. Both Collier and Beatty were staunch supporters of the Progressive Education: Collier was at Columbia, while John Dewey (the lauded father of Progressive Educated) was there, and Beatty, beginning in 1933, was the president of the Progressive Education Association. The shift in administration was the shift towards a progressive education system. This note reveals a more active roll in the Board of Indian Affairs trying to improve the conditions of learning for the children. Visitations from those like Mr Peasse, resulted in fewer boarding schools and more day-schools for Native children. (Reynher)

Marjorie, here, shows us that organized sports for the students was widespread. The school teams (whether it was baseball or basketball for boys and girls) would play neighboring Indian Boarding school teams, like the Phoenix school in Phoenix, Arizona. Marjorie’s note further reveals that there was significant communication between the neighboring Indian Boarding School in Phoenix, as in the end of this letter, she discusses the ability for the teachers to travel to Phoenix, and stay the night. The intermingling with the other schools reveals that there was a constant and steady flow of communication between not only the administration but the teachers and the students, too. 

Most of Marjorie’s letter are broad in content. This gives us the ability to touch upon a variety of topics from her travels, to the structure of her classroom, to after-school activities of both the children and teachers. The breadth of content, however, betrays depth in specific areas that may be of greater significance for us. Yet, the broad sweeps Marjorie paints allows us to fill in gaps where research may be lacking, as well as allows us to fill in the gaps of Marjorie’s own experience. The letter from March 10th is her first letter we have that she sent to her mother after arriving at Fort Apache, Arizona, after a two-week long train ride cross-country. This letter touches upon a variety of different aspects that Marjorie was confronted with when she began teaching and establishing a routine as a teacher at the Theodore Roosevelt Indian Boarding School. 

Marjorie Bates was a student of the Bridgewater Normal School in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, from 1915-1917. After graduating from the Normal School, she took up the position of teacher at the Theodore Roosevelt Indian Boarding School in Fort Apache, Arizona. While a teacher there (1924-27), she taught for a range of ages (from first-grade to adults). Her training from the Bridgewater Normal School did not specifically cater her education to teaching English Language Learners or Native American culture, but they did prepare her in the most current theoretical approaches to teaching itself. 
The Bridgewater Normal School was established with the hopes of making the job of a teacher a profession, and this they did (Boyden, 11). It was in the later 1870s that the school turned “its exclusive attention to the study of the Philosophy of teaching; to gaining a technical knowledge of the branches of learning taught in the schools; to preparing such courses of study as are the right occasions for the acquisition of useful knowledge and right mental development; and to training the pupils to teach, by requiring them to recite all review lessons in the form of teaching exercises. This method of work produced good practical results, and yet it did not furnish an opportunity for an experience in teaching and controlling a school of real children” (Boyden 58). Through Marjorie’s letters we see her attention not only concentrated on the children’s studies but on their other activities, mixed between her own adventures on the West Coast, upholding the Bridgewater Normal School’s philosophy of involving students in a more active than passive process of their education.