The building became a grammar school in 1911, and in 1984 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places when it became the Seminole County Public Schools’ Student Museum, an interpretive center and hands-on teaching laboratory. The center is housed in what was Sanford’s first high school. Participants will have the opportunity to make and taste butter walk through the demonstration garden to find out what kinds of foods were grown by Central Florida homesteaders and play with period toys and games – with no batteries. Many students walked for miles to attend classes, “but it was a privilege,” she said.īesides the workshop’s planned classroom exercises of reviewing multiplication tables, taking a spelling test of common words of the day, and writing a letter with a turkey quill filled with freshly smashed berries as ink, there also will be other turn-of-the-century activities in the center. Children stood when they spoke, and the boys and girls were separated – in class, on the playground and when eating.” It was a lot more disciplined, very regimented. “Our children would struggle in 1902 with the way they taught then. “It was simple, but it was more stringent,” said Cynthia Tomerlin, coordinator for educational and training programs at the Public History Center. An original 1902 classroom – with a 45-star American flag and portrait of President Teddy Roosevelt – will be featured at a Turn of the Century Workshop hosted March 22 by the University of Central Florida at its Public History Center in Sanford.ĭescribed by historians as the state’s oldest continuously used school building, the history center will hold a three-hour, family-oriented workshop to show what life was like in Central Florida at the turn of the 20th century, including a typical school day when report cards included “deportment,” students used slates, and there was a dunce cap in the corner.

Time out corner dunce cap