The Boston Normal School, designed to train women teachers for the Boston Public Schools, became a separate entity when it moved from Girls’ High to the top floors of the Rice School in 1876. Founded in 1852, the two-year normal course trained women to be assistants to male masters in primary and grammar schools. When the Normal School moved to the Rice School, women were required to be high school graduates and the course was one year, becoming two years in 1892. Women assistants taught in the two training schools: a boys’ grammar school in the Rice School and a mixed primary school, the Appleton Street School (later the Bancroft School)
By the time Boston Normal was renamed Boston Teachers College in 1922, it had its own building on Huntington Avenue and, in 1925, a four-year program. In 1952 the Teachers College became part of the state college system and, as Boston State College, merged with the University of Massachusetts at Boston in 1965.
