Centering Learning
By Eileen P. Corcoran, Director of Service & Outreach
You can still find echoes of the Spaulding Graded School’s educational mission in the fabric of the building. The chalkboard that spans one wall in the
Community Room, the worn stair treads leading to second floor, the names carved secretly into the back of doorways. While the building hasn’t been a school in decades, as the Vermont History Center it’s still a space for education and learning in a multifaceted way.
VHS itself is an organization centered around education in a variety of shapes and forms. While the History Museum in Montpelier hosts the majority of the school field trip visits VHS receives, the spaces and resources at the VHC allow us to reach a wide range of audiences. The Community Room often serves as our space for workshops provided to local historical societies and museums under our League of Local Historical Societies & Museums (LLHSM), and in the last few years, adult learners have participated in hands-on textile care activities, tackled the tough topic of deaccessioning, worked in small groups on improving their community impact, and learned fascinating details about stereoviews.
Though not in the numbers we see in Montpelier, we still welcome many student groups to the VHC. Students from Barre City Elementary and Middle School visit us as part of their end-of-the-year field day, where they often play historic children’s games on our front lawn, visit the galleries, and wander up to the library. These visits forge a connection between the past and the present and help them to understand their place in a long line of Barre students.
Most importantly, the VHC serves as a home base, allowing us to expand our educational offerings throughout the state with these amazing resources. Alongside the physical exhibition spaces, the resources at VHC offer an vast amount of educational content. Our collections offer opportunities for outside researchers and VHS educational staff alike. You can often find our educators in the Leahy Library looking through broadsides as they construct new lesson plans, combing the catalog and storage for objects to inspire new programs, or helping Vermont History Day students with their projects during the research days that we host.
But while it’s important to welcome learners to our historic building, it’s just as important that we seek out learners where they are. The Vermont History Explorer website is one way we do that. The vast majority of research and materials for that site come directly from our collections, and in the coming years, we will be continually updating the site to offer even more content for teachers and students.
With new resources like the Research & Exhibition Gallery (REG), and updated catalog records we are working on new ways to expand our educational opportunities at VHC and beyond. New initiatives include plans for guided student group visits in the REG which focus on high school & college audiences, expanding our hands on history programs to learners at local libraries, and gathering student history research through our All in Vermont: put your history on the map project.
We can’t wait to keep learning together!
This article was first published in the 2025 Fall / Winter edition of our member magazine, History Connections. If you'd like to get it and support our work, sign up as a member here.
