Burlington residents can easily deduce the sources of the straightforwardnames of two of the city’s nine public schools: Burlington High School andChamplain Elementary. But who was Lyman C. Hunt? How about Lawrence Barnes?H.O. Wheeler? And did Edmunds even have a first name?
Don’t look to those schools’ websites for answers. They havenothing to say about the historical figures who gave them their names. Thatseems odd, given today’s obsession with localism. Besides, doesn’t a schoolhave a responsibility to acquaint its students with some basic facts of history— starting with, say, information about the person for whom it is named?
Props, then, to J.J. Flynn and C.P. Smith elementary schools,both in the New North End, for providing easily accessible biographicalsummaries of their namesakes.
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I’m one educator who hasn’t forgotten the great inspiration Lyman Hunt provided to teachers across the country. He created Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading, wherein at a certain time each day everybody in a school picked up a book–of his own choosing– and read. No interruptions in the whole school. Everybody reading. Inspired by the benefits of this idea, I made it the core of my reading program for students having difficulty in school. As a teacher in Troy, New York, I wrote a number of articles about the benefits of letting kids choose their own books, and Lyman Hunt invited me to come be the final exam in his graduate course at the University of Vermont.