Everyone was in for a surprise in 1909 when New Mexico declared open the Spanish American Normal School at El Rito. The school had been founded to train teachers for the vast region of the "Río Arriba" in which there were few schools and the citizenry still did not speak English, sixty years after becoming a territory of the United States. The Territory of New Mexico, in quest of statehood, had decided that fluency of its people in English would earn it the right to become one of the Forty-eight, which it did three years later. State and school officials were dismayed that few students were sufficiently prepared to become teachers. First, most had to learn to cipher and to read and write. The region's geographic isolation, scant means of communication, and lack of roadways rendered it impossible for anyone to make the proper estimate of educational need, it turned out. But the school's students soon discovered how much they liked the Normal School, and how willing the school was to meet their educational need. Although the Normal School trained as many as one hundred teachers in the first decades, in time it became an elementary and high school with strong traditions and loyal students. As a boarding campus, the Normal School attracted students from throughout New Mexico, many at a very young age. Children of the Normal School recount how unity of spirit created a new culture of Americans that few knew about, and how their esprit was built on mutual esteem and shared belief.
Sigfredo Maestas is President Emeritus of Northern New Mexico College, the present institution that was the Spanish American Normal School at El Rito. He was President for more than thirteen years, first from 1985 to 1989, then from 1996 to 2005. After earning a PhD in chemistry from New Mexico State University, Maestas served as chemistry professor and as Academic Dean at New Mexico Highlands University. In the early 1960s, Maestas was a visiting scholar in the Fulbright program at the National University of Honduras. It was during his time as president of Northern New Mexico Community College that his efforts and that of Dean of Instruction José Griego, PhD, led to the fulfillment of the dream to create a teacher-training institution in North Central New Mexico. He believes this is the way a region of America begins to create intelligentsia, which helps to advance society generally. He is also the author of "Annals of the Spanish American Normal School: The First 112 Years of Northern New Mexico College," also from Sunstone Press.
