School Memories of Students from the Teacher’s School in Travnik

Abstract

The Teacher Training School in Travnik was a well-known school in the period from 1946 to 1972. It produced many qualified teachers most of whom spent their whole working life in elementary schools throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina. The last generations of these teachers will have started retiring in the coming years, and the aim of this paper is to explore their school memories and the way their professional identity had developed while they were training to become teachers. The Training School students’ school memories and their narratives would be helpful in the reconstruction of the school’s history itself, but also of the history of social community at the time. The society of that time was not particularly supportive and considered working women with suspicion. After the Second World War, the country lacked professional teachers, which could be another reason for such a large female attendance in the school despite the patriarchal restrictions.