Indian Springs School-Tech Lab
Indian Springs School Tech Lab
Indian Springs School is a private school that includes grades 8-12 with both boarding and day school students. It is located at the base of Oak Mountain in Indian Springs Village, Shelby County, Alabama, USA, near the city of Pelham.
Indian Springs School was founded in 1952 by Birmingham-born, MIT-educated businessman Harvey G. Woodward, who left the funds and instructions for creating the school in his will at his death in 1930. In some ways, his vision was a progressive one. Woodward wanted to make the school available to both upperclass and lowerclass people. He instructed that the school should champion a holistic approach to learning (the school’s motto is “Discere Vivendo,” or “Learning Through Living”). During its first years, the school was a working farm which the students tended, although this element was shortly eliminated. However, Woodward also stipulated that the school could only admit Whites, non-Jews, and males, limitations which were all eventually challenged and abolished. The school now is praised for its wide diversity.
Indian Springs opened in 1952 with ten staff members and 60 students. The first director of the school was Louis “Doc” Armstrong. He made several changes to Woodward’s original plans for the school, most notably Woodward’s request that the school not be preparatory.
By the 1970s, the school had grown to include equal numbers of day students and boarders. An 8th grade was added, and the school became coeducational in 1976.
Indian Springs School was the first boarding school in America and the first school in the southeast to be recognized by the Malone Family Foundation[2] with a $2-million grant to underwrite tuition and other expenses for gifted students whose families could not otherwise afford an independent school.
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