Student Life

For most Gatlinburg children, life at the Pi Beta Phi Settlement School represented a vast departure from previous educational experiences -- one that provided them with new and often bewildering academic challenges; with heretofore unknown opportunities for friendship and recreation; and with a chance to forge personal identities, independent from that of their families. It also provided them with the intellectual tools they would need to improve their farms and homes; to attend college if they so desired; and to capitalize on their town’s post-1935 tourist boom. In the essays that follow, we will explore student life at the Pi Beta Phi Settlement School, paying special attention to the school’s ever-evolving curriculum, to its recreational programs (including interscholastic athletics), and to its dormitory program. Doing so will allow us to construct a better picture of day-to-day life at the settlement school, thereby enriching our understanding of this important chapter of Gatlinburg history.

Little Mothers League, 1929

Students clearing athletic field, 1925