Mollie Woods Hare
Mollie Woods Hare was an American educator. In 1913, she founded the Woods Schools in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, serving students with intellectual disabilities.
Early life
Mollie Ainscow Woods was born in Duncannon, Pennsylvania, the daughter of McClellan Woods and Jean Harkinson Woods. She trained as a teacher at a normal school in Philadelphia, with further studies under Edward Ransom Johnstone at the Vineland Training School in New Jersey.Career
In 1902, Woods became principal of a Philadelphia public school for "retarded and truant boys". In 1913, Woods and her sister, a nurse, founded the Woods Schools to educate students with intellectual disabilities. It was located in their home in Roslyn, Pennsylvania until 1921, then in Langhorne. On the later, larger campus, she added housing and a Child Research Clinic to expand the school's mission. There were more than 40 buildings in the schools' complex by 1948. The schools became a private non-profit run by a board of trustees when she retired as its director in 1949.In 1939, Hare received an honorary degree from Temple University, and traveled to Geneva as a delegate to the Congress of the International Association for the Education of Exceptional Children.