BE A CRUDE COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
THAT WOULD teach surgery by lectures, without clinics, said
State Superintendent of Public Instruction R.B. Cousins in 1909.
He was urging legislators to fund teachers training schools
in which students could practice teaching at the states
A few years
later the Senate agreed, and North Texas opened its school in January
1914. In its first semester, the school met in a $5,426, seven-room
building. A director and four teachers led 100 students in seven
grades, while education students helped out.
years, the training school also known as the laboratory or
demonstration school grew and eventually housed kindergarten
through high school classes. Parents did not pay tuition.
to Howard Smith, Dean Emeritus of education and former UNT interim
president, by 1950 each class had about 24 students, and parents
put their children on admission waiting lists. Many of the parents
worked at the college, and many of the schools students later
returned to North Texas to work. Melody Kelly, now associate dean
of libraries, attended kindergarten at the school in 1955.
teachers were very innovative, she says. They always
used the latest techniques, and there were always student teachers
from the College of Education. I remember once when some students
who were going to be art teachers made a huge papier-mâché
elephant with wheels on it that we could ride.
the teachers and students at the school were well monitored
in the teaching program could observe the lab school teachers on
closed-circuit television while they taught class. This gave us
a chance to discuss what was going on in the classroom immediately,
closed in 1969 because of rising costs and increased university
enrollment there were more education majors than could interact
with the small number of children.
do miss the idea of a lab school, Smith says. The building
(now the Music Annex) is still there, but you dont see any
children around it during recess.