Teaching The Teachers Grade-School Students At Laboratory School Are Giving The Lessons

The sign posted outside the front doors invites visions of bubbling experiments and technicians in lab coats.

It reads “Reid Laboratory School.”

While you won’t find a mad scientist at work at Reid, there is definite evidence of something unusual in progress.

Eastern Washington University students and professors pass through Reid Elementary’s doors every hour of every school day.

At any given time, at least three education majors are in every classroom, weaving between uneven lines of desks.

Eastern students from other disciplines pop in too, armed with experiments to conduct with the Reid kids. Physical education majors test how high fifth-graders can jump. Psychology students learn to measure self-esteem.

Although it’s part of the Cheney School District, Reid Elementary School sits on the edge of the Eastern Washington University campus.

In exchange for giving Reid use of the building, Eastern gets use of the building’s occupants.

The result is a school filled to the brim every day with elementary and college-age students. It is a scene that can only be described as organized chaos.

“I’ve never seen anything else like it,” said Joseph Mirich, Reid principal for the past two years.

Reid is the only laboratory school left in the state of Washington. The once-common idea behind a lab school is to allow college education majors an on-campus chance to practice being teachers long before their student-teaching assignment.

Mirich said he was skeptical at first that the bustle of a lab school could be anything but a constant distraction to kids and teachers alike.

“Let me tell you, I didn’t know about this whole thing,” he said.

First, he said, students from Eastern are allowed to observe virtually any time of day, either in class or in one of two observation towers that offer a one-way look into the classrooms through mirrored windows.

Also, Reid students are working with two, three, four teachers at a time.

But it works, Mirich said.

“Really, the constant interruptions mean these kids are better prepared for the real world,” he said. “When you think about life, you don’t get to set yourself up in a cubicle and have no one to bother you all day.”

Budding teachers, too, get a head start.

“I get to watch a lot of different teaching styles,” said Winter Woods, an education major and senior at EWU. “Just by observing, I learn a lot. This really prepared me for teaching.”

Such praise for Reid is what’s kept the school going while other lab schools have quietly closed in the past decades, casualties of strained university budgets.

Reid has faced the threat of closure itself. Between 1970 and 1974, the school’s budget was twice cut by 10 percent.

In 1985 university officials found that closing the lab school would save more than $170,000 a year. Trustees gave the school a year to find other funding.

In 1986 the Cheney School District agreed to incorporate Reid. The district took on responsibility for the school’s curriculum and hiring, while Eastern provides the building maintenance.

Reid teachers are now paid a $1,000 yearly stipend by Eastern in addition to their salary from Cheney School District.

The stipend is a mere token of appreciation, Mirich said, for teachers who take a minimum of nine practicum students under their wings each year.

“It’s a lot more stress and a lot more work,” said Jackie Lyons, a fifth-grade teacher at Reid for the past 10 years.

Last week, her class was a blaring blend - three Eastern education students eager to put their newly acquired teaching savvy to practice versus 25 Reid students even more eager for Thanksgiving break.

“It’s certainly a lot more stimulating,” Lyons said of her job at Reid. “I was at a point at my last job when I didn’t want to come to school anymore.

“Here, you don’t get burned out. The college kids keep it young and fresh.”

In return for sharing their expertise, seasoned teachers also get first crack at the newest educational buzzwords - social promotion, unitary status - carried into their classrooms by Eastern students.

“We don’t always know exactly what they mean,” Lyons said with a laugh. “But we guess at them after the students leave, and usually we find out we’re right.”

Parents, too, praise the mutual benefits of Reid.

Because it is an open-enrollment school, meaning parents choose to send their children to Reid, there is little parental concern about the busy classrooms and experiments.

Julie Martin and her husband chose Reid even though they live just two blocks from another Cheney elementary.

“My kids seem to do really well with it,” she said of her three children enrolled at Reid.

“They benefit from so much more individual instruction with the Eastern students. But I can see where some kids might find it more difficult,” she said.

It’s not for everyone, educators admit. Lyons sees some kids struggle in the environment.

“Unfortunately a lot of kids need structure, so this is hard on them,” she said.

“Not everyone accepts this style,” said Mirich. “There are some parents who don’t like the interruptions.

“That’s why attending this school is by choice.”

For Nick Jackson, an assistant professor of applied psychology at the university, the school is a textbook come to life.

He often brings his students to sit in the sea-green bleachers of the observation towers. They listen to the wired-in sounds of the classrooms, watching for specific behaviors and how teachers manage the class.

“It’s certainly better than watching a video or reading a book,” Jackson said. “It’s like taking a piece of underwater life - something we never get to see - and bringing it to the surface.”

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