Normal School, Downtown Los Angeles

UES 1974 Yearbook
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Ann de la Sota
Anger Over Tuition
Childhood Expressions by Corinne A. Seeds
Corinne A. Seeds
Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School
Cynthiana Brown
Craig Cunningham
Enid Fremdling
Janet Harkness
Joe Lucero
John Goodlad
Kent Gardiner classes
Lab School Videos
Georgia Ann Lazo
Leondardo DiCaprio
Madeline Hunter
Margaret Heritage
Moving UES
Muriel Ifekwunigwe
Newspapers from the 1940s
PE Program Photos used in social studies
Photographs
Rocketry
Silva, Norma
Social Studies Photos
Sylvia Gentile
UES
UES Memorbilia new
UES Timeline
UES Videos
University Elementary School Buildings

125 Year Celebration
1933 UES Newspaper
1960s Class Photos
1970 Year Plan
1972 Year Plan
1993 - 94 Students
2013 Photographs

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The Legacy of Corinne A Seeds from Kent on Vimeo.

1984 Craig Cunningham - UES PE Program Short version from Kent on Vimeo.

The roots of what is now UCLA can be traced back to 1882, when the Los Angeles branch of the State Normal School, the usual term for an institution devoted to teacher education, opened its doors for instruction. Students who wanted to be teachers were the first to attend what is now one of the world’s pre-eminent universities.

Normal School, Downtown Los Angeles

1880

In 1880, Los Angeles was a gaslit pueblo with a population of 11,000. Leaders of the expanding city were trying to convince the state to establish a second State Normal School in Southern California, to resemble the original one existing 300 miles to the north in San Jose.

In March of the following year, the State Assembly approved the school. Over 200 citizens contributed between $2 and $500 and purchased a site less than a mile from the city’s main business section.The school and its children’s school rose from an orange grove which today is the site of the Central Los Angeles Public Library. On August 29, 1882, the Los Angeles branch of the State Normal School welcomed its first students, all destined to become teachers for the children of Los Angeles.

1882

Founded on August 29, 1882

1914

By 1914, Los Angeles had grown to a city of 350,000 and the Normal School, whose enrollment far exceeded its capacity, moved to a Hollywood ranch off a dirt road that later became Vermont Avenue. In 1917, Ernest C. Moore, the Harvard transplant and new Normal School Director, proposed that it become the first branch of the Berkeley-based University of California. On May 23, 1919, the Governor signed the necessary legislation. That year the “Southern Branch” offered a two-year program in undergraduate instruction to 1,125 future teachers. In 1922, a four-year Bachelor of Education degree program was added. In 1927, the Southern Branch earned its new name: University of California, Los Angeles, soon to be known as UCLA.

1940's

In the 1930s and 1940s, under the leadership of Principal Corinne A. Seeds, a student of John Dewey, the school emerged as an outstanding example of progressive education. In 1947, what was to become the Corinne A. Seeds University Laboratory School (UES) moved to its current home on the UCLA campus from Warner Avenue, Los Angeles.

The UCLA Lab School is a source of research and professional education and serves as a model and a resource for public schools.Through workshops on early literacy, primary resources, information literacy, technology integration, and school reform, the UCLA Lab School's teachers work closely with Los Angeles area schools to improve instructional practice.

1930s

From 1937 - 38 John Cage was an assistant at the school where his aunt, Phoebe James was the music teacher: (From Cage, Composted in America)

"Cage accompanied dance at UCLA either on the piano or with percussion, and he assisted his Aunt Phoebe in her music education classes at UCLA's progressive elementary school on Sunset Boulevard. For an aquatic ballet, Cage came up with the idea of a dipping a gong into the pool so the swimmers could hear it underwater. The water gong was the first among a great many original sound-producing contraptions the son of an inventor would devise throughout his career." From the LA Times By Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times Music Critic August 31, 2012

1933 University Elementary School Newspaper

This 1936 photo, as the inscription states, seems to have been taken from about where the University Elementary School and the Anderson School are now located.

1940s, Warner Avenue

Ms Seeds on right with white hat, probably Warner Avenue

Probably Warner Avenue School

Westward Movement Unit

Miss Seeds on right with white hat, probably Warner Avenue school.

Reunion, class of 1941

1940s, the school moves to temporary bungalows on the UCLA campus

Detail of Corinne Seeds from Shirley’s UCLA scrapbook, 1943:

From Shirley’s UCLA scrapbook: the 1943 graduating class, University Elementary School. Shirley labeled the photograph with key individuals: (1) second from left in the back row is Corinne Seeds; (2) beside Ms. Seeds, third from the left in the back row is Miss Anderson, one of the sixth grade teachers; (3) back row, second from the right is Miss Malony, another sixth grade teacher; and finally (4) in the middle of the photograph, Shirley, herself

Education: The Battle of Westwood Hills

Monday, July 14, 1947 Time Magazine

Corinne Seeds looks like a mild-mannered schoolmarm. She is a schoolmarm, and she doesn't believe in flaying naughty children alive; but she is doughty rather than diffident. She once taught Mexican women in a boxcar; and she has a zealot's faith in the wonders of progressive education. Ever since she began putting her theories into practice in the University Elementary School, the rolling, residential community of Westwood Hills, Los Angeles, Calif, has hardly known a day of peace.

The disputation has gone on for 18 years. But Miss Seeds, no mean disputer herself, also had the powerful backing of the University..

Read more on Corinne A Seeds 195

Jane Gottlieb, Cross Your ankles!, My 6th grade graduating class picture - 1958, University Elementary School at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA

Working in the harbor.

1960s

Joyce Gordon (Rangen) 3rd from left and Betsy Braun 5th from left front row, year unknown.


1969 - 1970

Miss Feldman, Miss Fremdling & Mr. Philips.

1970s

1970 - 71

Teachers form this era return to UES:

Left Olga Richards, right Cythiana Brown

Betsy from K on Vimeo.

During the years 1965-1970, John Goodlad led research and implementation of
multi-age and team teaching structure. 21 century photo

In 1960, Goodlad began his quarter-century association with UCLA, where he served first as a professor and director of the lab school and, later, for 16 years as dean of the Graduate School of Education. Goodlad was seeking to have more association with schools, and the lab school was particularly appealing. It was a fairly representative school, not an elite school for the faculty and a few other families, as were many lab schools around the country. “The combination to head the lab school at UCLA and the professorship was very compelling,” Goodlad told me, for many reasons, not the least of which was the need to move to a better climate for the health of one of his children.

1970s

1969 Year long plan for upper

1970 Year long plan for upper

1972 Year long plan for lower

Spring Sing with parents on one side of the gully and students on the other.

Cynthiana Brown and Jack Sutton

Craig Cunningham, PE coach at UES from 1964 - 1990

Nina Pascale That is me! Growing out my Dorothy Hamill haircut. Ha! Hi Jeff and yes, I think that might be David Adler. Chris Valeo and I used to have such a great time riding unicycles! The photo reminded me that in middle school I wrote a short story called "The Race" about unicycle racing on the UCLA campus. From UCLA LabSchool Facebook page

Diogo Monte-Mór, Drew Ivie, Matthew Arbuckle, Brian Bergman and Simon Helberg.

1993

UES Buildings

Construction of the east building, designed by Barton Phelps & Associates, begins in 1991 and is completed in 1993.

Kent Gardiner posing for a book cover in a East Building classroom.

1994

1993

Lto R Katy Seal, Hal Hyman, Dean of Grad School of Education and Deborah Stipek, 1993. Hal was the Principal 1985 - 1994 at which time Margaret Heritage took over.

Deborah Stipek, UES director.

"Teachers can motivate students only if they themselves are motivated. They can make students feel valued and secure only if they feel valued and secure; they can foster enthusiasm for learning in students only if they are enthusiastic about teaching. The school culture can make or break a teacher in the same way that the classroom culture can support or undermine students' efforts to learn."

- from her book, Motivation to Learn: From Theory to Practice

1994 NY Times: By WOLFGANG SAXON
Published: February 03, 1994

Madeline C. Hunter, Teaching Innovator And an Author, 78

Dr. Madeline C. Hunter, an educator and psychologist who translated a psychological learning theory into practical teaching techniques, died last Thursday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She was 78 and lived in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles.

Madeline Hunter

Ava de la Sota

1995

Admissions Policy of U.C.L.A. Lab School Faces Legal Fight

By The New York Times
Published: October 18, 1995

A 4-year-old girl from an affluent family has become the unlikely centerpiece of a legal battle over admissions to a popular public elementary school run by the University of California at Los Angeles and attended by Hollywood children. The girl's parents, both lawyers, say the school should stop using race as a basis for admission and instead strive to diversify strictly by income and the education level of the parents.

The girl, Keeley Tatsuyo Hunter, was denied admission to the Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School, where she had applied as a mixed-race student. The school, used as a laboratory by U.C.L.A.'s Graduate School of Education, selects about 50 students a year on the basis of race and income to match California's public school population. This fall, 39 percent of the new students are white, 22 percent are of Hispanic origin, 17 percent are mixed-race, 13 percent black and 9 percent Asian-American.

But some of those students are admitted under special slots -- 6 this year; in previous years up to 20 -- for the children of the rich and famous. Among those who have attended the school are the children of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Tom Hanks, Sally Field and Debbie Allen.

2001

Imported snow, Redwood Forrest, Kent Gardiner going downhill, Kathy Smith on right. UES

Jim Kennedy

Jim Kennedy, a Los Angeles Unified School District educator with a record of innovative work in urban schools, has been appointed principal of Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School (UES), the laboratory school for the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at UCLA. He will hold the Carol L. Collins UES Director's Chair. The appointment is effective July 1.

2007

Celebrating 125 Years

125th Anniversary

August 2007

2008 Jog-a-Thon:

2009

Name changed to UCLA Lab School, Corinne A. Seeds Campus

March 2009

2012

A big thank you to artist Cyrus Kabiru for a wonderful visit today! So inspiring to hear his message about taking care of the planet and to see his C-STUNNER creations made from found objects.

The C-STUNNERS tour focused on sharing Cyrus Kabiru’s creations with the Los Angeles art community, while also spending time with LA’s youth community to inspire future artists with Cyrus’s personal story and the stories behind each of his C-STUNNERS. During the exhibition, Cyrus participated in community talks at the MUSE School in Malibu, Santa Monica Boys and Girls Club (with Warren Brand of Branded Arts), and a hands-on workshop at UCLA Lab School on March 7 and 8.

Judith Cantor, librarian

2010

2011 - 2013

Thinking is what UES or UCLA Lab School students do best.

The bank that separates Seeds UES from the UCLA campus was cut by a prehistoric river. The creek that follows its course flows year-round making for an unusual riparian landscape moment in an otherwise semi-arid ecosystem. Bridged over and bounded by playgrounds, the creek marks the central axis of daily life at the school. It also holds lessons in history, natural science, topography, and land use and its potential for encouraging curiosity about the landscape is huge. Deterioration of the creek bed, neighboring redwood grove, and play areas called out for a renewal program.add native plants and invite insects and small animals back.

There is a program currently going on (2013) to take out the ivy that surrounds the gully,

US Department of Fish and Wildlife awards a Schoolyard Habitat Grant for work to restore the portion of Stone Canyon Creek that runs through campus.

2011

2013 Jog-A-Thon

Jog-a-Thon, 2013

2013 May 31, Sutton Retirement party

Kent Gardiner and Sharon Sutton

LtoR Kent Gardiner and Karolynne Gee

LtoR Margaret Heritage and Hal Hyman, former principals of UES.

Kent Gardiner and Joe Lucero.

LtoR Kent Gardiner, Norma Silva and Margaret Heritage

2013

2013 UCLA Photographs

Kent Gardiner retires, June 14, 2013, 39 years at UES.

More UES photographs

By Joanie Harmon

January 31, 2014

In a Los Angeles Times feature on Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest role as “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the actor recalls his experiences as a student at UCLA Lab School (then known as University Elementary School).
“It was like this little Garden of Eden,” DiCaprio is quoted as saying in the article. “There was a park and kids were playing in the sunshine and everything was multicultural, everything was peaceful, every religion and race and attitude was respected equally.”

The Times article discusses DiCaprio’s experience of growing up in a poor family amid the seediness of Hollywood, while becoming friends with children at UCLA Lab School who came from more affluent families.
“The UCLA Lab School is the jewel in UCLA’s crown,” says Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, dean of UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. “Our ‘little Garden of Eden’ continues to cultivate an ethos of excellence and engagement at the nexus of research and practice teaching and learning for all. We are proud of all our graduates – Leonardo DiCaprio, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, actress and Down’s Syndrome activist Andrea Friedman, Harvard President Derek Bok, and artist Jane Gottlieb – and the thousands of other Lab School graduates who are doing good work for our city and our world. ”

2012 Nov 30 Gully Rain from Kent on Vimeo.

2012

Graduation in Redwood Forest, 2012

2013

2014

By Staff of UCLA ED and IS

Largest gift in the history of UCLA Lab School to fund upgrades to existing facilities, build new music and art space.

February 13, 2014

Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, Dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, has announced a major gift of $6.5 million from an anonymous donor to UCLA Lab School. A laboratory demonstration school located on the UCLA campus, UCLA Lab School serves as a site where innovative elementary education methods are developed, tested, and shared broadly. This generous gift will launch the new UCLA Lab School Campus Enhancement Campaign and serve as the lead gift in a drive to fund upgrades and improvements to existing UCLA Lab School facilities, as well as the building of a new music and art space for the school.

“We are deeply honored to be the recipients of this transformational gift to UCLA Lab School from a visionary, engaged, and extraordinarily generous donor, who prefers to remain anonymous,” said Dean Marcelo Suárez-Orozco. “This investment in the future of UCLA Lab School represents an extraordinary opportunity and responsibility. Fundamentally this monumental gift stands as a challenge to all of us to redouble our efforts in the work of re-imagining and re-shaping elementary education for the future.”

The donor had learned that a Master Plan for the UCLA Lab School Campus Enhancement Fund was underway and very generously expressed an interest in funding those projects that are hardest to fundraise for, including electrical and bathroom facility upgrades and the school’s heating and cooling system. In addition, the donor also wanted to support music and arts education by funding a new art space that had been identified as a top priority for the school community.
UCLA Lab School was previously known as Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School (UES). The name was changed in 2009 to better convey the school’s purpose as a UCLA laboratory for research and innovation in education. The current UCLA Lab School campus was built at the north end of UCLA near Sunset Blvd and was completed in 1949. It was designed by architect Robert E. Alexander, who at that time was president of the Los Angeles Planning Board. Alexander formed a partnership with Richard Neutra, one of the most important architects of the 20th Century, to build a housing development in Chavez Ravine. Neutra and Alexander then became partners in their own firm, and along the way designed an expansion of the UCLA Lab School nursery-kindergarten building at UCLA, which was completed in 1957. Subsequent alterations and construction projects at UCLA Lab School were overseen and completed by Barton Phelps & Associates and UCLA Facilities.

Leo Marmol, FAIA – the co-founder and managing principal for Marmol Radziner, an architectural firm in Los Angeles, and the parent of a UCLA Lab School student – took the lead in developing the Campus Enhancement Campaign Master Plan. Marmol worked with members of UCLA Lab School’s Building and Grounds Committee to identify the needs of the existing campus and to map out and prioritize future plans for expansion.

“As a parent of a student at UCLA Lab School, I am especially honored to be part of the school’s amazing tradition of education and architecture,” says Marmol. “This generous gift will allow us to begin the rehabilitation of the wonderful architectural tradition by Richard Neutra, Robert Alexander, and Barton Phelps.

“Robert Alexander and Richard Neutra were very interested in connecting the inside classroom space with the outdoor spaces. The classroom is not an enclosed room, but rather the entire ecosystem of the campus. The Stone Canyon Creek that runs through the school’s campus, for example, can be studied from an environmental, historical, mathematical, or cultural perspective. The more the classrooms can integrate with the natural landscape, the more opportunities there are to make those educational connections.”

Marmol noted that his firm’s designs also embrace the California Modernist movement and its integration of indoor/outdoor spaces and therefore they were honored to be selected to lead the rehabilitation and enhancement work.

“Marmol Radziner is thrilled to be part of the improvements that will take place at UCLA Lab School,” he says. “The original buildings are remarkable examples of modern design and excellence in educational thinking.”

UCLA Lab School is completely unique in that it brings together work of such noted architects who were concerned about the architecture of learning – with the expert knowledge gained from being a part of UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies whose mission is to be at the forefront of innovation.

The UCLA Lab School Campus Enhancement Fund will be one of the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies’ major fundraising initiatives during the UCLA Centennial Campaign, which is set to launch in May 2014.

“This gift will be transformational not only for our campus, but in launching our community-wide fundraising efforts,” noted Robert Simonds, the chair of the UCLA Lab School Advisory Board and a parent at the school, “I applaud such visionary philanthropy.”

The roots of UCLA Lab School can be traced back to 1882 when the Los Angeles branch of the State Normal School began to train teachers to serve the growing population of Southern California. Ever since then, UCLA Lab School, the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and the University have been inseparably interconnected in a shared mission to improve education in Southern California.

“This lead gift to the UCLA Campus Enhancement Fund,” notes UCLA Lab School Principal Norma Silva, “launches our much-needed efforts to refurbish the existing campus and to expand our facilities in strategic ways that will support our innovative work moving forward. We are delighted at the extraordinary generosity of this donor who values the importance of our laboratory school’s mission—improving the quality of teaching and learning through research and outreach to elementary public schools. This gift and others that follow will allow us to preserve and grow this treasured Los Angeles institution as a much-needed model of engaged and interdisciplinary learning for the 21^st Century.”

Today, UCLA Lab School is working on programs to strengthen and enhance teaching and learning in PreK-6 education, including advancing partnerships with schools and districts in Los Angeles and California; expanding professional development programs for teachers; and enhancing educational opportunities for students and families in traditionally under served communities in Los Angeles.

2013 Mayor Garcetti: There are so many UES experiences that reflect who I am, from studying Tenochtitlan and building pyramids down by the [campus’s] gully, to studying the American West and taking a trip through the Southwest to an Indian reservation, to more LA-focused [experiences].
I had great teachers: Cynthia Desrochers, Mrs. (Karolynne) Gee, Miss (Aileen) Johnson, and of course, Mr. (Jack) Sutton. They encouraged me to accelerate my learning always. They were there to keep up and to help push me if I exceeded where we were at, and they [helped] bring me along if I was way behind.

We didn’t talk about politics, social change, and human rights as such. But I think the values they imparted to me were that when you engage in Los Angeles, you engage in the world, and vice versa. I think there was a strong sense of the diversity of L.A. that made me feel comfortable as somebody who comes from a mixed background. It felt like home in a place like UES.

Mural work at UES: