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A new name for a broader mission

What’s in a name?

A lot, especially if you are a parent, teacher or supporter of the Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School, which has now been renamed the UCLA Lab School as it prepares to push out into the wider world of Los Angeles with a second campus. 

Its current campus, set among the tall redwoods in a leafy glen just off Sunset Boulevard on the north end of campus, will become known as the Corinne A. Seeds Campus of the UCLA Lab School, still honoring the visionary educator who helped move the school, once part of the California State Normal School, to the UCLA campus more than 60 years ago.

“People here certainly know us as UES,” explained Principal James Kennedy. “There’s a lot of attachment to that name. But that name is not as well-known to people outside of the school. The work of this school is as much about what we do outside our community as inside. … This is our opportunity to explain to the outside world who we are and what we do.” And the new name, UCLA Lab School, says it all — that the school is an important part of UCLA and that it is a laboratory school for the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies (GSE&IS).

In that capacity in recent years, the lab school has contributed much, through collaboration between its teachers and researchers, to important research and programs on bullying, better understanding of how children’s anxiety affects their academic performance and social development, and new methods for teaching science.

Last year, the lab school and GSE&IS announced ambitious plans to open a campus in a low-income neighborhood in inner-city L.A. so that families in these communities could benefit from the research, resources and educational expertise that have made the UCLA Lab School a standout elementary school, officials said. Currently, Kennedy is looking for a suitable site for the new campus in South Los Angeles, Pico-Union, East Los Angeles and Lincoln Heights. He’s hoping to open a second campus in September 2010 and perhaps even a third. The training of new teachers has already begun.

On Tuesday, March 10, happy students, proud, camera-toting parents and enthusiastic school staff came together for a spirited celebration of speeches, songs, cheers and an unveiling of the new name under braided balloon arches. Led by Joe Bruin, students paraded in, waving pennants and wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the new school name. The entire celebration was underwritten by school parents.

“I am a proud UCLA Lab School dad. We are blessed as parents to have our kids go to the best school on the planet,” Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo told the gathering as he prepared to present Kennedy and GSE&IS Dean Aimée Dorr with a city proclamation that confirmed that reputation.

“What’s great about the name change,” Delgadillo said, “is that we are going to be able to make sure other parents across this city get that same blessing — a great education, because this school is setting the tone as a model for the rest of the city, for the rest of the state and the country.”

Parent Diane Keaton, who said she has never missed an opportunity to see the children perform in the nine years she’s been a parent there, introduced a musical program by classes of students who sang African-American spirituals as well as songs in Spanish, from Nigeria and by George Gershwin.

Chancellor Gene Block, in his remarks, said the UCLA Lab School is central to the goal of UCLA’s mission to export the knowledge created on campus out of Westwood to benefit other schools and communities throughout the state.

The chancellor noted that UCLA’s faculty and students campuswide already collaborate with the elementary school in many ways. Researchers from neuroscience, anthropology, linguistics, engineering and other parts of campus have all worked with students and teachers at the school.

“The lessons learned here about education and child development are transferred throughout Los Angeles and California,” he said, so that public school teachers have the educational tools they need — tested and refined at the UCLA Lab School — to improve their teaching methods and curricula.

The addition of a new UCLA Lab School campus in Los Angeles will enable UCLA “to have a real impact on the challenges facing our city,” he said. That is why the school’s role is so important to the life of UCLA, and why it will be even more so in years to come, he emphasized.