Consistent with its professional teacher-training mission, in 1896 the Third District Normal School opened its first “practice” or “laboratory” school to give prospective educators hands-on classroom experience. What we today at Southeast showcase as experiential learning. For 90 years, our students taught elementary, junior high, and high school classes right here on campus for generations of regional youth.
John McGhee, Southeast’s sixth president, created the practice school for “student teaching” during his brief tenure in the late 1890s. Like any normal school – pun intended – our laboratory school initially housed first through eighth grades. “Pupil teachers” – or student teachers as we say today – taught classes under the direct supervision of tenured college faculty. Many students came from rural areas outside Cape public schools which kept class sizes small. With enviable student-to-teacher ratios, fresh Southeast student teachers – who rotated every year – employed new techniques in curriculum and instruction, classroom management, as well as, extra-curricular activities, all of which made for a vibrant and innovative education. Even as campus locations periodically changed, the Academic terraces served as the playground for recess.
Eventually, College High School was added by the 1930s in today’s Crisp Hall, with its own Indian mascot, basketball and volleyball teams, letter jackets, and yearbook the “Powwow.”
In 1986 the last class graduated from what was by then known as University High Preparatory, and the lab school closed due to rising costs and restructuring in the university’s student-teacher education program.
