1. Estabrook School HSR Feb 26, 2013

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Joseph Estabrook School: Historic Structure Report Executive Summary 2 Estabrook School was built for a population of 650 students at a cost of $1,220,000. As a precaution, because the team teaching program was still considered experimental, the design also included an option for conversion to twenty -three traditional classrooms for an estimated cost of $18,000. The firm of Clinch, Crimp, Brown and Fisher of Boston, which specialized in school architecture, designed the Estabrook School. The development of the building program for the Estabrook School was the joint effort of the architects; the Standing School Building Committee; Dr. Donald Mitchell of educational consultants Kargman, Mitchell and Sargent; Franklin School teachers; and SUPRAD representatives. The 13.3 -acre setting of open fields surrounded by woods, the largest elementary school site in Lexington, enhanced the expansive feeling of the building itself. The architect, Frank Crimp, who thought that the children should see something beautiful when they approached the school, suggested the inclusion of the 48- foot -long mosaic mural designed by fifth grade students at the Munroe School. Team teaching at the Franklin and Estabrook schools inspired improvements that are still part of the Lexington School System: • Libraries in elementary schools. Before Estabrook, books were brought to elementary schools on a weekly basis and stored in bookcases in corridors. • Teacher aides and clerical aides, to free up teachers to spend more time teaching. Even at the time that the Estabrook School was built, "each school [in Lexington] had its own culture," according to Bill Terris.4 Among elementary schools, only the Franklin and Estabrook Schools had team teaching programs. The majority of parents in those schools supported the team teaching programs One parent went so far as to say "We thought team teaching would change the world. ,6 The other schools retained the conventional system of 25 to 35 children taught by a single teacher in a classroom of about 900 square feet in size, a system that is sometimes called "cells and bells." In spite of team teaching's lack of universal acceptance, teacher collaboration has continued in various forms until the present. From the 1970s onward a variety of initiatives incorporated team teaching concepts. As Sandra Trach, current principal of the school, said, "The spirit of the Estabrook School is within us." However, team teaching, as a complete educational system like the Franklin and Estabrook models, did not survive. The system required not only that teachers be committed to the concept, but also that they spend enormous amounts of planning time to make it work. Even then, some students did not thrive in the team teaching situation. In 1963, a petition was circulated requesting that the new superintendent to be hired for the Lexington Schools be a "conservative." Parents voiced concern that the team teaching and advanced placement programs were too experimental. One parent said, "It does not help to be told by your children's teacher that `we are 4 Bill Terris, interview with Anne Grady, March 3, 2012. 5 Ethel Bears, "Team Teaching at the Franklin School," June 1969, 25 -26. Typescript in the Special Collections, Cary Memorial Library. 6 Arthur Katz, personal communication, 2010. 7 Charles Butts, personal communication, April 2012.