Remembering the Children's School at 30

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When Kathy Bishop started the Children’s School at what is now Stony Brook Southampton as part of her master’s thesis 30 years ago, there were only 10 kids in one classroom for her to watch over.

As the school celebrated its 30th graduating class last week, Ms. Bishop was preparing caps and gowns for about 40 of the 78 students who now attend.

Ms. Bishop has two daughters but describes the school as her “first-born.” She said this anniversary is special because it helps demonstrate that the school’s integral place in the community has come full circle: both the valedictorian and salutatorian of Southampton High School’s graduating class of 2007 were also graduates of the Children’s School—and thought it important enough to mention their time there in their addresses. One of Ms. Bishop’s former students, Jennifer Halsey, who graduated from Southampton High School in 2000, is coming back to teach at the school this summer, after teaching first grade in Florida.

“Kids have not really changed,” said Ms. Bishop, who has continued to oversee the school’s operation through the sale of the college campus from Long Island University to Stony Brook University, and the election of her husband, former LIU Southampton Provost Tim Bishop, to the U.S. Congress. “They’re a little bit more materialistic, but they want to be with their peers. They want to play and they have wonderful imaginations.”

Long Island University had been well-known for its early childhood development programs when Ms. Bishop started the Children’s School, which served as a learning lab for students in the program and was housed in two rooms in the Montauk dormitory. As the Children’s School expanded over the years, it was given its own building, a wood-shingled two-classroom structure surrounded by a white picket fence on the western edge of the campus.

When LIU closed its doors three years ago, the college offered the Children’s School the Bridgehampton building, next door, where even more of the classes can be housed. What’s missing, though, is the learning lab environment of the original Children’s School. Stony Brook does not have an early childhood education program and doesn’t plan to add one anytime soon.

“It’s more community members now,” said Ms. Bishop. “There aren’t a lot of people on campus.”

When the school was first formed, there were very few other day care centers in the area. Public schools didn’t have a pre-kindergarten program, and the school served as a place where working Southampton families could socialize and keep their children safe.

“It’s a real family place,” said Ms. Bishop. “I have two mothers. I taught them and their kids were here. The parents meet their friends here. Mothers are very isolated, and here they can ask all the questions they can only ask one another. I feel that’s a very important aspect of what we do here.”

At graduation on June 5, the pre-kindergarten students lined up along the stage in the Duke Lecture Hall, where college students usually gather to hear talks by literary and science luminaries. Ms. Bishop told her graduating class that Winston Churchill said to never, ever, ever give up.

“What did the little engine that could say?” she asked the beaming students, one of whom screamed “I give up!”

“Did you do your best this year?” she asked, to shouts of the word “Yes!” from the class. Then she solemnly quoted Yeats to her students’ rapt attention: “Education is not the filling of a path, but the lighting of a torch,” she said.