Lucy Sprague Mitchell

Lucy Sprague was born on July 2, 1878 in Chicago. Despite being one of six children, she was a shy, nervous, and withdrawn child who suffered from uncontrollable nervous twitches until she was sixteen. That was when she first started to regularly attend school and became interested in John Dewey and Jane Addams’ educational ideas. In 1896 Sprague began attending Radcliffe and, in 1900, she graduated with honors. She then worked at numerous University positions until she became the first Dean of Women’s Studies at the Univeristy of California at Berkeley and also volunteered in Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement in San Francisco.

In 1912, Sprague married Wesley Clair Mitchell with whom she had two children and adopted two more. He became a Professor of Economics at Columbia University after the two moved to New York in 1913 where she began to take University classes from John Dewey and visit Caroline Pratt’s Play School. She liked Pratt’s school so much that she turned over her stable and backyard to Pratt’s school, which became the City and Country School. This inspired her to do a number of things. In 1916 she founded The Bureau of Educational Experiments, later known as the Bank Street Collage, with her husband. Then, in 1931, she opened the Co-operative School for Student Teachers, later known as the Co-operative School for Teachers (CST).

In 1921, Lucy Sprague Mitchell published a classic collection of short stories called the Here and Now Storybook. She also published Know Your Children in School in 1954. This book highlighted child development, as well as the outside factors that influence a child’s school life.