What would eventually become the A. Sophie Rogers School for Early Learning started on the ground floor of Campbell Hall as the " Nursery School" shown here in 1927.
In 1925, Ohio State opened a laboratory preschool to enable students and faculty studying early childhood the occasion to observe young children.
A century later, that school — now the A. Sophie Rogers School for Early Learning — continues to fulfill its dual goals of offering research-informed instruction to children and providing opportunities for students and researchers to expand their understanding of a child’s earliest experiences of classroom learning.
When Ohio State became one of the first public universities in the nation to offer coursework in child development in 1923, psychologists, pediatricians and educators were beginning to expand insights into the processes behind how children learn.
Being able to see these processes firsthand was the initial impetus for creating the school, officially known as the Child and Family Laboratory. The school was set up within the Department of Home Economics, then part of the College of Agriculture. Faculty from the Department of Psychology and the College of Medicine were also involved.
For the first eight decades of its existence, the school was housed in the university’s Campbell Hall. At the time the school was established, Campbell Hall was one of the newer buildings on campus, having been completed only nine years earlier.
The school, located on the ground floor, became popularly known as the Campbell Hall Nursery in an age when the term “nursery school” was being promoted by proponents of early education.
Many of the children who attended the school in its early years had a parent who was an Ohio State student. Enrollment was small, with only one teacher and a couple of assistants to cover a morning session and an afternoon session, each with fewer than 15 children.
The class day was relatively structured and included a medical inspection, scheduled free play, toilet time, a snack, music, story time, a nap and lunch. The children were also given a daily spoonful of cod liver oil.
From the 1940s through the 1960s, Helene Heye was the faculty supervisor for the school. Heye’s work with the school informed her research on early education curricula and child care licensing standards.
In the 1950s, Heye lobbied the university to construct a purpose-built facility for the school, but those dreams would need another half century to come to fruition.
By the late 1970s, with more mothers entering the U.S. workforce, the societal need for early childhood care and education became perceived as more critical. Ohio State began looking to increase the capacity of the school, as well as the connections between the school and university researchers.
A foundation established by former psychology department faculty member Dr. A. Sophie Rogers, who was also a pediatrician and founder of a private nursery school in Columbus, provided funds to operate Ohio State’s laboratory school, which was renamed in Rogers’ memory in 1985.
The modernization of the school continued under the direction of Rebecca Kantor, who arrived in what is now the College of Education and Human Ecology in 1983. She initially served as the laboratory school’s lead teacher before becoming school director in 1987.
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Kantor promoted the student-centered Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education at the school. She later became chair of what is now the Department of Teaching and Learning in the college.
In that role, Kantor also was involved in discussions with donor Betty Schoenbaum that led to the creation in 2007 of the Schoenbaum Family Center. The purpose-built facility is located off campus in Columbus’ Weinland Park neighborhood and next to Columbus City Schools’ Weinland Park Elementary.
The Schoenbaum Family Center building has an observation deck, allowing Ohio State researchers and students the opportunity to observe A. Sophie Rogers School classrooms in a noninvasive way. A few years later, a research partner, the college’s Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy, was also established at the center.
Helping to oversee the move from Campbell Hall to the Schoenbaum Family Center was Anneliese Johnson, at the time the school’s preschool program coordinator. Johnson became the A. Sophie Rogers School principal in 2010, a position she continues to hold today.
Johnson started teaching at the school in 1997 while earning her master’s degree from the college in early childhood education. She has seen many changes in her more than a quarter century at the school.
“While it was wonderful to be set in the middle of campus and visit the stadium, Mirror Lake and the Oval with young children, it is even better to be positioned near campus and partner with families in a neighborhood setting,” Johnson said.
The move to the center enabled the school to expand its size and to institute a mixed-income model, which blends funding streams from a variety of public and private sources. Now, children enrolled at the school come from a range of family incomes.
The school provides a full day of education at both the infant/toddler and preschool levels.
“Engaging preservice educators in a school setting with varied funding pathways provides real-world, experiential learning to our undergraduate students, while also delivering the highest quality education to the wider Columbus community,” Johnson said.
The school also offers work, internships and clinical field experiences to Ohio State students across multiple disciplines, including teacher education, social work, special education and speech-language pathology.
Undergraduate internships offer paid positions that expand Ohio State students’ skills working with young children. And not only are A. Sophie Rogers teachers up to date on the latest research and best practices in early learning and development, they also share their expertise through taking part in research, presenting at conferences and authoring publications in professional journals.
A century after its founding, the A. Sophie Rogers School for Early Learning continues to provide Ohio State students and researchers with opportunities to learn about early childhood education and development, while remaining on the cutting edge of research-informed instruction for young children.
Today, a fund accepting donations in Rogers' memory to support the A. Sophie Rogers School for Early Learning resides at The Ohio State University Foundation.
