Greenwood Laboratory School celebrates 100 years

With current enrollment of 361 and class sizes limited to 30 students, alumni say Greenwood’s small size is one of its virtues.

“We were so small that basically everybody had to be involved in everything,” said Tom Kissee, broker at Tom Kissee Real Estate and a 1976 Greenwood graduate. With only 120 students in the entire high school at that time, “You couldn’t step back and wait on somebody else; there was nobody else.”

Juli (Kollmeier) Sarff, corporate accountant for The Killian Group and a K-12 Greenwood alumna, agreed. “Being a smaller school, you don’t have nearly the variety of classes, some of the extra things, but you have teachers who know you and genuinely care about you.”

Informally established circa 1907, Greenwood began – and continues today – as both a working school and an education laboratory.

“We serve two purposes,” said Greenwood Director Janice Duncan, Ph.D. “One is to get students kindergarten through 12th grade ready to go to the college of their choice, and the other is to serve the university.”

The school is clearly achieving its college prep goal: Duncan reports that 100 percent of Greenwood students graduate high school and of those, 99 percent go straight into college. The one or two students who don’t enroll in college right after high school typically do so within a year or two.

And Greenwood students’ performance on college entrance exams regularly exceeds the norm. In 2006, the average ACT score for Greenwood students was 25.1 compared to the state average of 21.6 and the national average of 21.1.

The laboratory school provides MSU students and professors with practical experience, observation and research opportunities.

MSU’s College of Education places student teachers and practicum students at Greenwood, and many professors, including some from Drury University, bring classes to Greenwood to observe teaching methods.

“We also serve any department of the university in research, so that professors who have research that pertains to school-age children may have a project here,” Duncan said.

Teaching public affairs

Greenwood also differs from other schools by sharing MSU’s public affairs mission.

“Every student that graduates from MSU is to understand the responsibilities of citizenship and be prepared to be a good citizen,” Duncan said. “Since we’re part of the university, anyone who graduates from Greenwood, we feel, needs the same.”

Greenwood students participate in community involvement at all levels. While initial activities focus on clothing drives, awareness walks and fundraising, the stakes increase in eighth grade, Duncan said.

Eighth-grade social studies classes break into teams that learn about issues in the Springfield community, research those issues and look at how the city is addressing them. The students propose alternative solutions in a presentation to a panel that often comprises city officials. Panel members judge the students on public speaking, presentation content and the plausibility of their solutions.

In high school, students must do a service-learning project in one core subject area each year to earn public service credits.

Greenwood educators focus on inquiry learning, not rote memorization. “We have a real emphasis on that, so students learn how to learn,” Duncan said.

And learn they do. Greenwood students have taken the Grand Prize at the Ozarks Science and Engineering Fair every year since 2000, and Greenwood students’ Missouri Assessment Program test scores are well above average in math and communications.

Born to learn

Since the 1920s, there has been a waiting list for students to attend Greenwood, with many families registering their children at birth.

Real estate broker Kissee, whose mother and grandmother also attended Greenwood, said the reason he only attended high school at Greenwood was “I didn’t get on the list soon enough.”

In his 1968 book, “Shrine of the Ozarks,” former MSU President Roy Ellis, Ph.D., tells the story of Greenwood’s first director, M.A. O’Rear, getting a call from a woman who wanted to sign her child up. When O’Rear asked the child’s gender, there was an embarrassed silence because the woman was in the hospital in labor and hadn’t delivered yet. “What’s so funny about that,” said current Director Duncan, “is (recently), I heard my secretary on the phone to someone saying, ‘No, you have to wait until he’s born before you can sign him up.’”

However, the waiting list is no longer a foregone conclusion. Duncan noted that while the school had 110 applicants for 24 kindergarten positions this year, there were actually five openings in the first grade with no waiting list. Likewise, although the senior class is maxed out at 30, there are only 20 students in the junior class.

Looking toward the future, Duncan would like to see Greenwood increase its enrollment, offer statewide teacher training and provide programs for students not enrolled at Greenwood.

She also hopes to conduct a successful capital campaign to raise $3 million for the school: $2 million for state-of-the-art science labs and $1 million for other improvements.

Sports Success

Greenwood’s sports prowess is well represented in the school’s trophy cases.

Being such a small school, “It was kind of a David vs. Goliath thing always for us in sports,” said alumnus Tom Kissee. “We just really banded together.”

The school has a legendary basketball rivalry with Springfield Catholic that is typically played out at Hammons Student Center or MacDonald Arena to accommodate the fan base, and Greenwood has fielded several standouts in golf, including Payne Stewart.

Centennial Celebration

Greenwood Homecoming Weekend 2007, Oct. 5–7, marks the official kickoff of the centennial celebration, with several events planned.

Oct. 5

5 p.m. Chili supper in Greenwood cafeteria

5:30 p.m. Unveiling of new athletic banners, gymnasium, honoring championship coaches, teams and their families

7 p.m. Homecoming soccer game, Plaster Sports Complex

Oct. 6

9 a.m. Alumni Social Hour and Brunch at Highland Springs Country Club

7–11 p.m. Alumni Dance – Rock, Stroll and Remember – at the Shrine Mosque

Oct. 7

1–3 p.m. Classroom open house[[In-content Ad]]