THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 4, 1996 TAG: 9602020171
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 24 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH THIEL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 143 lines
HAMPTON ROADS PARENTS may soon have another choice of places to send their kids to school.
That's if Eileen C. McDougall, a 35-year-old Virginia Beach resident, succeeds in her plans to open a new private elementary and middle school on Oak Grove Road in Chesapeake.
McDougall hopes to open Utopian Elementary School & Developmental Center Inc. in September to serve preschoolers through sixth-graders in the 1996-97 school year, then later expand to serve students through the eighth grade.
She is shooting for an enrollment of about 66 students next school year, with eventual expansion to as many as 300 kids.
She has yet to break ground on the new school's building, or to hire a staff. She has only four students enrolled so far. She and her husband are financing most of the venture themselves.
But Impaq Computers Inc. of Virginia Beach already has agreed to be the corporate sponsor for McDougall's enterprise and will donate business expertise and most of the computers for the school.
And McDougall hopes that by summer, she'll have begun construction on the facility's $350,000 first phase, which will include administrative offices and three classrooms. She plans to add more classrooms, computer labs, a science lab and a small planetarium in later phases.
It's a tall order for a young mother of two who holds only an associate's degree in childhood development, earned in 1990 at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona.
McDougall is enrolled now at Virginia Wesleyan College and is scheduled to graduate in the spring with a bachelor's degree in elementary education.
She said she then will begin immediately studying for her master's degree in educational administration at Old Dominion University. Her goal is to earn her master's degree and then a doctorate within five years.
But McDougall said she already believes she has the experience necessary to run a school.
She started her career as a registered nurse. A debilitating knee injury, suffered while lifting a patient, ended that in the late 1980s.
Then McDougall began volunteering in her son's preschool, and realized she had a keen interest in the education of young children.
That's when she decided to study for her associate's degree.
While attending school, McDougall said she worked with young children enrolled in the community college's developmental learning center, a sort of lab school.
When her husband, a Naval intelligence officer, was transferred to California in 1991, McDougall said she was hired as a lead teacher at the Monterey Peninsula Christian School in Pacific Grove.
While there, she said, she helped other teachers at the school set up developmental learning centers, small sections within classrooms where kids can apply their lessons. If children were learning about the letter A, for example, they would cook apples at a mini-kitchen center. At an art center, they would create ants out of construction paper or draw the letter with colorful paints and markers.
She brought the experience with her to Hampton Roads when her husband was transferred here in 1992. She worked as a preschool teacher at Linlier Preschool, the sister school of Virginia Beach Country Day School, through 1994.
She would have stayed with teaching, but another knee injury disrupted her plans, she said.
So she decided to open her own school, employing some of the techniques she had learned and used since earning her degree in 1990.
Reza Hashampour, president and chief executive officer of Impaq Computers Inc. in Virginia Beach, said he has every confidence that McDougall will pull it off.
Hashampour befriended McDougall when she taught his daughter's preschool class at Linlier.
``I know my daughter is ahead of a lot of other students because of Mrs. McDougall,'' said Hashampour, whose 6-year-old daughter, Ashley, is now in the first grade at the Greenbrier Baptist Church school in Chesapeake.
``She's an excellent teacher, and she's got a unique idea, which I support,'' Hashampour said.
McDougall said she sees gaps in both public and traditional private school education.
Public schools, she said, serve so many kids that those with special needs, such as intellectually gifted children and students with chronically short attention spans, do not get the education they need. Classes are too large, she said.
Some private schools also have large classes and do not offer students individual attention, she said.
She'd like Utopian Elementary to blend the best qualities of both public and private schools, ``for those children who are just the little square pegs who don't fit into the round holes,'' she said.
``I view children as a deck of cards. They're all cards, but they're of different suits. They're all different.''
All students will have individual learning plans, which will identify their strengths and weaknesses, she said.
Her class sizes will be strictly limited: 10 students in classes for 3-year-olds, 12 students in pre-kindergarten classes and 15 students in the other grades.
All students will be required to participate in at least one after-school club.
McDougall promises to offer all students instruction in math, science, language arts, social science, multicultural education and foreign language, fine arts and physical education.
She'll use objects called manipulatives to teach math; she'll most likely teach students to read by using the phonics method, which shows students how to identify words by sounding out the letters.
Students will help produce a school newspaper called the ``Utopian News.''
McDougall intends to emphasize science instruction, particularly through an agreement with NASA-Langley to pilot many of the space department's educational programs for kids. Next spring, for example, McDougall's sixth-graders are scheduled to try out a new program called ``Adventures Into Cyberspace,'' she said.
Teachers and students will rate the program and then offer their observations to NASA-Langley, McDougall said. NASA-Langley will use Utopian's analysis to improve the program before offering it to the public.
McDougall also said she plans to work closely with the Chesapeake Arboretum to allow the students to have nature lessons there. She also plans to have an environmental garden on the school grounds.
McDougall said such opportunities will allow her kids to experience science firsthand.
``Everything's going to be as hands-on as possible,'' she said. ``I want them to not only read about snails but to go out and dig them up and observe them.''
She will look for other opportunities to test new teaching materials and methods, and allow educators from public and other private schools to learn from her experiences. There will be observation windows built onto classrooms in her school, so parents and educators can visit anytime, she said.
She plans to offer workshops for parents, and before- and after-school care for all students, for a fee. The school will be open to care for kids from 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
A shuttle bus will be provided for kids coming from Virginia Beach.
McDougall is hopeful that Utopian will become an ideal learning environment for children.
``I thought, if I could create the perfect school, what would it be?'' she said. ``And I think I've done it.'' MEMO: For more information about Utopian Elementary School & Developmental
Center Inc., call Eileen C. McDougall at 340-0027 or send electronic
mail to emac(AT)infi.net.
ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MORT FRYMAN
Eileen C. McDougall plans to open Utopian Elementary School &
Developmental Center Inc. in September.
by CNB