author
Lucy Sprague Mitchell
1878–1967
A pioneer of progressive education, she helped reshape how children learn by arguing that classrooms should grow from curiosity, experience, and everyday life. She also wrote lively books for children, bringing that same spirit of discovery to the page.
1 Audiobook
Here and Now Story Book Two- to seven-year-olds
by Lucy Sprague Mitchell
About the author
Born in Chicago in 1878, Lucy Sprague Mitchell became one of the important voices in American progressive education. She studied at Radcliffe College and later worked at the University of California, Berkeley, before turning her attention more fully to the study of children and how they learn.
In 1916, she founded the Bureau of Educational Experiments, the organization that later became Bank Street College of Education. Her work helped build the Bank Street approach, which treated children's direct experience, play, observation, and social development as central to learning rather than secondary to it.
Mitchell was also a children's writer, and her books reflected the same close attention to the real world that shaped her teaching ideas. She died in 1967, but her influence remains strong in early childhood education and in conversations about child-centered learning.