Montessori History
In 1998, the BASD school board approved offering a Montessori option. BASD is one of only a handful of public school systems in the state to offer Montessori. Physician Maria Montessori developed the system of learning in 1907. Montessori is a different approach to education, with an emphasis on learning how to learn: observing life, listening, looking for patterns, making connections, and reflecting on how things fit together and work. Students master the core curriculum: reading, writing, and mathematics. Montessori is a program that meets state and national standards, using different materials and methods than the traditional setting.
Cooper School History
Cooper Montessori School sits on a property that has served the community’s students for generations. As early as 1888 a kindergarten building stood where the Cooper School stands now. At this time there were no sidewalks or paved streets for kids to walk to school so it was thought by some as a “mistake” to send young children to this school as stated in the Standard Democrat newspaper, October 1896. This building served kindergarten until 1911 when kindergarten classes and first grade were moved to Lincoln School on State and Kane Street.
In 1896, construction on the Conkey School started with the school opening in 1897. Cooper School housed both grade and high school students until 1925, when the high school classes were moved to a new school on Robert Street. The Conkey Street building continued to serve as a grade school until the new Cooper School building opened in January 1968. The building was demolished in 1970 to make more room for playground and parking purposes. The Conkey Street School was renamed Cooper School in 1940 in honor of former Burlington resident, Congressman Henry Allen Cooper. Mr. Cooper, a politician, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Henry Allen Cooper (September 8, 1850 - March 1, 1931)
Mr. Cooper was born in Spring Prairie, Wisconsin, son of former Free Soil Party State Representative Joel H. Cooper, a physician. In 1851 the family moved to Burlington, Wisconsin. Their house was a station of the Underground Railroad, and in 1852 sheltered fugitive slave Joshua Glover on his way to Canada. Henry Cooper graduated from Burlington High School in June 1869. After school, Cooper attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and graduated in 1873. He then attended Union College of Law, then the legal faculty of Northwestern University and graduated there in 1875. He was then admitted to the bar, practiced in Chicago until 1879 and then commenced practice at Burlington.
Aaron Smith (1760-1828)
Mr. Smith was born in New York. In July 1778, he enlisted in the Massachusetts Militia to serve in the Revotionary War. Smith was present at the battle of Yorktown and was mustered out two years later in June, 1883. Smith moved to Burlington, Wisconsin and died in Burlington on September 23, 1838. His grave is believed to be somewhere on the Cooper School grounds in Burlington. Smith’s actual burial site may have been on the property line of property he once owned located on Amanda Street – the street where the Cooper School is located. There is one account of bones being uncovered as the property was being leveled for the construction of a house.
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