CCS Short Stories

We’ve collected stories from parents, students, and staff over the last 40 years at CCS. If you’d like to add your story to this collection, you can do so here.

We are grateful to Alumni Parent Nicole Gregory for editing this collection.

two memories

By Jonah H. Sanderson, CCS Alum

If I had to think back on my two favorite memories from Children’s Community School (I was there 1992-1998), it would be our annual Jog-a-thon and kindergarten.

Though I wasn’t much of a runner, I loved seeing all of my favorite teachers and friends at the Jog-a-thon. The water station was set up outside and after we did one lap around, my whole shirt was wet. In my first year at CCS, I had a kind and sweet teacher named Terri. One time on the bus returning from a field trip, she came and sat with me.

Neal always did hire the most incredible staff. It will be very hard to picture CCS without him.

I wish CCS, forty more incredible years!

memory of a lunch helper

By Joann Rodgers, Alumni Grandparent

One of my favorite memories of CCS was a visit I made at a time just as lunch was about to begin. I volunteered to be a "lunch helper" at my granddaughter Ellie's table, which mostly entailed opening juice boxes and wiping up spills.

I don't recall the name of the amazing teacher who sat with us, but at some point, one of the children, a boy, grabbed at another child's hand and frightened her.  The teacher soothed the frightened girl, then turned to the boy. She held both of his hands gently in hers. She said to him, without a touch of anger: "Can you tell all of us at this table what we learned about touching others?"

The boy looked into her eyes. "We always ask permission to touch and be touched."

"Right!" said the teacher.

A jewel of a school

By Lana Chirco Baltz, Alumni Parent

I remember hearing about this little jewel of a school lovingly referred to as CCS when we began the daunting journey to find "the best" progressive elementary school for Dutch, and later LouLou.  Met Neal, search over.  "Neal is the real deal" became a familiar phrase that echoed through our home during the course of raising our two children at CCS.  Kirk and I were so excited, we'd go to the fundraisers and other events even though it would be two years before Dutch would enter kindergarten.  We knew this was going to be our home ... and it was from 2005-2014.

I cried at ALL the Sings for the first two years ... OK, fine maybe three. "If you miss me at the back of the Bus," "Georgie," "Ain't Gonna Study War No More," "Inch by Inch." The Bobcat Dance share ... Jog-a-thon ... hayride at the pumpkin patch ...

Life itself

By Adam Rodgers, Alumni Parent

It was spring 2018, and the clock was ticking. Loudly. My wife Jenny and I had secured nearly all of the big-ticket items on our “moving to Maryland from California” checklist: new house; new hockey team for Aaron, our rising sixth grader; new gig for his dad; new proximity to those we hold dear, including daughter (and CCS alum) Ellie, now 23, who had called Maryland home since attending college there.

One box remained glaringly un-checked: a pre-school for Levi, then four years old. I had made the calls, visited several, and—having come up short—was resorting to driving around my new town with the delusional vision that a solution would appear.

With only a couple of hours to spare before I was due to board a Southwest flight back to LAX, something caught my eye, just past the Harris Teeter (miss you, Trader Joe’s)—a colorful play structure, nestled between a grove of trees and brick building that turned out to be a schoolhouse. 

Once buzzed inside, I found my way to the office and was greeted warmly by Sheeba, the school’s director, who was just wrapping up a phone call. She gestured for me to make myself comfortable, so I took a seat and let my eyes wander. Photographs of children lined the walls. Playing, laughing, exploring. And building—with blocks. A sign?

Always There

By Kathy Wyner, Alumni Parent

I parked the car on Cedros Street, more easily accomplished in 1991, even on a Saturday. Neither my son Nicholas (age 10) nor I had brought tools to the annual CCS Parent Work Day. We weren’t gardeners; we were just bodies, willing to take direction. I figured maybe we would end up delivering cups of water or lemonade to the real workers.

Even at 9 a.m., the campus buzzed with activity. Professional landscapers had worked in advance with the Work Day Committee on design and organization. They had already installed the sprinkler system and unloaded pickup trucks full of boulders, sand, dirt, shrubs, flowers, wheelbarrows, and thick rolls of sod onto the middle yard. Parents and children streamed in carrying brooms, rakes, spades, and shovels.

A Decade at the oasis

By Mark Williams, Alumni Parent

It’s hard to believe, as I write this, that our family has spent as much time away from CCS, at this point, as we did in it.

Our sons Eli and Asher are now post-college and wrapping up, respectively, as I write this, and being a half-decade apart, just as Eli was mustering out from “Group 6,” as it used to be called, Asher was heading into “Group 1.”

That gave us about a decade in the CCS oasis.

Part of that oasis for me personally, came in the years spent volunteering in the library, which also coincided with my most active years as a children’s book writer, so to be literally among the audience I was purporting to write for was quite a treat, as was being surrounded by the work of many colleagues each Wednesday morning that I went in.

The Most Fabulous Field Trips

By Amy Reichbach, Alumni Parent

Forty years for Children’s Community School—a milestone by most standards, and I’m so lucky to have been part of it.

My tenure in the history of CCS came late in the game. Both my daughters attended Children’s Circle Nursery School, and we often heard that Children’s Community School was like the next level version of Children’s Circle (infinitely appealing). My oldest ended up going to parochial school, but my youngest was an outdoorsy, out-of-the-box thinker, nature girl. Julia was the perfect candidate for CCS.

She started in the fall of 2003 with several of her pals from Children’s Circle, so pretty easy transition into Terri Agbodike’s kindergarten class (known in those days as Group One). From the estimating jar to getting to decide what they wanted to study, this was a whole new concept for this LA-City-Schools-raised mama. Ancient Egypt and dinosaurs won BTW, and a field trip to the Natural History Museum proved exhilarating as one of the kids had an aunt who worked in the back area, and we all got to go behind the scenes and hold a 150-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth…

This was just the beginning of fabulous field trips, even simple things like walking around the block each season and drawing the same tree to see how it changed.

obama’s inauguration

By Deanne Avner, Alumni Parent

I think the most powerful memory for our whole family—and the rest of the class might agree—was the Red-Tailed Hawks’ trip to the 2009 inauguration. Sean and I were crushed that we weren’t able to volunteer to attend, but we were thrilled that Katelyn was going to experience this life-changing event. The importance of electing Barack Obama really made an impression when she realized the massive turnout and high emotion of all the attendants. The fact that Helen thought ahead so many months knowing, no matter who was elected president, that it was going to be an historical time just reiterated to us what a special education CCS offered.

Katelyn had this to say: 

“I remember waking up super early for the inauguration and knew it was cool and knew it was a big deal…

This Is It

By Maria Ramirez, Alumni Parent

… I remember the day of the tour we walked all around the school. We went into the classrooms, the block room, black top, garden, library, auditorium, etc. As we were walking around CCS I became aware of how happy, focused and comfortable the children were. I also noticed the good energy and respect among children and adults.

When the tour was over, we went to the library for a meeting with Neal. The prospective parents asked their questions and Neal answered them. After it was over and they left, it was my turn. With the help of my translator, I was able to ask all the questions I had. It was an amazing experience. Neal explained the CCS philosophy and how each child and family were a very important part in the CCS community. He also explained how much they value each student and the contributions that they bring to the school. As I listened to Neal, I became aware of a feeling inside me telling me "This is it. This is the school for my children"…

A dedicated “Drop-off Sargeant”

By Darcy Kaye, Alumni Parent

I was the carpool “drop-off Sargeant” for a couple of years while Charlie was at CCS (he graduated in 2011).

I volunteered for the position partly because I felt it was important to be involved in the community, partly because Charlie liked me being around school (clearly this was before he became a prepubescent young man and wanted me nowhere in sight!), but also because I apparently have some control issues that the position allowed me to exercise. Apart from a couple of run-ins with parents who didn't appreciate my sense of order and rule-following, it was a great experience and I got to meet all of the kids and their parents and welcome them to school a couple of days a week. 

A huge thank you to CCS from our family and happy 40th anniversary!

A Few Memories Among Many

By Nicole Gregory, Alumni Parent

We live near CCS and even though our son, Charlie, just graduated college, sometimes I slowly drive by the school and peek into the yard, just to feel the flood of happy and fun memories when he was a student there, such as:

…Reports of U.N-worthy discussions at school about the rules for kick ball, so that a final consensus could be reached about what was fair.

… Accompanying Charlie’s class on an overnight field trip to a Northern California bird sanctuary, where I witnessed that the logistics of travel (packing a suitcase and getting to meals on time), was as valuable a lesson for the kids as the bird presentation.

… Listening to a Middle Eastern musical group perform at school one week, then live bagpipes another week.

… Huddling with other moms to bemoan that our kids were turning nine, when Neal passed by and commented, “At least your kids are still in the single digits…” and we looked at him with awe and sympathy.

… Watching a boy in Group 6 dressed as Paul Revere give a riveting, confident speech about his life and career, holding the audience of kids and parents in rapt attention.

The late reader

By Jesse Young, CCS Alum

I was a late reader—I don't think I was able to fully read until third grade. CCS, being CCS, didn't hurry me along, and let me figure things out at my own pace—and reading eventually came to me in due time. And once it happened, I loved nowhere more than the CCS library.

I could only check out one book at a time, so completing one book was a powerful incentive to be able to get a new one! My first series was the Sailor Jack books, a vintage set of introductory books about a submarine seaman and his rather mundane adventures. My parents told me years later how much they hated the books (they were apparently very boring!), but to me, it was like a secret language had been unearthed. It was a true joy.

I also stuttered, quite badly at times, when I was a CCS student. I would get over-excited, and my words would gum up in my mouth. It was, by turns, more frustrating than embarrassing. Reading out loud was my solution. I would read out loud to my parents at night (I remember struggling mightily with the Boxcar Children series, a CCS perennial), sometimes sitting up in their bed with them.