Ann Cutter '90 MA was something of a loveable firebrand at Curry School.

“I had numerous fights to avoid taking home ec,” says Ann, who still has the thick bundle of hair and enigmatic smile she exhibited as a high school senior in Curry's 1961 yearbook.

She wanted to take shop instead, she insisted. Ann stood her ground, and although she never took shop, another girl did.

Ann is the daughter of two former UNCG (then Woman's College) biology professors, Victor and Lois Cutter. “Anything you did, anything, your parents were going to hear about it,” she says.

Indeed Curry School was a small, clannish group made up of the children of professors and staff at UNCG, and other kids who lived in the neighborhoods surrounding the university. Professors from the university taught the classes, which ranged from elementary grades to high school, and supervised student teachers from the School of Education. A News & Record columnist once described it as “the perfect charter school.”

Paul Ashby '71, who graduated from Curry in 1967, was in much the same boat as Ann. His father, Warren Ashby, taught philosophy, founded the residential college in Mary Foust Hall and started the honors program. His mother was assistant director of the college's Institute for Child Care and Early Development.

Paul's graduating class consisted of only 33 seniors, 16 of whom had been together since kindergarten. “Most of the Curry kids lived within walking distance; many of them lived on Tate or McIver or Stirling,” says Paul. “We didn't know we were exclusive, but if you went out in the real world, they would kid you about going to Curry.”

School days

The public K-12 schools weren't always keen on allowing student teachers in the classroom. Curry School opened in 1893 as a demonstration school to train future teachers. By 1902, the school had its own building on the campus. That building, located on Walker Avenue and named for education advocate Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, burned in 1925.

A new Curry Building, which now houses the UNCG School of Education, was built on Spring Garden Street in 1926. The facility included a separate cottage where the girls, Ann Cutter excepted, studied home economics.