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What's the difference?

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To close or not to close? The case for small schools

10/28/2015

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Social and mainstream media have been buzzing over the past few days about the recent decision at the Vancouver School Board to exempt AFS Macdonald Elementary school from the list of nineteen potential schools listed for possible closing. You may recall, that by a slim majority, last January the trustees approved a Mackenzie King like motion - "Closure if necessary, but not necessarily closure" - which left the option open down the road to consider closure and consolidation of under-utilized schools as a possible money-saving strategy. 

Now, let's face it, the decision to close a school is never an easy or a popular one. Schools are often a social hub (for child and parent) of a neighbourhood or community, and the idea of a short walk to school versus a longer drive or bus ride inevitably raises the ire of parents.


When I was a Superintendent in rural school district in eastern Ontario in the 1990s we were faced with a similar dilemma. The previous Board and administration had selectively closed a number of small rural schools which had raised the political hackles in a number of other communities who perceived themselves to be next on the chopping block. 


Urban neighbourhoods love to keep their local schools (a 1988 study in Toronto found that the number one reason that parents chose their local public school over its fully funded Roman Catholic counterpart was that the public school was closer to their home - quality of education was not a major factor!). But that attachment comes nowhere near the desire of small isolated communities to fight against any closures. For many of them, the school is the last existing institution that binds the village together. The general store has been supplanted by box store malls twenty kilometres away, the local church is virtually empty, the post-office has been shut and all that is left is the local school. It is the one public gathering place, the local park and recreation centre, and the only remaining link between their child and her or his community. For villages like Tamworth, Centreville, and Yarker, school closure was a non-starter.

After much public consultation, we decided to take a middle course with respect to school consolidation. Rather than close schools and move students, we twinned them. Eventually there were five pairs of partner school. The two twinned schools shared one administrative team, resource teachers, and specialized equipment and teaching/learning materials. In addition, classes were paired on a regular basis with their counterparts from the partner school for joint studies, field trips and activities. How much money did we save? Not much. It turned out that the real benefits were not financial. In actual fact it was the wide range of unintended outcomes that made the project such a great success.

To begin with, the cross-pollination of students from different schools and villages was fantastic. Having spent years with the same small cohort group, the infusion of a fresh crop of peers had an amazing impact on the social dynamic of both school communities. New friendships were made, academic partners were identified and the students were energized by a change in routine and atmosphere. For their teachers, the impact was no less dramatic. Having been the sole teacher at one grade level for years, all of a sudden each of them had a teaching partner with whom they could share units, resources and ideas. The quality of instruction improved in each of the schools and we saw unexpected jumps in standardized test scores at all levels. Finally, when the first groups of graduates moved into high school, they came as part of a larger cohort, had already had exposure to students from other parts of the county, and transitioned much more smoothly into the secondary panel.

Ironically our experience, which was uniquely suited to a sprawling rural school district measuring 50 km east to west and stretching from a school on an island in Lake Ontario to an isolated rural village school 200 km to the north, makes a pretty good case for the closure of underpopulated urban schools. Setting aside financial considerations - both in terms of economies of scale and the possibility of leasing or selling surplus space - the academic argument for closure and consolidation is very strong.

In addition to the social and academic benefits of consolidating school populations such as we experienced, you also have the chance to concentrate resources - human, technological, facility etc. where they can be shared by a larger group of students. Issues such as class size and composition are easier to resolve in a larger school, multi-grade classes tend to disappear and the opportunity for greater collaboration among faculty can have a huge impact on the quality of teaching and learning for every child involved.


School closure is not a popular concept, but a strategic approach to the use of available resources is more likely to result in an improvement in the quality of education than the maintenance of small, under-resourced and sparsely populated buildings across the city.

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Success is always an option!

10/1/2015

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Our school is a school of second choice. Most parents and children don’t come to us because they want to, but because they feel that they have to. We meet an incredible group of kids each year – students with a wide range of learning challenges, anxieties, and barriers to their academic progress. There is however, one thing that they all have in common. Every new student who walks in the front door of Kenneth Gordon tells me that the one thing that they have learned in all their years of schooling is that for them, success is not an option. Their expectations of inevitable failure have become hard-wired to their self-image. They have become, in their minds, like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. You can almost hear them singing…
 
                                                             I could be a straight “A” student,
                                                            Quite serious and prudent,
                                                            High marks would I attain.
 
                                                           Not a class would I be bored in,
                                                           Wouldn’t go to Kenneth Gordon,
                                                           If I only had a brain!
 
So, faced with this negative sense of self, our goal for each student has to be to unlock the puzzle that has resulted in them developing this view of themselves and their prospects. We need to strive to help them to find their own individual pathway to success. So, having said that, the critical first step, is get them to believe that they can learn, they can thrive in a school environment, and that they do have as good a shot at success as anyone.
 
But how do you make that happen? Where should you look for the formula to kick-start the path to student success? Well there is lots of research (and even more opinion) to consult. You can look at Carol Dweck and decide that you need to move them from a fixed to a growth mindset, you can study Paul Tough and decide that what they lack is “grit”, you can read Carol Anne Tomlinson and immerse yourself in differentiation. You can built your programme, as we have, on a Universal Design model, or on neuroplasticity, or even make it feel like a boot camp. All of those practices, theories and models work for some kids. But none of them have a chance, unless you break down the basic barrier to student success, their own self-image!
 
Many schools have a pretty proactive Social Emotional Learning curriculum for their students, and across the North Shore we have great teams of counselors, psychologists, SLPs and OTs. Lots of wonderful resources for kids, but in spite of all that, it seems to me that our real source of insight in how to build confidence in students is not necessarily the experts, but someone a little closer to home.
 
Let me tell you what I mean. In the 1980s I taught at the University of Connecticut alongside William Purkey. Purkey is considered the father of the "inviting schools" movement and was the author of two books from the early 70s entitled Self-Concept and School Achievement and Inviting School Success. Bill Purkey always said that “anything worth doing is worth doing badly”  (as anyone who has heard me sing will attest!) But he also emphasized the importance of school being a welcoming environment, where each child felt cared for and valued. School, he argued should be their home away from home, and a safe place to take risks. We have known this for decades, but is that always the case in our schools? 

Standard school jargon talks about the principle of “in loco parentis”, educators acting in the place of the parent – we use it in classroom management, on field trips, and even in how we approach discipline. But maybe we’ve got it all wrong.
 
Maybe, if we educators really believed in the importance of in loco parentis, we could consider following a different kind of approach when working with our students. In fact, what if we acted like parents rather than teachers? What difference would that make to help students to succeed?
 
What if every school treated each child as if her or his success was critically important to us?
 
What if we all actively searched for ways in which every student could learn effectively?
 
What if our first response was always to believe what a child says and not try to pick apart their stories?
 
What if we all respected the fact that family life is complex, and that not every night at home is going to be conducive for completing homework?
 
What if we all stopped playing children off of one another with stars and stickers and class rankings and pep rallies – with our all too common practice of proclaiming winners and losers?
 
What if all educators acted the way that we expect our students' parents to act: to be supportive and to communicate regularly; to check agendas and sign homework; to encourage, to give second (and third and fourth) chances; to treat children with dignity and respect; and, to assess their work as an instructional tool - not as a judgment of individual worth?

You see, in loco parentis is not actually a legal construct at all, it is a philosophy of teaching and learning. The more that schools and administrators and teachers become cheerleaders, coaches and advocates for children; rather than taking on the roles of judge, jury and executioner; the better the chance they have for success. 

We don’t ask parents to act like schools. And, for their part, schools should not take on the role of parents, but rather what we must do, as educators, is to embrace each parent's belief in the potential of her or his individual child. That is the true meaning of “in loco parentis”, and the ultimate secret for student success.




 

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    Dr. Jim Christopher is recently retired Head of Kenneth Gordon Maplewood School and Maplewood Alternative High School in North Vancouver. A parent, author and long-time teacher, and educational administrator across Canada, he has been actively involved in the drive to differentiate learning experiences to meet the needs of all learners.

    View my profile on LinkedIn

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