Blog Posts

Self-Regulation: More than just spin bikes!

5/1/2016

This past week, my old friend and colleague Dr. Paul Bennett published an article in The Globe and Mail entitled: "Stationary bikes in the classroom. Are we spinning out of control?". In it, he referred to the concept of "self-regulation" as a New Age approach to classroom management. According to him:

Frustrated, fidgety kids and stressed-out parents are driving many teachers crazy – and they are grasping for life preservers in today’s classrooms. Enter stationary bikes, the latest wave in the North American self-regulation movement.

I must confess, we do have a spin bike or two at the school, and wiggle pads, thera-bands on chair legs, hokki stools, sit balls and even a punching bag! Many of our students have fidgets and we spend a considerable amount of time in our SEL classes working on "zones of regulation" or using strategies such as MindUp to help our kids work on their understanding of self, and regulation of their emotions. These are not "life preservers" but rather pro-active interventions to help our students concentrate more effectively in the classroom and to enhance their interpersonal relationships with their peers.

In actual fact, far from being a New Age gimmick - the importance of self-regulation has been demonstrated in a host of research studies to be a key component of effective executive functioning in students. One 2012 summary of current research states that "the development and effective measurement of behavioural regulation, or “executive function in context,” [has established] that behavioural regulation contributes significant, unique variance to children’s academic achievement and growth trajectories between preschool years, elementary, middle school, and even to high school." In other words, it is an essential component of the student learning process.

Basically the research supports what common sense tells us, namely that strong, negative emotional reactions (often brought about by anxiety or frustration) impede a child's ability to regulate their own behaviour in a classroom setting and will often result in them being unable to concentrate and focus on essential tasks or miss key instructions or verbal cues. Consequently, strategies that help students to manage these strong feelings are bound to have a positive impact on their ability to complete tasks and develop persistence in the face of challenges.

The traditional alternative to self-regulation has been to address the behaviour and not its root cause. Strategies such as "time outs", isolation rooms, staying in at recess, or suspensions/expulsions have proven to be counter-productive. A 2008 study on the impact of dealing with behaviour challenges by the American Psychological Association (APA) concluded that:
Rather than reducing the likelihood of disruption...school suspension in general appears to predict higher future rates of misbehaviour and suspension among those students who are suspended.

In other words, suspending a child simply reinforces the notion that she or he does not belong at school. Rather than feeling remorse about their actions, suspended students feel resentful and angry. The result, as noted above, is that they will act out these emotions at school the next time that they get a chance and become the "chronic behaviour problem" that educators love to complain about.

It is far more productive, and beneficial in the long term, to work on helping students to develop self-regulation strategies that will enable them to break this cycle and have a more productive and successful school experience. If this means a few more spin bikes around the school, it is a small price to pay!

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16 Years in - 5 Things we'd better know about 21stC Skills

4/11/2016

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One century ago, in April 1916, my grandfather was fighting in the trenches of Belgium. He was adept at applying the 20th century skills that he had learned in school and life to the situation that he faced both in Europe and upon his return to Canada after the war. Now, let's fast forward a half-century to my days in high school in the 60s. This was the age of television in the classroom, human spaceflight, the ARPA-net, microprocessors, hand-held calculators, audio-cassettes and Star Trek on TV. To what extent do you think that the 20th century skills that were cutting edge in 1916 were still front and centre in our daily lives 50 years later? Jump another 50 years to today and look back at those schools without computers or internet access or Smartboards or hand-held video communications devices? How is it that my contemporaries and all of our 20th century trained teachers are able to cope in the present without having learned 21st century skills in school? The reality is that the basic competencies that we all need have not changed significantly at all.

Here are five things that we need to remember about our current fascination with 21st Century Skills:

1. Most of them date from the 19th Century. When we set aside technology (which changes daily), what are the skills that we are advocating for? Literacy (print and digital); numeracy; effective oral and written communications; collaboration and teamwork; creative problem-solving; social thinking; ethical values and behaviour etc. are all attributes that my grandfather would have been quite skilled at a century ago.

2. Learners don't have to adjust to change, teachers do. Our students live in the "now", educators are constantly playing catch-up. No-one would take their child to a doctor who hadn't updated her skills and kept up with current research since leaving medical school ten years ago; but how often do we send our child to a teacher who hasn't kept up to date? For most of our students, 21st century skills is a meaningless term given the fact that they have lived their whole lives in the 21st century. This is the "new" normal.

3. Schools (and universities) are the last bastion of the "knowledge is power" philosophy. In an information-rich age, access is power and the ability to find, sort and analyze information is a far more adaptable and useful sphere of knowledge than being able to recite the lineage of the British monarchy back to the Norman Conquest. In too many classrooms, the use of the power of technology is an updated version of the filmstrip projector/cassette player era of my teaching career. It is just an updated tool to teach "content".

4. Schools spend way too much time in the Cognitive Sphere. Almost five years ago, the National Research Council identified a host of interpersonal (conflict resolution, leadership, collaboration, empathy, etc.) and intrapersonal skills (perseverance, adaptability, integrity, initiative, etc.) that have "measurable benefits for multiple areas of life and therefore are critical for all students". These "soft" skills are developed intuitively by the best teachers but not as systematically as they should be.

5. People a century from now will laugh at you. So get over yourself!

There is a growing body of research that tries to put all of this together. The Ontario Ministry of Education recently released a discussion paper on 21st century competencies.

http://www.edugains.ca/resources21CL/About21stCentury/21CL_21stCenturyCompetencies.pdf

They take the concept of competencies beyond that of the simple mastery of "skills":

A skill is seen as the ability to perform tasks and solve problems, while a competency is seen as the ability to apply learning outcomes adequately in a defined context (education, work, personal or professional development). A competency is not limited to cognitive elements (involving the use of theory, concepts, or tacit knowledge; it also encompasses functional aspects (involving technical skills) as well as interpersonal attributes (social or organizational skills) and ethical values.

My grandfather would have felt right at home!

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Retaining Staff in a high rent market

3/23/2016

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This week I am hiking, biking and swimming with my family in Palm Desert. Travelling away from the Lower Mainland always gives me a chance to reflect on some of the seemingly unique challenges that we face as school and school district leaders in our corner of the continent. Having said that, the more that we travel, the more evident it becomes that some issues are more universal than you might think.

Yesterday I picked up a newspaper (yes they still actually print them!) and read the following headline: "For teachers in pricey enclaves, paying the rent a tough assignment". Wait a minute, I thought, is this article about my own staff? Every year I lose teachers and support staff for the simple reason that they can't afford to live within a reasonable commuting distance from the school. They search out and find positions farther afield, away from the crazy prices and low vacancy rates of the Greater Vancouver area, or they desert the province altogether. Even the ones who stay, are worn down by the long commutes or crippling rents that have a huge impact on their quality of life. An individual school like ours can't do much to mitigate this problem, but it would appear from the above mentioned article, that a number of school districts in the United States have taken up the challenge in a creative and effective way.

The solution, in an era of declining enrolments and under utilized schools has been, not to sell of property, but to convert it to subsidized housing for staff! In San Francisco for example, the school district has announced that they are going to build 100 housing units on district property and implement rental subsidies and forgivable housing loans to help to retain younger faculty and staff.In Silicon Valley, the district is converting a closed elementary school site to 200 rental units and offering them to staff at below market rates. Rather than selling off property to developers, they are using it to attract and retain high calibre staff. Universities have been doing the same thing for years in order to attract professors to areas with high costs of living. Independent schools, especially those with boarding, offer faculty housing as an additional incentive to getting the best people to relocate. This is not a new idea, it just hasn't been actively applied in our public school districts.

Perhaps now is the time for some creative thinking. This is a project that school districts, the province, and employee unions should be able to get behind. Rather that disposing of property as a one time cash grab, how about using it to invest in the long-term stability of the system, and the maintenance of high quality and less stressed staff?

It's a win/win for everyone!

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Is your memory working for you?

3/3/2016

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All of our parents come through our doors armed with a recent psycho-educational assessment. In many cases, they have invested significant resources to get it done for their child in order to have a better understanding of the challenges that she or he is facing in school. Unfortunately, the product is often a dense and mystifying document that cites norms and variances, spews a wide range of scores in numerous sub-tests, assigns rankings (high average, low average, much below average, etc.); and, concludes with a series of categories (ASD, LD - mathematical reasoning, ADHD, OCD, etc.) which the psychologist has deemed as having a possibly significant impact on the learning abilities of the child. The best reports are written in plain language and have been delivered with considerable care and explanation to the family; the worst are heavy on data and light on analysis; and, the majority are somewhere in between.

One area that invariably baffles our parents is that of Working Memory. Often confused with short-term memory, working memory is not just about not forgetting to put the recycling out before going to school, but rather refers to the "ability to keep information in mind and work with this information" in some immediate task or problem-solving situation. All of us have only a limited capacity for working memory and can only retain a finite amount of information for a short period of time (literally seconds) before it decays. A simple example would be the ability to look up a phone number and then dialling it while you still retain the digits in your mind. For most of us, (thank goodness for redial!), if we didn't connect and then waited 15 minutes to try again, we would have to look the number up a second time. The fleeting nature of working memory, in general, is intended for us to retain or retrieve data just long enough to complete a necessary task.

Working memory is the cognitive function responsible for keeping information online, manipulating it, and using it in your thinking. It is the way that you delegate the things you encounter to the parts of your brain that can take action. In this way, working memory is necessary for staying focused on a task, blocking out distractions, and keeping you updated and aware about what’s going on around you.

Working memory has a huge impact on reasoning ability, self-regulation, attention and focus. Consequently it has an impact of the success of all students with respect to academic skill applications particularly in reading and mathematics. Research has shown that a measurement of working memory capacity can be a fairly reliable predictor of academic success in future years.

So, if working memory is a challenge for some students, what can be done to support them in developing strategies to work around it? Common strategies used in working memory training include repetition of the tasks, and the gradual adjustment of the task difficulty and complexity with each stage of mastery. Often, classroom teachers and tutors will use techniques such as front loading, rehearsal of material, chunking, scaffolding, pairing mental images with the material, mnemonics, and other meta-cognitive strategies. Unlike working memory training, the concrete techniques taught to students are learned strategies that kids can deliberately apply to a given situation.

At KGMS, we also help students develop their working memory through the use of Cogmed Working Memory training. Students, for whom this has been identified as a potential intervention, complete a six week training course online, monitored by their tutor. The results are then analyzed by our SLP and shared with parents. There is a follow-up six months after the training to determine the level of retention of the improvements noted in working memory. A 2015 study on the impact of direct working memory training showed both definite improvement, and retention of working memory capacity which correlated with statistically significant increased performance in learning outcomes, particularly in reading and math, more than two years after the training.

Improving working memory, like improving reading and math performance, is part of the process of helping students to develop new pathways to success. It is always a work in progress!

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Grit is for Sandpaper: Redux

2/15/2016

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Sunday I read a tweet online from an educator who was praising a speaker at the IDAOrlando conference that she was attending. The speaker, with apparent clarity and certainty, declared that "The number one thing that LD students need, is grit." Well, the comment did make me grit my teeth, if that was the intent! Grit, like the "growth vs fixed mindset" mantra, is just another truism in the current "blame the learner" approach to working with students with learning challenges.

With the best of intentions, teachers and theorists have placed the mindset burden on the backs of students who are already struggling because they learn differently than the system expects them to. And, if being told that they have a fixed mindset is not enough of a burden to place on learners, they follow it up by telling them that the reason that they are underachieving is because they lack "grit" or, as I read recently in another article dedicated to oversimplifying complex processes, they are short on "moxie"! More and more our classrooms and schools are sounding like something out of a Horatio Alger novel or a 1940s movie script.

In actual fact, most of our students have to have incredible perseverance just to get up and come to school every day and face another 6 or 7 hours where they feel like they just can't cut it. So, before you start putting up your "Paul Tough" posters and before you start copying cutesy "Growth Mindset" bulletin boards off of Pinterest, be sure that you know whom your real audience should be.

You see, I have seen the "gritless", and they are us!

It is we educators who often lack the “moxie” to break down the barriers to learning. It is telling that our provincial teachers' union is taking the issue “class composition” to the Supreme Court – basically saying – “get those kids out of my classroom, they are too difficult to teach!” Independent schools all too often do the same thing – we’re just a little more subtle, using phrases like “sorry but your child is not a mission appropriate candidate for our school” or the “it’s not you, it’s me” approach – “Unfortunately, we’re just not a good fit for your daughter/son”.

Instead of listening to the outside experts, perhaps we should be focusing our attention a little closer to home. 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. You see, parents are really the ones with “grit”. They are the ones with a growth mindset about their own child, they have so much “moxie” that we often berate them in the staff room for being too pushy, or of being “helicopter” parents.

So maybe a real solution for our students, and us, would be to take over their advocate role. 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 we showed the same grit and perseverance that parents do when they support and advocate for their child?

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.

Clearly, it is not students who need “grit” or a “growth mindset”, it is us. We are the ones who all too often give up on some kids as being beyond our ability to teach, and move on to easier, more pliant targets. We are the ones who need to use our professional grit to sand away the rough surfaces of insecurity and fear of failure and to expose and polish the underlying core of self-worth. The sooner we cease deflecting our professional responsibilities by blaming the learner for her or his lack of “moxie” – the sooner we can actually make a difference in their lives.

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. We have to work with them to help them to discover their own personal pathways to success. Let's not use glib phrases and popular slogans to blame the learner. Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work as their "pushy" teachers.

All it takes is a little grit!

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5 Things that an astronaut taught me about learning

2/6/2016

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Yesterday I had the distinct privilege and pleasure of listening to Canadian astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield speak about his time in space (six months over three missions) and as commander of the international space station. He was interesting, engaging and entertaining - everything that you would want in a keynote speaker - but mixed in with the personal anecdotes, the stunning visuals, and even the guitar playing and singing, there were some key messages that resonated with me and gave me lots to think about as I headed for the Seabus on my way home. Here are five of the important learnings for me:

1. Every day is a fresh start and an opportunity to learn something new: We often ask kids, either as a reflective educator, or as parents around the dinner table, "what did you learn today?" But, how often do we turn that question on ourselves? Are we continuous learners? Or do we go through our days by rote, doing the same old things as a variation on an on-going theme? What if, instead, we were determined to not let a day go by without learning one new thing? A new set of facts about a topic of interest? A different perspective about our current beliefs and professional practices? A new skill? It can be as simple as trying out an interesting recipe for dinner. "What did you learn today that made you grow - just a little?"

2. Things don't happen just by luck (good or bad): We always talk about being in the right place at the right time to get a new opportunity, or job, or career advancement, and, conversely to miss the boat for the opposite reason. The fact is, the only way that you can be in the "right" place, is if you have put yourself there. By that I don't mean just physically, but in terms of your learning, your life experience, and your attitude. For everyone who gets an opportunity because they were in the right place at the right time - there were a dozen others who were too, and who didn't get it. It's not a matter of luck, its a matter of preparation.

3. In fact, most of life is preparation: Chris Hadfield is an astronaut. Almost every Canadian school kid has seen pictures or videos of him in the ISS doing experiments, or singing songs, or simply pointing out things through the station window. We all know that an astronaut is someone who flies around in space. Chris Hadfield is an amazing and accomplished astronaut. He has been in the space programme for 23 years, of which only six months have been actually been in space! Three opportunities to "do his job" in more than two decades of training for it. I originally met Marc Garneau, the first Canadian in space, back in the late 1980s. His was a similar story. Years of training for three flights and a few weeks in space. Know what you want to accomplish and get ready for it.

4. Look for the next step: Superman is (shockingly!) a fictional character. No-one can actually "leap tall buildings in a single bound". But, we can all scale just as high a target if we take it one step at a time. There is no need to be in a hurry, you just have to keep moving onward and upward. Each forward step takes you closer to your goal. Too many of us spend our lives like the ball in a pinball machine either shooting forward and falling back, careening from one experience to the next or, sitting in the chute waiting for someone else to pull back the plunger that gets us started. As Commander Hadfield says: "Almost everything that you chose not to do in your life, no-one told you couldn't". Know where you want to go, and get on with it.

5. Have a vision not a dream: Back in my days of accrediting schools, I once had a Head say to me that he knew what his vision was, but he just didn't know how to get there. That wasn't a vision, that was a dream. We all have dreams. Like Chris Hadfield, I watched Star Trek growing up, saw Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the moon and imagined myself flying around in space. For me, that was a nice fantasy, for him, it was a career path. His journey from a young boy with a vision to an amazingly accomplished spaceship commander was marked by learning new things every day; making his own "luck"; dedicating himself to years of preparation; and, systematically heading towards his goal one step at a time. In a funny, self-deprecating moment, Chris Hadfield called himself a "loser" because his goal had been to land on the moon not to command the International Space Station. In reality, his vision had remained intact, but history had altered his target.

I took my two youngest sons, Morgan and Quinn to hear Chris Hadfield speak. When we were leaving Morgan, who is 12, said to me - "Dad, I really want to be an astronaut when I grow up." So, my learnings, these five steps, are really being written for him, so that he can take his dream, turn it into a vision, and create his own future - one step at a time.

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5 Things I learned this Christmas about supporting learning

12/27/2015

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For over 40 years, some of the best insights that I have had with respect to teaching and learning have come from my own children and grandchildren. I have seen what engages them and what bores them; what motivates them and what turns them off; what inspires them to persevere and what sends them packing. It has helped me with my parenting but it has also had a huge impact on my life as an educator. This Christmas was no exception. Here are five things that I have learned from my two youngest sons (12 and 9) so far this holiday about teaching and learning:

1. Collaborative learning almost always trumps independent activity. My youngest son is a games fiend. Cards, board games, WiiU or iPad competitions with his brother, you name it and he will play it. He is not a win at all costs kind of kid - he just loves to socialize through a shared activity. How often do we give our students the same opportunity? Are our classrooms and learning opportunities structured to support group interaction or are our kids glued to their own learning islands? It takes more prep, and way more classroom management to create and maintain constructive collective learning opportunities, but it is always worth it.

2. Learning by doing. I would love to buy a new boat for our cottage. Unfortunately, all of my assets are tied up in Lego (in the past it was Playmobil and before that every Fisher Price toy ever made). Our house is decorated, not like something out of Better Homes and Gardens, but more akin to the most current Lego catalogue. We have all of the Mavel and DC super hero sets; Ninjago; Chima; Harry Potter; Lord of the Rings; Lego Movie; Toy Story - you get the drill! What do they all have in common? They provide hours and days of infectious fun and creative activity. This summer we had a family Lego competition. A theme was chosen; we each had two minutes to choose pieces from a variety of bins; and then 15 minutes to create our response to the theme. Each resulting masterpiece was then presented, with appropriate back story, and a winner was crowned. Then we smashed them up and started over again.
"Maker spaces" have become the new bragging point for schools. Do you have one? Have you outfitted it with the latest technology and tools and materials? Are all of the bells ringing and the whistles tooting? A quick scan of social media will go a long way towards making you feel inadequate in this area! However, you don't really need anything fancy. Some bins of interesting "junk"; basic construction materials; and a willingness to let your classroom get messy (read "trashed") are all that it takes. Kids are engaged, the creative juices flow, and the possibilities are endless.

3. Books are not out of date: Our sons have as much technology as anyone could want at their fingertips - and they use it constantly. Having said that, during "technology-free" times they move seamlessly to their newest book and dive down into whatever adventure awaits them there. Good, age-appropriate literature is always in demand in our house (for children and adults) and, although I love the convenience of carrying around a library on my mini, there is nothing more satisfying than the tactile feel of a good, solid book in your hands. It is always a great family outing to prowl around a bookstore hoping to score the latest by a favourite author or discover a new series to explore. When we travel, local bookstores are always an important stop en route. Having the right literature in your classroom (for all reading levels) and giving exclusive time each day devoted to its exploration is sure-fire winner.

4. There is nothing better than a good story, well-told: Most nights, I put our sons to bed with a story. Years ago, I made the strategical error of inventing a story about a trio of monkey detectives. We now have our own version of the "1001 Nights" as our 3 detectives have travelled to every continent solving mysteries for the local non-human populations. The only times I get bumped off the bedtime agenda is when my wife has them entranced by a "read-aloud". Usually a book that is a bit too advanced for our younger son and a bit too easy for our older one, but one that tells a great and engaging story.
I love going into classrooms where you can hear a pin drop as the teacher reads to the whole group. We are a species with an oral tradition much deeper than our written one. Telling stories and reading aloud to students not only honour and preserve that tradition, they foster a sense of community and shared experience.

5. Sometimes plans just have to go out the window: As good 21st century parents, we pride ourselves on our ability to over-programme and organize our children's lives. Less structured holiday times are a good reminder that, when we take the time to sit back and let things happen, wonderful learning experiences can take place. Giving children time to explore, and supporting them in getting past obstacles in their paths, can be incredibly rewarding and instructive. With all of current emphasis on self-reliance, and grit, and, (as I read today), moxie, we often forget that sometimes kids just need our help and support. If our goal is to have them develop as inquisitive and productive learners, shouldn't we be around to clear out some of the underbrush and let them find their own path? Yesterday we went for a hike in Capilano Canyon. There were recently fallen trees and a heron waiting for an unsuspecting fish to come along. There were hills to climb and bridges to cross. There was a cascading falls coming off Cleveland dam and down the spillway where weeks before there had only been a trickle. And there was running and skipping and lots of laughs. My own children always remind me that these are the real and authentic types of learning experiences that we need to share with our students whenever we can!

Can we do anything less as educators?

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Grit is for Sandpaper

11/30/2015

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Last week we held our fall term parent/teacher/tutor interviews. The school was buzzing with animated conversations and positive exchanges between our staff and the families of the students whom we serve. As the day progressed, as usual I had a number of parents drop in to share stories and ask questions. However, this time there was one comment that really gave me pause. One of our new parents said to me that her interview had been a revelation. It turns out, she told me, that her daughter had been working hard for years to overcome her learning challenges with little apparent success - while all of this time, her family assumed that her failures were due to the fact that she was simply "lazy"!

She told me that at her last school, her teachers had told her that she lacked "grit", that she didn't persevere hard enough to be successful and that with greater effort she could do just fine. One teacher went so far as to tell her that she had a "fixed mindset" that she couldn't do things and that was what was getting in her way. What was the sub-text? Basically that it was not her teachers' fault that she wasn't succeeding at school, it was hers.

The American educational philosopher Neil Postman once commented that hearing a teacher say: "I taught that concept, the student just didn't learn it." was akin listening to a car salesperson say: "I sold that car, the customer just didn't buy it." Teaching and learning (like selling and buying) is a symbiotic process, neither can live in isolation from the other. The teacher who "teaches" something that nobody learns, hasn't taught anything at all.

My concern is that recently - and perhaps this is the result of the pressures brought on by high stakes testing, or regional/international examinations (Provincial, IB, AP, etc.) - educators have scrambled to place the onus for success or failure squarely on the shoulders of the student. Complaints about "class composition" or a lack of grit, or a fixed mindset all point to the child as the source of the problem, not the school or classroom or teacher.

So what can we do to change this seemingly "fixed mindset" in ourselves as educators? To begin with, we have to understand what the terms really mean, and where they come from. A glib turn of phrase should not replace the need to delve deeply into the individual challenges of each student. Low self-esteem, a product of repeated effort and failure, does not show a lack of resilience, it shows a need for support and understanding. A preconceived notion that a particular task is hopeless is not a product of a "mindset" but a hard-earned realization that comes from completing painstaking work that has reaped little or no reward.

It is our job, as parents and educators, not just to recognize that a student is "stuck", but also to help them to back away from a seemingly impossible challenge and find a different pathway around it. That is not a lack of grit, it is just common sense!

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What is success?

11/18/2015

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On September 26, 2015 I had the privilege of speaking on the topic "What is Success" at TEDxWestVancouver.

Here is a link to that TED talk.

What is Success?

Happy viewing!

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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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