Why Your Child Will Benefit From a Small School Communityby Richard Solomon, Ph.D. Rocky Hill School Parent and Trustee Clinical Director, Delta Consultants (Providence, RI) Adjunct Instructor in Psychology--University of Rhode Island/Providence Campus Spring 2005 If an important goal of all schools is to create relationships between families and schools that encourage educational partnerships, then school size is critical to the establishment of such relationships (“Not only do intimate settings increase the chances of teachers and parents making positive contacts, but they also provide more supportive environments for teachers' relationships with children.” Lightfoot, 1978). Smaller schools permit teachers and their students to become highly familiar with each other, to develop a sense of comfort with each other and to establish relationships that are also highly inclusive of the student's parents. Curricular and social issues are readily identified and managed, each contributing to the armamentarium of student life-skills that is gradually being established. Just as important decisions must be made regarding homes, extracurricular activities and careers, American parents are gradually being presented with a variety of school choices for their children. In President Bush's No Child Left Behind Legislation, an interesting emphasis has been placed upon the creation of more school options for the nation's students. Hence, neighborhood schools that have been under-performing are subject to more scrutiny and, in many instances, American families are being presented with other potential school choices. Parents who are looking towards independent schools for their children are also presented with many options. While most independent schools tend to be smaller than their public counterparts, size variation is also highly existent within the independent community. Some schools resemble a medium size elementary school while others purposively establish a small and intimate environment that, while in difficult economic times can be challenging to maintain, foster meaningful relationships among faculty and the school's students and families. For children, numerous child psychologists (e.g. Piaget, 1970; Biller & Solomon, 1986) have emphasized the need for children to develop a sense of social and intellectual competence and mastery of the environment as an important component of healthy development. Indeed, such competence is often thought to be an important building block in the development of effective problem-solving skills during adolescence and adulthood. Smaller schools have the decided advantage of thoroughly familiarizing students with the school's environment . Indeed, the school becomes a second home, a place where the child feels the comfort and encouragement to take intellectual and personal risks, to succeed, to fail, to grow and, ultimately, to flourish. Of equal importance is the visual scenario inherent in small schools. Students from different grades see other children, often several times a day. Such visual exchanges make everybody familiar with each other and constantly remind each student of where they were several years ago and where they are going to several years hence. Teachers also have interactions, even informal ones, with students from other grades, establishing a sense of familiarity even before the child has entered their classroom. The familiarity that faculty and students establish with each other in small schools extends also to students' families. This type of familiarity works in several ways. First, parents typically become familiar with faculty well before the student has arrived in her/his classroom. Sometimes siblings have preceded the student. Other times, parents and faculty have already worked together on school committees or important events. The end product is that many children enter their classroom in September with the family-faculty relationship already well-established. An important adage in school-family connections is to have worked together on positive happenings before having to deal with each other regarding learning or behavioral problems. To that end, small schools have the distinct advantage of preparing families and faculty to address student needs in a broader context (i.e. how is the student faring in comparison to previous years? what are the overall developmental objectives that the faculty and parents have for the child?) and in the immediate context (i.e. what is the problem that is occurring at the immediate moment? where does this concern fit in the context of the student's learning objectives for the academic year?). Smaller schools also offer the opportunity to more readily identify student's accomplishments and encourage leadership and participation in a diverse array of activities. Finally, smaller schools offer a distinctly different experience for faculty. Faculty are often sacrificing financial benefits in order to pursue their careers within independent schools. Within the smaller school locale, faculty truly become parental partners, working closely with parents and colleagues to establish stimulating and safe educational environments. They are truly regarded as the experts of that grade-level with each grade-level being cherished for the specific developmental and curricular objectives that are established. Recent educational activists (Sizer, 2000; Litky, 2004) have emphasized the importance of students and families being known within their school locales. This can be accomplished in most school locales but is far more readily accomplished with smaller school communities. In a society where its citizenship is perhaps on the verge of becoming frighteningly anonymous, schools can evolve themselves into locales where families, students and faculty are true partners in the raising of responsible and motivated citizens. In independent schools, this partnership is a de facto component of the school environment, a community where a family can feel a sense of belonging, acceptance and where the family can look to the school as reliable and insightful resource to assist in the raising of children. Collegiate Series Articles The Grass Was Not Greener: One Student's Journey to Boarding School and Back Why Your Child Will Benefit From a Small School Community Senior Projects: Is Your High School Student Ready? The Value of an Independent School Education How
to Choose the Right School for Your Child Strategies
for the Year-end and Summer Months
|