Sean Sharp’s ITRT Blog

Bridging Differences: The Purpose of Small Schools

Small schools are an attempt to re-create, intentionally, the best of the family dinner table, the town meeting, the public square, the legislative process, the team, and the academy of thinkers—with as much of the diversity of the larger community as we can corral all in one manageable place.

This article got me to thinking about my teaching experiences and where I’m at now. In particular it got me considering the small school at which I taught for eight years. The Little School is quite a different place and I think that this article speaks to many aspects that we were striving for and towards. Curriculum was “emergent,” based on student and teacher interests; classrooms were no more than sixteen students; desks were non-existent (we had tables and chairs); there was a lot of student choice throughout the day; academics were often taught through projects; assessments were narrative formats for each student; parents were invited to observe all morning before conferencing afterward; we took into account each individual student’s developmental timetable, aware that no two kids were developing at the same time, in the same rate in all areas. Assessments were also done based on work samples and observation. Kind of radical compared to standards, teachers being told what to teach, and helping students do well on standardized tests.

I’ve often believed that school is the one place in a childs life where they can come and be part of a community, learn to be part of a community that is not their family, with other humans that are in their same stage of life. My question after reading an article like the one linked above is how do we make our schools smaller learning communities, even within the confines of a large school? How do teachers create their community in their classroom while helping students to be part of their larger school community?

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