This is my 18th year of teaching, and my fourth
school. I think I may have figured out the solution, unrealistic though it may
be, to “failing” schools in the US. In short, size matters.
Our school is tiny, just 200 students from K-12. Before we
got here, I thought it was comically, shockingly tiny. Now I’m rethinking that.
Each grade consists of roughly 15-25 kids. That’s a broad
range, but since the school is only five years old, the classes grow as you go
down… there are seven kids in the senior class, but three full kindergarten
classes. Oh wait, but “full” for kindergarten means 15, as it should be, not
30. Sophie’s teacher hand writes weekly reports for each kid, because it’s
reasonable. Teaching a class of 15 is perfect (the classes I have are from
14-17 kids). It’s enough for a good group dynamic, activities and discussions
and such, but not so much that I’m overwhelmed when they all need my help. I
can actually plan more complicated things because it won’t exhaust me trying to
corral kids like puppies in a basket. I can get a better grasp on who is
understanding the concepts, and if a fourth of the class is struggling, it’s
easy for me to give them calm, focused attention because there are only four of
them. I don’t feel like I’m being pecked to death by a dozen ravenous baby
birds. When I’m not spread as thin, I can put more effort into my students and
I feel more personally invested. I’m teaching kids I know and care about. Even with
my “light” stateside load of 26 kids per class x five classes (California had
40 per class), there were kids whose names I’d forget by July.
Everyone knows everyone. Even the little kids say hello to
me by name, and I see kids of all ages talking and hanging out. Our entire staff fits in one room. There aren’t enough kids to make
cliques and there is nowhere for bullies and mean girls to conduct their
business. Skipping class is hard. There are a few girls that have the potential
for that, and they’d be terrors in a big school, but here? They can’t alienate
the other four girls in their grade.
They are forced to work out their conflicts, and they do. Each class is a
little family.
The school’s size is fantastic, but it’s also a private
school, which means there are other perks. We have 50 minutes for lunch, and
the teachers and students eat together on real plates with real silverware. The
food (Thai) is mostly healthy, ranging from acceptable to outstanding, and the
time is decadent. We can have
meaningful conversations without glancing at the clock or rushing off to make
copies. We can bring students into the conversations because they’re right
there at the same table.
Another big perk is curriculum. Recently, I sat down with
the other two secondary science teachers to discuss what we teach. Over the
course of the hour, it dawned on us that the three of us have total control
over our curriculum. In April, we’re going to take over an unused office and
turn it into a curriculum war room, revamping the whole shebang. We’re going to
do something that all of my previous schools could only dream of doing: design
a science curriculum from grades 6 through 12 where the subjects actually lead
into each other, are age-appropriate and make sense chronologically. Because
there are only three of us, and we’re all very flexible people, there should be
minimal haggling. I’ve never been so excited to write curriculum in my life. There’s
a sentence I never thought I’d say.
Every week, there is a chapel service for all students (one
for primary, one for secondary). This is a quasi-Christian school. Its founders
are a fairly religious Korean-Thai couple who are involved in a lot of
philanthropy. The school has a lot of religious elements, but none of it is the
oppressive, authoritarian, rule-driven, shame-on-you-sinners brand of
Christianity (hence my calling it “quasi-”). The weekly chapel service is
usually about character and responsibility, given to the kids through
inspiring, relatable stories and interactive demonstrations. Chapel also serves
as a meeting for school business—announcements, reminders, to give recognition
and awards for various things. I am not the least bit religious, but I kind of
enjoy chapel. It’s just one more thing to make it feel like a community.
There are, of course, some downsides. A school this size can’t
have much to offer in the way of sports or electives. They do a great job with
extracurriculars to make up for that. There is no special ed department. Zero
services for the learning disabled, most of whom aren’t even identified or
diagnosed. The best we can do is lean on our experience to figure out what the
kids need (again, advantages of small class size!) and adjust our teaching the
way we know how. It’s a very unofficial approach, but I have enough experience
accommodating IEPs that I’m confident that I’m doing right by those kids. Socially,
the dating pool for the older students is dismal, and they know it. I’ve said
before that there are very few English-speaking kids for Sascha to play with,
and that’s hard.
The workload is tremendous. Absolutely tremendous. I do only
have four classes, instead of the usual five. However, each is a different
subject. Feeling personally invested in these kids, I want to make the lessons good. I feel guilty when I give them
worksheets. Planning and carrying out four different classes a day is really flipping hard. Next year will be
better when my lessons are in place, but even then, I want to fine-tune (or
flat-out re-do) what I’ve done this year. I’ve actually lost sleep thinking
about how much I’ve botched the evolution unit I’m wrapping up with my 7th
graders. It’s challenging in the best sense, but it is A LOT. I have more work
but am somehow less stressed than I used to be.
This brings me to the Big Rewards part. It’s not so much
that we make crazy salaries (it’s roughly $25K a year). The cost of living is so
cheap that we can actually do something with our money. I’m still in awe of how
often we are able to travel. This weekend I’m going to Chiang Mai, and the
entire weekend—bus fare, two nights in a hotel, all meals, even a 3-treatment spa
trip—will cost about $150. In April, I’m going to fly down to Bangkok to shop for
a weekend, and I found a round-trip flight for $52 (hotel for around $30/night,
and yes, it’s a good one!). Back home, we tried to make do with weak “staycations”
that never truly scratched the travel itch but still broke the bank.
This post will probably elicit many “Why don’t you stay
there?” responses. There are lots of reasons, mainly retirement—you try to save
for retirement on $25K. Sure, we could save for a retirement in Thailand, but we couldn’t save enough
to retire anywhere else in the world, and I would like to keep my options open.
I wrote this quickly and have to wrap this up because I am actually leaving for Chiang Mai soon and I
have to plan one more lesson before I leave. I just wanted to get my thoughts
out about tiny school greatness. I wonder how that could work back home. What
would that look like with the population of kids we had, the ones who swear and
fight like spitting cats? What would learning look like with classes of 15? What
could field trips be? What would lunch be like, where kids could actually eat
slowly and converse with each other and their teachers? Discipline cases could
be counseled instead of punished. Kids might feel safer, cared for, and more
secure in an environment like that. What would this do for our students as
adults?
