Little School, Big Rewards

This is my 18^th 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 7^th 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?