So far in my teaching career, I've taught at schools with about 200 students and at schools with upwards of 800 students, as well as at a couple of schools that are somewhere in the middle. Several times, I've had parents ask me which is better. "I'm looking at moving to a new neighbourhood, but the in-district school for the house I saw is really really tiny. Is that okay?"
Here are some advantages of small elementary schools.
At a small school, everyone knows each other better. The principal will likely know your child's name, even if your child doesn't get in trouble. The teachers on recess duty know your kid; this is especially important if your child has behaviour or health needs or has experienced bullying. Your child will also be more likely to know kids in different grades because they'll all be outside at recess at the same time, and because extracurricular activities will be open to a larger range of grade levels. At my small school, it feels much more like a community. At larger schools, community-building is more challenging. A small school has fewer classes per grade level. This means that your child is more likely to be in the same class as their friends, and will be with the same classmates year after year. This can create a tight, family-like peer group.
Another advantage of a small school is that it's easy to get involved in opportunities behind the classroom. In a large school, opportunities such as getting to read the morning announcements or present at an assembly may be limited to a select few of the oldest students. In a small school, your child is more likely to get a chance.
It's also far less competitive to make it onto sports teams. For example, an elementary school soccer team can field the same number of grade five and six players, regardless of the size of the school. If there are 100 interested students, the kids who get a chance are those who play soccer outside of school. At a school with 20 interested students, nearly everybody can play on the team. While larger schools do have in-school leagues for the kids who don't make the competitive team, there's something to be said for the experience of getting to compete against kids at other schools. Also, the competitive team probably has a volunteer teacher or parent as a coach, while the house-league teams have limited coaching. At a small school, kids who aren't top athletes get a chance to develop their skills.
Lastly, huge schools can be overwhelming! When the bell rings after recess and seven hundred kids have to find their lineups, or when 40 different classes of kids are making their way through the halls to the library or gymnasium, things can get rather chaotic. As a petite teacher, I was sometimes afraid I'd be trampled at a large school - so I can't imagine how a grade one student would feel.
So there you have it! I love my small school and hope my own children get a chance to experience a wonderful school community like the one at the school where I teach.
In this post, I wrote/ranted about whether students should get into the TDSB's specialized schools based on merit vs. a lottery system. I have one more important point to add to this rant - what about the arts schools?
The TDSB has several arts-focused high schools. Similar to the academic specialized programs, kids from marginalized and racialized backgrounds are underrepresented. To combat this, the school board has changed their admissions process from being audition/portfolio based to a random draw, invoking the ire of some parents, students, and school trustees.
One problem that the school board has is that most high schools do not offer high quality arts programs. As a result, teenagers who want to study the arts in a postsecondary program are limited to the specialized arts schools or have to pay for lessons outside of school. This is why I believe that the specialized arts schools should still require auditions and portfolios - this can reserve these schools as a place for students who are truly serious about studying their art form.
But what about the students who don't want to study the arts in college or university, who don't want to pursue a career in the arts? This is why every high school should offer an arts program that meets the needs of these students. A student shouldn't have to trek across the city or prepare for an audition in order to attend a school that allows them to take fairly standard classes in music, art, drama, or dance.
The specialized schools would then be available for the students who want to take specific courses; for example, an arts-focused school might offer credits in animation, photography, and mixed media because they attract enough students to offer these courses, but every high school should offer visual arts courses taught by trained teachers.
Ok, so if arts schools have a rigorous audition process, how is that fair? First of all, if every school offers high quality arts courses, there would be fewer students auditioning. Secondly, we need elementary and middle schools to also offer high quality arts programming. Since I have a background in music, I'm going to use music as my example here.
Very few public elementary schools have the type of music program that would give children the skills to get into a program like Claude Watson. Currently, the students who get into that program need to take private lessons in order to meet Claude Watson's high standards. However, if an elementary school has a trained music teacher who actually teaches the music curriculum properly, the graduates of that elementary school will have the skill set to succeed in an audition for an arts school without needing to pay for private lessons.
Seriously - if you take a look at the music curriculum in Ontario, the standards are pretty impressive. Children in grade six should be able to sight-sing proficiently, for example. But since most schools barely offer music classes, very few children actually get anything beyond a grade one level of music education. The same goes for visual art.
So what do we need?
Strong arts programs at both the elementary and secondary levels in all public schools.
Special sessions to prepare interested middle school students for admission to arts programs. These sessions should be fully funded by the school board (including transportation and any materials they need) and should include coaching by professional arts teachers so that every interested student gets an opportunity to prepare their art portfolio or prepare for their audition.
Funding for musical instruments and art supplies for elementary and middle schools.
Training for teacher candidates (people in teachers' college) and in-service teachers to properly teach the arts.
Yes, it's okay to have auditioned arts schools for the elite arts students - but a good arts education should be available to everybody.
In Toronto, where I live, students and their families get a lot of choice about where to go to high school. Every student has a "home" school, which is a school at which they are guaranteed admission. Students in French immersion or gifted programs can choose a high school that continues their program, or they can go to their in-district English school. And then there are the specialized schools and programs. Students can choose a specialized program in the arts, math & science, leadership, athletics, or International Baccalaureate. Until recently, admission to these programs involved an application that usually included an essay, interview, audition, or portfolio.
One problem was that white, affluent students were over-represented in the specialized programs. School board trustees blamed the admission process for this - and rightfully so. In order to get a spot in a music program at a specialized arts school, a student probably needs to take private lessons. To submit a visual arts portfolio, a student needs art supplies, and these are not always available in the art room at their middle schools. For an academic program that requires an essay or interview, it's certainly an advantage to have parents with a Canadian education to guide them through the process. Admissions exams? A tutor can help. Needless to say, these lessons, materials, and tutoring can cost a lot of money, giving an advantage to students whose families have the means to help them.
The admissions process for the specialized high school programs changed for this school year. Now, interested students apply to a centralized application system; they are selected for programs based on a random draw. When this was announced, parents and students (mostly white and/or affluent ones) were outraged. They were concerned that lottery-based admissions would make it less likely for their children to get into the programs and that the quality of the programs would be watered down by having kids who didn't measure up to the high standards set by the old admissions process. Meanwhile, other prospective students and parents applauded the new process; now, families who couldn't pay to give their kids an advantage finally stood a chance.
So, where do I stand on this? Given my interest in equity in the education system, you'd assume that I support the new admissions process. Surprisingly, I support the old process with its interviews, exams, and auditions, but with a very strong caveat.
The problem, as I see it, isn't that specialized schools require auditions, exams, and interviews to get in. The problem is that regular high schools don't provide the high-quality academic, leadership, and arts programs that students are looking for. I believe that all public high schools should have academic programs with high standards; teenagers shouldn't have to apply to special programs and trek across the city in order to get a math class that challenges them and prepares them for university. Instead of having special schools where the "smart" kids are separated from everyone else, we need high schools that offer these challenging courses. We also need elementary schools that prepare everybody to succeed in high school. Currently, students often have to seek out private tutoring in order to succeed in reading, writing, and math.
So how can the TDSB improve this?
We need smaller class sizes. Currently, grade 4-8 classes can have well over 30 students! The full-day kindergarten classes often have close to 30 students, with one teacher and one early childhood educator, and are often housed in classrooms that are far too small.
We need more educational assistants, special needs assistants, child and youth workers, social workers, and other support staff in our schools to support children who are struggling.
We need resources in our classrooms. When I was growing up, we either had textbooks or workbooks in math class. Many schools have stopped using these, preferring more inquiry-based teaching methods, but haven't provided any materials! Teachers have to spend their own money buying resources, or they spend hours creating them or looking for them online. This means that many elementary school math programs are a weird hodgepodge of whatever the teacher can find.
We need more special education teachers who can withdraw students in small groups to provide remediation in literacy and math.
We need better maintenance for the physical school buildings. Students in Toronto often go to school in classrooms with mouse infestations, mold, and leaking roofs. There are so few caretaking staff that it's nearly impossible for them to keep the schools clean.
We need more budget for basic school supplies. Have you ever tried to teach children to measure angles when there is one protractor for every five students?
We need air conditioning! In September and June, some classrooms can have temperatures over 30 degrees. Teachers often do whatever they can just to have everyone make it through the school day without fainting. Teachers' and students' productivity suffers due to the heat for up to two of the ten months of the school year, causing us to lose a lot of instructional time. This is not conducive to a good education.
We need real professional development to train teachers in evidence-based approaches for teaching literacy and math. When the new math and literacy curricula came out, the training we received was the chance to watch a pre-recorded webinar on our own time. We need every teacher to have paid professional learning opportunities.
We need more robust school nutrition programs. As the cost of groceries goes up, more and more families are food-insecure.
We need more resources for parents and families. So many parents seem so overwhelmed, and more and more kids are coming to school struggling with self-regulation. Schools need to be community hubs that can connect families with organizations that provide parenting courses, winter clothing, counselling, and the other supports that parents need to succeed.
Ok, so if every school has top-notch academic programming, is there still a need for specialized high schools? I'll write more about that in a future post.
