The Teacher's Attention: Why Our Kids Must and Can Get Smaller Schools and Classes

5 The Four- Piece Relationship Load Solution

T he Sephardic thinker Maimonides grappled with the issue of class size in the twelfth century (Achilles 1999, p. 22). In 1693 John Locke argued that private tutors were preferable to schoolmasters in their moral influence because a tutor “was likely to have only three or four children to supervise, compared with the three or four score of the schoolmaster” (Heywood 2001, p. 160). Relationship load in education is hardly a new topic, yet it continues to be seen as secondary to fakeacademic -crisis concerns. Brevity has been a chief culprit. Because of the obvious value of small classes, for example, we don’t tend to linger on the details, which gives the impression that the issue is of less importance. In an 1899 lecture, John Dewey said as much. The fourth of four keys to his laboratory school was “individual attention”: This is secured by small groupings—eight or ten in a class. . . . It requires but a few words to make this statement about attention to individual powers and needs, and yet the whole of the school’s aims and methods, moral, physical, intellectual, are bound up in it. (1990, p. 169) Let’s give the subject more than a few words. 5 The Four-Piece Relationship Load Solution The Four-Piece Relationship Load Solution / 79 What Each Piece Does Let me briefly describe the effects of each of the four aspects of my conception of relationship load. Class size affects the number and length of day-today individual interactions students can engage in with teachers. As will be described in the next chapter, small class size also increases the positivity and personalization of each interaction. It has the most direct impact on the child’s ability to perceive the availability of adult attention, as well as the teacher’s ability to balance that with the child’s need for autonomy. School size affects the depth of nonclassroom relationships students and educators have at school. The larger the school, the more relationships are required, and thus the more like strangers students and educators will feel and treat each other. Another effect is how closely teachers can coordinate their efforts when members of small rather than large faculties. Miles and Darling-Hammond (1998) emphasize the tendency for teachers to coplan in small schools as one of the greatest benefits. Indeed, they found that by despecializing teachers and programs schools could actually reduce class size and increase coplanning time. Continuity is the time dimension, the length of relationships, which affects how deep they become and how effectively they can work to optimize attachment security. The effects of all three other dimensions are enhanced by increased continuity. Parent, guardian, or family load is a way to consider how many homeschool relationships guardians and teachers have to sustain with one another, as well as how deep and trusting they can become. In large part, family load varies in tandem with the other aspects. The smaller the classes and schools, and the more continuous the teacher-student relationships, the fewer, deeper, and more cooperative family-educator relationships can be. In addition, fullservice schools would offer other services to parents and lighten the load of institutions and personnel with which they need to interact in order to raise their kids. Relationship Load from the Outside In According to Beth Simon and Joyce Epstein, school-home communication as a key factor in school success and climate has been well documented (2001, p. 5). Less acknowledged is how parenting becomes easier with more school connection and social support. Earlier I discussed how the social isolation of parents is one of the factors in the nurturance crisis. A secret ingredient in our perception that parenting was easier or better in the past is that “There was nearly complete ‘overlap’ of home, school, and community influence on children’s learning” by many community adults rather than our current 80 / Chapter 5 trend toward parents performing their duties in isolation (p. 21). Simon and Epstein point to the mutual benefit of school-home connection when they write, These connections are likely to result in “family-like schools” where educators welcome parents and community partners, and treat each student as an individual; and “school-like families,” where parents guide their children to fulfill their roles and responsibilities as students . (p. 4) Home visits appear to be particularly helpful in drawing reluctant or overworked parents into a relationship with the...