Large Corporation or Small Family
Large corporations exist, as an entity separate and distinct from its owners. “The small town grocer gets mercilessly taken out by the new Wal-Mart in town. The small town grocer may have an established customer base and friendly relations with the community, but it simply can’t match the low prices offered by Wal-Mart.” (Leo Sun) I remember growing up in my small town in Nova Scotia where I often went to the grocery store owned and ran by a local family. I clearly remember Mr. Day (the owner) playing a joke on us kids on April fools day. He placed a sign in the candy display window stating, “Tomorrow, all candy 10 for 1¢”. When we rushed to the store early the next morning on April 1st, we were very disappointed when Mr. Day asked us to read the sign. He then said: “tomorrow never comes”. We were mad but also laughing that he got us. Mr. Day did give us free candy that day. I can without hesitation say Wal-Mart or any other large corporation store does not even come close to giving me the feeling I got when I went into “Day’s Grocery Store”. Do we dare take this description of the power of a large corporation over the small family business and apply it to our High School education system?
Last week we interviewed some of the grade 12 students who were part of the original cohort of grade 10’s that started the Energetic Learning Campus (ELC) three years ago. The purpose of these interviews was to help us get a clear picture on how we can better meet student needs for when they leave us. One of these interviews was with a student, who before he came to us in grade 10, was ready to drop out. He has a complicated life and is still struggling to get enough credits to graduate. As we talked in the interview about connecting with teachers at the ELC and the Main campus, the student explained how he made a lot of connections with the ELC staff but did not really make connections with the Main campus staff. Then a very thought provoking answer came from this “high risk potential drop out” student. Here is how he described the difference between the ELC and the Main campus: “Here (Main campus) is like a corporation and there (ELC) is like a family. The ELC wasn’t big, everyone was like genuine and told their story right off the bat. Here is like everybody is keeping everything from you. You go on in grab your books do your sh!t and leave. You don’t talk to any of your teachers – they just tell you what to do and then leave – they don’t have any stories to share.”
This is not singling out one particular High School, this students description applies to most typical large high schools in North America.
The large corporate high school according to the interviewed students becomes a daily grind of the same old thing. Long classes, where you do the same thing over and over. Too much “book work” for every class! We found that all types of students, the ‘A’ student to the struggling student, were expressing the same concerns and comments. One of the key root causes of success in education and learning is the building of a strong relationship with the student. Corporate high schools with 1000 + students place itself at a disadvantage when it comes to building relationships. I am not saying that relationships are not built in these high schools because some great teachers are able to accomplish this as individuals.
The large corporate high schools have too many layers of management. It is divided into departments that form their own silos. The separate silos usually look to see success of the department regardless of how the school fares as a whole. As it can happen in large corporations, large corporate high schools manage to hide “dead wood”. Staff that do not live up to the schools expectations, are not easily singled out in a large high school. Do we need to re-think how the power and size of the “corporate” high school affects our delivery of education to students? I think we need to change the way we structure and schedule our large high schools. We need to bring the “family” aspect of the small cohort into the “corporate” high schools.
At the ELC, we have a campus of 200 students where “everybody knows your name”. It is a wonderful, trusting community that promotes social responsibility. Relationships are built through the many school community events our staff initiates. Our campus philosophy is based on a collaborative team effort. We all believe and live by the old saying, “it takes a village to raise a child”. Smaller schools have fewer layers of management, fewer silos and are more able to create that “family” run school.
The ELC, according to the interviewed students, is a place you want to go to in the morning and a place where you really get to know your teachers. It is a place that students feel they are part of a family. How can we take a place like the ELC and duplicate its community into large corporate high schools?
To change the way we do things in our high schools we need to eliminate the “corporate” values. We need to restructure large high schools to create smaller cohorts or mini schools within the larger school. We need cohorts of teachers and students who are not bound to a schedule or timetable or provincial exam. We don’t want teachers to teach to the test. Only covering all the learning outcomes and not going deep in the learning creates a culture where students know a little bit about everything but nothing about anything. We need to set up spaces that promote a community of trust that helps lead to great student-teacher relationships. If we continue with the large impersonal high school system then we can only expect to create a culture that separates students and teachers. It becomes a culture of “us and them”. If we want the students to want to come to school maybe we should create more small-town grocery stores like “Days Grocery Store” in our school system. Wouldn’t it be nice to see our high school students excited about going to school and actually look forward to learning?
Sheldon Steele
VP ELC