by David Marshak

Most Americans went to elementary schools where every June they said goodbye to their teacher, and every September they had a new teacher. Most went to middle schools or junior highs that followed the same pattern, except now they had four or five teachers to whom they said goodbye.

Most parents send their children to schools, public and private, that follow this same pattern. No matter how much the teacher has learned about the child’s strengths and weaknesses, gifts and struggles, learning style, sense of humor, and emotional well-being and needs; no matter how much the child and teacher have come to value and care about each other; no matter how effective the teacher has become at teaching this child—and how effective the child has become at learning with the guidance and care of this teacher, most schools in the U.S. operate this way.

Do parents act this way in any other part of their parenting lives? Do they find a new pediatrician every autumn? A new dentist? New babysitters? Of course not. But most Americans are so used to the yearly cycle that both parents and educators fail to question it.

“Goodbye every June” harms every child because the quality of relationship between child and teacher is one of the two most important variables in determining how well a child will learn and grow in school. The other key variable is the teacher’s competence and qualities. And it is likely to harm those who are at risk of not doing well in school - children whose families are poor, and children of color who have white teachers.

Children who are from poor families often have parents who did not do well in school and who have ambivalent feelings about school. For them, a teacher who cares deeply about their child and who establishes a bond of trust with her or his parents can make all the difference. And children of color who have white teachers need to know their racial identity does not matter to their teacher except as an element of their identity. They and their parents need to know that the teacher values and respects the child and his or her family.

All of these qualities of relationship take time to develop. Yet despite this the American norm is to toss out all of these profound values every year and start all over again. Why?

History and habit. Here’s the true background story.

When Napoleon Bonaparte, the emperor of France, defeated the Prussian army in 1806, leaders of the Prussian state committed themselves to reforming their school system. The first wide-scale public school system in human history, one of their reforms was age grading—putting all children who were the same chronological age into the same grade. This was 130 years before the birth of developmental psychology, but it seemed efficient to the Prussian leaders to put all children of the same age together and teach them the same things. Because the Prussians wanted to keep their boys from becoming too emotionally involved with teachers, they decided to give children a new teacher every year.

Horace Mann, the most effective American proponent of common schools - what we now call public schools - toured Prussian schools in the early 1840s and advocated for the inclusion of key elements of the Prussian model, including age grading and a new teacher every autumn. Many parents and teachers resisted age grading at that time; particularly in small, rural communities that had multi-age, one room school houses. It took sixty years, but eventually age grading and “goodbye every June” became standard practice.

Personalization of learning

Innovations invented for emotional manipulation 200 years ago, prior to any scientific understanding of human development, are hardly cutting edge educational practices.

Today there are exemplary schools across the nation focused on personalization of learning and growth for children and teens that can only be nurtured when teachers and students work together for two years or longer, allowing teachers to know their students as individuals and care about them deeply.

Some schools create multi-year classrooms through looping, where a teacher keeps her/his class for more than one year, for example, teaching the same group of children for first grade and second grade. In Waldorf schools the teacher loops for eight years, from first grade through eighth grade. Another option is the multiage class which includes children of various ages who would ordinarily be in different grades. For example, an intermediate elementary multiage class might include children from ages 9-12 years, or 4th through 6th grade. In a multiage class, students stay with the same teacher for all three years. Most Montessori schools are multiage.

Parents recognize a key advantage to this approach is personalization of learning. Personalization means that teachers are providing and supporting learning opportunities and challenges for each individual child based upon his or her current capabilities and needs. “The benefit that we have experienced here is the relationships that my daughters have established with their teachers,” says one parent. “Their… teachers know who they are and what their needs are. For my older daughter, her teacher has recognized that she’s a very independent learner. The teacher just has to tell her, ‘This is what I need you to do,’ and she can go and do it. Whereas my other daughter needs a little more direction, a little more guidance. Over the years the teachers have come to understand each of my girls’ personalities, and they adjust their teaching to fit each of them, which is, I think, absolutely amazing.”

In this kind of educational environment, students feel safe and cared for. They feel respected by their teachers, and they respect the school, their teachers, and each other. The students also feel very much “at home” in these schools—the school is “their place.” Another parent notes. “ There are always those kids in middle school who are different, and they often become targets for other kids. But here, because everyone knows each other so well, the kids treat each other better and take care of each other. I haven’t heard of any bullying or anything like that.”

In many of these schools the children organize and manage their own activities to a significant extent because the teachers know the students and can give them more responsibility for themselves, their learning, and their behavior. Because the children/teens have strong relationships with their teachers, they care a great deal about how their teachers view them. A third parents comments, “With four years, you have a relationship between child and teacher. So now you have a child who is responsive to this adult, who then is more likely to become responsible. When he’s asked to do something, he is very eager to please that person because they’ve developed this bond, as opposed to doing something just because they have to do it. This dynamic plays out in academics, so the kids are going to be higher achieving for this reason.”

In these kinds of schools, just about all of the students want to learn. They want to come to school because they like being there. Most parents are involved in a positive way because parents and teachers have more time to get to know each other. “The three year relationship means that you know what to expect from the teachers,” says one parent. “You develop a relationship adult-to-adult. The teachers know me, and they know what to expect and what I can do. And I know them in the same depth. If I bring up an issue, they’ll know it’s important, because they know me well enough…The three year commitment also means that we get this dedication from the parent volunteers and this willingness to be part of the school and do whatever is necessary.”

Personalization of teaching and learning also means much greater efficiency of time use for learning. “With each one of my kids, they’re excited about school at the beginning of the year, but it takes them three months to build the relationship with the teacher so they can really getting down to work. So here, the second year with their teachers … they were into projects so much more quickly.”

One parent summed up her daughter’s experience in a school with three year classes in this way: “It just is such a seamless experience. It feels like a synchronicity with the natural rhythm of life. My children are developing along their continuum. Their teacher follows that continuum intimately and knows them. She or he will have to check back in after the summer to see where they’ve gone, but for the most part they sort of pick up where they’ve left off, with a few adaptations. It’s just lovely.”

Click here to discuss this article in our forums [1].

David Marshak has taught people of all ages, led schools and school districts, and studied education and schooling for several decades, most recently at Seattle University. He is the author of The Common Vision: Parenting and Education for Wholeness. He welcomes your comments and questions at: david.marshak@gmail.com [2]

RESOURCES—books

Teaching and Learning in the Intermediate Multiage Classroom (Paperback) by Alice Leeds and David Marshak. Scarecrow Education

Exploring the Multiage Classroom (Paperback) by Anne A. Bingham [3]. Stenhouse Publishers

A Room With a Different View: First Through Third Graders Build Community and Create Curriculum (Paperback) by Jill Ostrow [4]. Stenhouse Publishers

Looping Q & A : 72 practical Answers to Your Most Pressing Questions (Paperback) by Jim Grant [5]. Crystal Springs Books

On the web: results of a Google search for “multi-year classrooms”

Mabel I. Wilson School - Multiyear Classrooms [6]
The Odyssey School
[7]CATALYST
[8]Multiage Classrooms [9]
Compass School Privacy Statement [10]
Stoneridge Montessori School [11]

In Your Area

There are multiage and looping classrooms—and some schools—all across the United States . You have to look school-by-school to find them in public schools, because most school districts fail to notice how many multi-year classrooms they have and exactly where they are. But you can find them by searching schools’ websites, where they are usually identified.