Back to Questions Parents Ask.
Q: How well do the children make the adjustment from a school with fewer than 100 children, to a high school that might have 2000 students?
Barbara: Parents often ask about the human, emotional, and social impacts of leaving a small atmosphere and moving to a bigger one. They ask us, again and again, “How will my child be able to face an atmosphere that is considered more harsh, or at least more impersonal?”
One answer I give, based on the repeated experience of our graduates, is that because they’ve been respected, cared for, appreciated, and loved, they are able to come forward with confidence.
Confidence doesn’t come from the endurance skill of being able to stay alive while being severely criticized. It comes from the opposite. Our children gain the very real confidence that grows from being appreciated as themselves, and guided to be in a group in creative ways. We don’t only foster their individuality, but their skills for being confident in their own self, and being with others in ways that are positive and effective.
The children leave us with many, many skills for presenting themselves to groups of people that they don’t know - how to speak clearly, for example. We can give many examples of the skills they acquire by participating in a huge theatrical production every year, from the time they’re four years old.
By the time they leave us, they’ve been led through many, many success experiences. Achieving success includes, of course, accepting risks and challenges. Over time, very gradually, they learn to be comfortable and secure in an atmosphere of challenge, and of facing the jumping-off place into uncertainty and the unknown, with enough trust to, first of all, actually do it, and have the energy and insight to succeed.
The children learn confidence, and how to support one another in difficult situations. Over time, it becomes a habit of mind, and a habit of being — to receive people they don’t know with curiosity, with an open mind and an open heart, rather than suspicion, wariness, shyness, or competition.
Being in a room with 11 or 12 children at our school, and being on the playground with 60 — it’s a lot of people, and a lot of different personalities. But the most important skill, initially, is to become increasingly aware of one’s self, so that one can learn how to be with others. It’s very hard to learn these skills, if not almost impossible, if you’re in a situation where there are 200 children on the playground, and none of these social aspects of learning are being taught by the teachers.
How do we learn, generally speaking? How do we learn intelligent decision-making? How do we gain an affection for ethical behavior? We learn these things only by starting to be aware that they exist, and discovering them for ourselves. We can then experiment and see, oh, that wasn’t a very wise decision — what should I do now? This process is of deep value for the children, and if they don’t experience it, it’s a great loss to their development of maturity, socially, emotionally, and intellectually.
We find that the children absorb these lessons, because we see them practicing them on their own. And there’s great variety. The “big” lessons, such as developing confidence, showing courage, having resilience, and being able to concentrate for a sustained time, are some of the biggest human possibilities and challenges for us all. They don’t come easily, and they require a unique set of learning experiences for each child.
It’s a privilege that our school is able to work openly with those possibilities. What the children discover, and become, is certainly not only in the teacher’s hands — it’s a much larger picture than school. But we do offer opportunities here, very purposefully, and an environment, very purposefully, that can foster these helpful life skills.
Being small is a tremendous advantage. Of course, we could be small and not be concerned with cultivating children’s skills as human beings. But, yes, it’s wonderful, of course, to be small. Because teachers, in my experience — and I’ve had many public and private school experiences as a teacher — teachers are always trying their best. They simply are. But sometimes the system is difficult. Placing a large number of children in a small room is very challenging, as any parent knows who’s ever given a birthday party. It’s just a lot of energy in one little place. So, yes, it’s definitely important that we’re small, because it allows us to have a level of communication, and an alignment between our philosophy and our actual practice, that is very rare.
Helen: We received a striking testimonial that speaks to this. One of our graduates is now in high school, and he wrote us an unsolicited email expressing how astounded he was by what he termed the lack of awareness among his friends, of their impact on other people. He said, “They banter back and forth, and I can tell when somebody’s feelings are getting hurt, but when I bring it up to them, they haven’t even noticed.”
He said, “This is something you taught me.” What he meant by “you” is the culture of the school, because we are seamless in our commitment to nurturing these kinds of awareness.
Barbara: Having the middle school be an integrated part of our school provides a powerful example for the younger children, because they learn a great deal from seeing how the older ones behave with one another. They also learn from the way the teachers feel, think, and behave. They quickly understand, for example, that there could never be such a thing as my going up to a middle school student and not being received with a warm hello.
If a student is running around or forgets to greet me, I say — “Stop! I just said ‘good morning!’” — and immediately they stop and happily say hello.
The school culture comes from the top down. It begins with the example of the teachers and how we live and behave. Another girl, who graduated and entered Menlo High, returned for a visit and told us how astonished she was that her peers were either afraid of their teachers, or had an attitude that was rather unfriendly or a little suspicious, or simply wouldn’t deal with them at all.
She said she couldn’t imagine why that was, because she was used to thinking of the teachers as people and as friends.
Helen: She told us she went to freshman orientation at Menlo, and the teachers spent a great deal of time and energy reassuring the freshmen that they didn’t have to be afraid of them. She’s sitting there thinking, “Why would any student be afraid of a teacher?” Because we nurture a culture of tremendous respect and affection for one another. We have a very healthy environment.
