Small schools

I prefer small schools. With the exception of ONE YEAR in my career, I have only taught in them. That one year, I was placed in a large school as an ATR. It wasn't a choice.

What's great about small schools is how well you get to know your students and they, you. You really get in sync and teaching them becomes much, much easier as you know how their minds work. Plus, the atmosphere is much less aggressive and more like a family. It's also easier to get things done -- you know what you need to do and there are fewer hoops to jump through.

The one horrible thing about the small schools in which I have worked thus far is, for all the knowledge that you have of the kids you are neither:
1) Given liberty to design a curriculum completely for them as you are bound by state standards which don't always make sense and tests which are capricious in their focus and lackluster in their challenge. It's like being an Olympic coach and having to prepare your athletes for a strange set of unhelpful and bizarre exercises which might cause him/her injuries.
2) Funded sufficiently to take care of the problems of which you are well-aware. You'd think if you were given the opportunity to work this closely with students, you'd be given the means to help them. Brooklyn Comprehensive had a part-time social worker on staff. Do you know how many of our kids needed help with everything to getting housing to being counseled through the anxiety of returning to school at the ripe ages of 18-21?

The "new small schools," I've seen have no more money than we did, and some of them seem to have less. I didn't see any social workers at all at the ones in Tilden and they SHARE a psychologist. Why? Why not give people the ability to make the idea really work? One transfer high school has a van with which it picks up students. This is made possible by funding the city gives to community based organization who then pays for the van. This is because this organization demands large fees to work with students -- so it can do the job right. Not everyone can afford to get to work with this organization. And they're getting overwhelmed.

But, I ask you: why not just give THE SCHOOL the money for the van? What's with the middleman? Cronyism, I think, but I could be wrong.

What I know is that IT IS WRONG for one school to have so much more resources than others and for them all to be judged in the same way. I think it's also against the equal protection clause of Amendment 14. Is this not, "separate, but equal"? Why does no one raise this? Well, maybe they think this Supreme Court wouldn't rule in favor. That's still no reason not to bring the case. Can you imagine if all of the schools had the ability to help the students they know, and in some cases, know so well?