Posted by
Waski_the_Squirrel on Friday, August 04, 2006 11:35:01 PM
I didn't post yesterday because I was busy selling my house in another town. I stopped to visit old friends while I was there and it reminded me what a great place it was to live and teach.
The town itself was a town of 500-600 people. It boasted a healthy Main Street (for a town that size), a small hospital, and its own school. While I was there, the school boasted about 200 students K-12. While I was there, I was the entire science department. I taught every single science class for grades 7-12.
It was an idyllic life, sort of like a Norman Rockwell in reality. I won't pretend there were no problems or that I was completely happy there. I will say that a lot of what I experienced there was from an idealized America of the past.
Teaching in a school like that is a lot of work. I taught for 6 periods (out of a total of 7). That was 6 different courses I had to prepare for: setting up labs, correcting, planning, sharing equipment, and writing materials. It is a full day, especially fresh out of college. I'd been taught to be a Physics teacher and suddenly was teaching everything.
This was a good experience. I learned time management. I'd have never survived without those skills. I also gained a wonderful picture of the way students develop, how their skills build, and how the different sciences connect to one another. After a few years, that paid great dividends in my teaching skills.
I very much enjoyed watching my students grow up year after year. I got to know them first as 12-year-old kids and could watch them become young adults. In the process, I got to know their families, taught their brothers and sisters. If I'd stayed long enough I also would have gotten the chance to teach their children.
There are times I've asked myself why I left that world to teach in larger schools. One reason was that I got to teach Physics every year in a larger school. In the small school, I only taught it every other year. Another reason was that these small schools are a dying breed.
The dark side of these schools is a trait of North Dakota. We are running out of kids. Families are smaller and young people have been convinced that to stay in a small town is a mark of failure. They tend not to come back. Even in most of the larger schools, the enrollment is dropping. As it drops, the money dries up and eventually, the school is forced to shut its doors.
That school had once boasted an enrollment of nearly 500 students. Within 10 years, it is projected to have about 100 students. It won't be able to keep its doors open.
My new school (not the one with the nasty union fighting) has about 450 students. By most standards, that's a very small school. To me, it's large. It recently absorbed a school of about 70 students through a process called consolidation. This created a district of nearly 1000 square miles. Of course, like all schools, the enrollment is dropping. In about 10 years, it is projected to have 325 students.
My job is safe at this school. No matter how much the enrollment drops, it covers such an enormous area that it cannot realistically consolidate with a neighbor. In fact, all of the neighbors are a great deal smaller, so they are more likely to come to my school. If trends continue, this will be one of those small schools that I love so much, but without the drawback of having too much future.
The demographic trend is one I want to analyze, but I'm trying to keep my Friday blogs uplifting. The picture I've tried to paint here is of a way of life that still exists. I maintain a website in which I've photographed these schools. Many of these small schools inhabit very old, beautiful buildings. They never had the money to build new. It's a great way of life and I'm glad I had the opportunity to live in it.