Small Classrooms,
Small Schools,
Big Results
Text: David Mullen
S engaged learning community.

pace to breathe... this is
what small classes, and
especially small schools,
offer students as they
move into young adulthood. Indeed,
as adults we often work in smaller
communities: families, workgroups,
sports teams, and other venues.

Small schools and small classes offer
students the crucial opportunity
to grow socially as well as
intellectually, with breathing room
for the individual student within an
In a small classroom, every voice is
important and every voice is heard.

There are no back rows.

In large classrooms teachers must,
by necessity, teach subjects rather
than students. Teaching a class of
30 students each day, a teacher
simply doesn’t have time to get to
know every student. The stars and
the strugglers may get attention,
but that can leave many students
with little sense of engagement. And
while in a classroom of one there
is a great deal of attention to the
student, there is little in the way of
learning about building community
and playing well with others. There
can be a balance however, between
a large class and a class of one.

Opportunities to learn socially
are crucial, and in small classes
students don’t get lost in a whirl of
competition, or get isolated by being
the only “log in the fire.” In this
middle space, are the small schools.

“What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.”
— “From Fire” by Judy Brown
14 January 2018 washingtonFAMILY.com



Students seek small schools to get
away from the tightly packed logs of
competition and fast-paced curricula
so that the fire of their learning
and imagination can find space
to breathe. Others look for small
classes having found that in being in
a 1:1 or tutoring situation, they are
the only log, with little opportunity
to grow into maturity within the
breathing space offered by engaging
with a learning community.

Along with a sense of community, in
a small classroom there is a sense of
accountability... no slipping through
the cracks when the work isn’t done
or the topic misunderstood. In a
small classroom the teacher has the
freedom to take time for a moment
of mindfulness, or to go on a tangent
connecting current immigration
policy with that of the 1880’s. A
student’s inquiry can lead to a deep
“space between the logs,” which
dive into a subject, without worries
is where so much of adulthood is
about meeting arbitrary testing
learned and ultimately lived.

guidelines. A teacher has the time
to work with individual students
who have difficulty understanding
a topic.

David Mullen has been Head of School
of The Nora School since 1991. The
Nora School, an intentionally small
college preparatory high school located
In short, small schools and small
in Silver Spring, recently celebrated its
classrooms can give attention to the
50th Anniversary.

washingtonFAMILY.com January 2018 15