At the elementary level, the idea of looping — keeping a group of students together with the same teacher for more than one year — has taken hold. But the concept is almost unheard of at the secondary level.
One educator who has pioneered the use of looping at the high school level is Jane Berger, who created Battle Creek Central Academy, a school-within-a-school at Battle Creek (Mich.) Central High School.
Photo by Mark Regan
"A year and a half ago when I thought about doing this, I came to an ASCD Annual Conference and I talked with Jim Grant, who's a guru about looping at the elementary level," Berger recalled. Grant told her that looping at the secondary level did not exist in the United States. "He told me that the only place it was being done was in Denmark. Of course, that made me want to do it all the more," she said.
So when Berger created Battle Creek Central Academy, a career academy with block scheduling, she made looping part of the equation. In the 1998-99 school year, 100 sophomores ("our guinea pigs," she called them) were selected to attend the Academy. These students were grouped in one hall along with their five teachers, with whom they had classes for the first three of four blocks each day. These students are now in the second year of the program, Berger explained, taking junior-level core classes with the same teachers.
Academy teachers have mixed feelings about looping, Berger said. On the plus side, looping strengthens teacher-student relationships. Teachers have also found that looping saves instructional time because "you don't lose the two weeks at the beginning of the school year getting the rules going and getting to know the kids," Berger noted.
On the flip side, however, the students got to know each other so well that socializing became rampant. "They just talked way too much," Berger said. The second year, "the teachers came to me the first week of school and said, `Oh, my God, what have we created?'" Academy teachers have even considered taking the students to camp the week before school begins so the students could "get all that social stuff out of the way and get ready for school," she said. Another drawback to looping, Berger said, is that too much togetherness can erode students' tolerance for their classmates' foibles. "You know how it is with your own children, or your husband or wife, where you used to put up with [their quirky behavior], but you don't want to put up with it anymore?" she asked. "Familiarity breeds contempt." Over time, some students simply exhaust their classmates' patience. "I'll hear it from the back of the room," Berger said. "Fred, shut up! Sit down! Every time it's Fred! We're sick of Fred!" Teachers have had to "work past" that problem, she said.
Nevertheless, the strengthened bond among Academy students and teachers has helped produce positive results, Berger said. Compared to other students at the high school, Academy students have had better attendance, fewer suspensions, and a decreased dropout rate. A student survey showed that Academy students had a higher comfort level at school, felt better prepared for the future, were more satisfied with their education, and were more involved in the community.
Perhaps even more telling than these data, however, was an incident that Berger recounted. When a student from the high school had been killed in a high-speed chase with police, many Academy students were grieving. ("Sixty of our 100 kids knew this kid," Berger said.) A counselor who was working with the grieving students came to Berger and said, "Jane, you have to hear this. The kids said, `If we could only have gotten him into the Academy, we think we could have saved him.'"
"That came from the kids," Berger said. "I think we're on to something here."