“I have cousins who say I have a weird teacher, but I love her,” said Emily Dasmar of Chicago, who will enter 8th grade at the private Waldorf School of Chicago this fall.
A moment later Emily clarified her relatives’ remarks. It’s not that they think the teacher is weird–it’s the situation. Carol Triggiano has been Emily’s teacher for grades 1 through 7 and will be her 8th-grade teacher, too.
That is the goal at the more than 600 Waldorf schools worldwide, where the practice of “looping”–having pupils and teachers stay together for two or more grades–gets carried to the nth degree.
“I’ve taught at public schools and at private schools. When I was at the other schools, I often felt it was around March when I was really getting to know the kids,” Triggiano said. “I would have to give them up at the end of the school year and start all over with a new group and pass my group on to a new teacher who knew nothing about them.
“With looping, we learn a child’s strengths and weaknesses and how to build on the strengths and challenges. We become almost like a member of the family, because parents look at us almost as being in a supporting parenting role.”
Looping, most often in two-year cycles, is being practiced in schools across the nation, though to what extent no one knows for sure, because the number is in constant flux. Teachers who practice looping, their pupils and the pupils’ parents say it has many advantages over having pupils change teachers every year–provided that several concerns are addressed.
Education researcher, writer and speaker Jim Grant agrees. Grant is co-author of “Looping: 72 Practical Answers to Your Most Pressing Questions” (Crystal Springs Books) and executive director of Staff Development for Educators Inc., a New Hampshire-based firm he founded 25 years ago.
A practice with a history
“There’s a lot of interest in looping these days, though it shows up in education literature as far back as 1913,” Grant said during a phone interview from his office in Peterborough, N.H.
“It goes back to the one-room school, which valued family grouping and staying with a teacher,” Grant said. “It’s about as far back to basics as you can go without going backward, and it makes sense.”
Looping has several benefits, according to Grant, including better attendance, better classroom discipline, fewer children placed in special education programs and better cooperation between teacher and parents.
Grant attributes these benefits to the longer-term commitment that looping requires.
“When teachers and kids and parents are in partnership, attendance is better,” Grant said. “Also, discipline problems just about disappear, because the kids love their teacher and police each other. There’s good peer pressure.”
Because teachers know they will have at least two years with a pupil, they also tend to be more patient with pupils who have problems learning, Grant said.
Triggiano said looping almost forces teachers to look for solutions to problems.
That was one of the goals of the Waldorf Schools when they were started in Germany in 1919 by Rudolph Steiner, said Deborah Kahn, business manager at the Chicago school.
“He felt it would be better for teachers to get to know the children and their strengths and weaknesses,” Kahn said. “They would be seeing tendencies and problems and be able to work with them more effectively.
“He also felt it would be more interesting and challenging for teachers to learn a new curriculum each year.”
In public school settings, most looping programs involve a teacher and group of pupils staying together for two years. And whereas looping is expected at Waldorf schools, it is usually voluntary in public schools.
At Tate Woods Elementary School in Lisle School District 202, Principal Christine Messina recently wrote her doctoral dissertation on looping. She was able to observe teachers and pupils at her school, where five teachers since the 1998-99 school year have looped.
She said looping helps alleviate anxiety among pupils, giving them a sense of stability and security that makes them better pupils and risk-takers.
“They tend to participate more and learn more,” Messina said. “Teachers learn the learning styles of their students. That second year, they hit the ground running, because they know their students so well.”
At Maplewood School in Cary, looping has been done on and off for 13 years, said Principal Kevin O’Connor. Sixty pupils were in three looping classes this year.
The district has surveyed parents of looping pupils and found that they believe their children have a much smoother start in their second year of the looping program.
“It takes a few weeks to get to know new students academically,” O’Connor said. “With looping, there isn’t that unknown. That second year saves six to eight weeks of time. Teachers can jump right in to what they’re doing.”
Still, the practice has not been studied much in education circles.
Said Nina Dorsch, assistant chairman of the department of teaching and learning at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb: “There’s no sacred academic view of looping at this point. There is not a large body of scholarly research on the phenomenon.”
She added that many such classroom initiatives work well when they are voluntary, as with looping. “Because it is an option, people would have the feeling that, yes, it’s successful,” Dorsch said. “What I haven’t seen is research on parents who reject looping. It would be interesting to know why some parents reject it.”
Grant said parents usually have several concerns about looping, including possible personality clashes between their child and the teacher and possibly putting their child in a poor teacher’s class for two years.
Teachers often worry about getting a difficult class or overbearing parents.
Freedom to opt out
Grant said looping programs should allow parents to remove their child if there is a personality clash or if the parents believe the teacher is doing a poor job. Teachers should also have the right to remove pupils, including in instances where the teacher and a parent do not get along.
Julie McFarlin of Cary has encountered no such problems. Three of her four children–Michael, Tommy and Morgan, who recently finished 2nd, 4th and 6th grades, respectively–have been in looping classes at Maplewood School. Her fourth child, Tara, will enter 1st grade this fall. She hopes to place Tara in a looping program.
“Come September of the second year, the teachers know my children’s strengths and weaknesses,” McFarlin said. “The kids are more comfortable because they’re returning with the same group of classmates. It is wonderful for them to already have the peace of knowing their teacher and classmates.”
Denise and Chris McGillicuddy’s son John, 13, will enter 8th grade this fall at Waldorf, where he has looped each year with Triggiano.
“There are a lot of things about staying with one teacher that I think are positive,” Denise McGillicuddy said. “The teachers are invested in the kids. They have a stake in how things turn out. They have to really want to teach, to learn a new curriculum each year. These are extremely dedicated teachers, and it shows. I think it’s been a great experience for my son.”
