Civilization: the building of a school ecology

Let's conduct an experiment. A thought experiment.  You're going to be on your own in the wild for the foreseeable future.  What is the one skill that you would like to have mastered in order to help you survive?  It can be assumed that you have very modest other skills, even if you don't have much time for their application.

When I pose this question to students, most answer either hunting or fishing, maybe a few suggest gathering, with the common purpose being the acquisition of immediate calories. Then we imagine that a second person is going to join you.  What skill would you like them to have? Again, most think food but shift to long-term production: a farmer. We continue, with skills for the next memebers of our budding society being homebuilder (carpenter), doctor, tailor, tool maker, shepherd, and then quickly gettting into either redundancy of food production or perhaps variety or specificity.  Play this game with yourself, your students, your family, allowing no "wrong" answers. Enjoy the ensuing discussions and see what common patterns emerge.

Through this exercise, students discover what they deem as "essential" to the foundations of society. Typically they also note who is NOT listed: a dancer, a quarterback, a social media celebrity, a political pundit. To be fair, often the roles of singer or storyteller (historian), warrior or police officer, and leader are suggested with some debate, usually between persons 7 and 20.  I then encourage students to think about the pay-scale and voice offered to people who fill these roles as it relatest to the value offered society and ask what questions come to their mind and/or what this tells us about our society.  

Now, however, let's shift to schools.  Imagine that you have 15 students of varying ages and experiences and/or abilities in a range of disciplines. What one "skill" or teaching ability would you want in that situation?  Pause and think before reading on!

Through several discussions about this scenario, the most common answers I've heard are some variation of art or music teacher. The specific answer is not as important as is the observation that it is always some form of immediate "teacher." What is revealed is the obvious truth, as I see it: for school to exist, it is both necessary and sufficient for there to be a student and a teacher.

To continue this thought experiment, we need to up the stakes.  We can't just add teachers, we need to add students as well.  Let's assume that for every adult added, another 15 students (perhapa random number between 10 and 20!) will be added. Similar to the civilization experiment, you may wish to add more subject matter experts or perhaps more age-specialists.  Appreciate the variety of answers that come with discussing this idea with colleagues.

Note who you hire first: a teaching assistant or an administrator or a business office manager?  Keep in mind that when you add a non-teacher, the average number of students in the classroom increases, even if it's slight.  What ratios begin to appear between the various roles of teacher, teaching assistants, administration, and support staff?  As you, being the founder, have influence or what form each of these roles takes, how do you define the role of "administrator?" What salaries do you offer the various positions? 

Without prescribing too much here, I'm willing to bet that you've just created an ecology very different than the one that currently exists, either at your school or in education in general.  I'd bet that you created a school that adds positions of support for teachers and students as opposed to governance over teachers and students.

Enjoy where this takes you!