Looping Education Program

Looping is a practice which allows a team of teachers to remain with the same group of students for a period of two or more years.  The concept of looping is not new.  In 1913, the Department of the Interior recommended this practice.

At the heart of successful looping classrooms are the continuity of relationships and the learning environment.  Looping allows teachers and students to get to know one another.  Children learn the expectations of their teachers while the teachers get to know the needs and the strengths of individual students over this two-year period.  The looping classroom is time-efficient.  Built into the looping relationship is extra time; most teachers find that their students start the second year of class as if it were the 174th day of school, needing virtually no period of adjustment before getting into the swing of learning.  Teachers estimate that they gain at least a solid month of instructional time at the beginning of the second year of a looping cycle.  Teachers also have a head start in the second year with their relationships with parents.  Bonds formed in the first year are strengthened during the second year.  By the second year of a two-year classroom, children know what is expected of them.  They know the classroom routines and trust that they’re in a consistent, stable environment.  They’ve developed strong ties with their classmates and respond to positive peer modeling and peer pressure.  Many teachers report that discipline problems drop dramatically in the second year of a multi-year arrangement.  The strong parent-teacher relationship that tends to form in a looping situation lets the child know that the teacher and parents are working together for his or her best interests.

The danger in presenting standardized test scores as a reason to loop is twofold: (1) it puts the emphasis on the wrong thing; and (2) there is a risk of putting a successful program in a bad light if the test scores do not go up.  Many of the important benefits of looping can’t be measured on a standardized test; higher self-esteem, motivation to learn, more socially conscious behavior, and a sense of well-being are life-long benefits that can’t be measured in stanines.  The emphasis should not be on high test scores (even though that might occur), but on creating better lives for the children involved.

Looping is accepted primarily because it is based on one of the most basic human needs: the need to form strong, enduring relationships with others.

Actually, the question is more likely to be, “What if that teacher seems to dislike my child?”  The ultimate solution may be to provide a year-end “opt-out” choice for the parents.  But before this happens, the teacher and school administration should make every effort, for the child’s sake, to resolve the conflict.  Sometimes, a conflict between a student and a teacher is the result of a misunderstanding, which can often be remedied; other times, the student’s learning style may clash with the teacher’s instructional style.

This is a valid concern, not just for the parents of gifted children, but for all parents,  The looping classroom is ideal for providing enrichment activities.  Since the teacher can develop a curriculum plan over a two-year period, she doesn’t have to worry about “stepping on the toes” of the teacher in the next grade, at least in the middle of the two-year span.  She can accelerate students in the first year and extend the teaching horizontally in the second year.  The looping classroom is also conducive to implementing the type of independent learning strategies – learning centers, independent research, and team-based projects – that allow children to seek their own depth and direct their own learning.

Looping is not new;  the U.S. Department of the Interior referred to the benefits of teacher rotation as early as 1913.  The concept is becoming increasingly popular around the United States.  It is not a fad, either.  For almost a century, Waldorf schools have been keeping students together with the same teacher from first through eighth grade.  Looping has also been practiced for many years in Germany, Scandinavia, Japan, and Israel.  Looping has grown out of the natural desire of teachers and parents, who recognize the importance of long-term relationships in children’s lives, to do the best they can for their children.  Cherry View first instituted the looping concept in 1999 with a first to second-grade looping option.  The program has been successfully running consecutively since its inception.

It is true that saying good-bye to close relationships that exist between teacher and child and even among classmates is difficult.  Teachers report that it is difficult to say goodbye to the parents, too.  Even though anxiety about the end of a two-year looping classroom is a valid concern, and separation does seem more stressful compared to a single-grade, single-year classroom, we feel that the solid emotional foundation that two years in a looping classroom provide more than makes up for that.

The evidence from teachers and parents seems to be that children who have the experience of a positive two-year classroom do very well in a single-grade class, and seem to retain the gains made in the looping class.  They fit in well with their new classmates, retain their ability to direct their own learning, are usually very solid academically, have a better attitude toward school, and show sensitivity to others, making them positive role models for their classmates.  The downside seems to be that if students have a looping teacher who gives them the reins in terms of directing their own learning and having ownership in the classroom, it can be a difficult transition to have a teacher who exerts more control over the learning process.  This is more a matter of adapting to different teaching styles than a looping issue.

We feel that, when possible, parents should have a choice in this issue.  Parents have expressed a number of reasons for not wanting their child to loop.  Some parents:

• Only understand a conventional single-year, single-grade classroom.
• May be opposed to their child having a particular teacher for a two-year period.
• Want to take a “wait and see” attitude.

Yes; but for the most part, this has more to do with the child’s reaction to the specific situation than the concept of looping.  Some children:

• Do not fit in with the other classmates.
• Have a learning style incompatible with the teacher’s instructional style.
• Develop a personality conflict with the teacher.

These children may need a fresh start in a new classroom in order to get back on track.  Also, some children simply like change; they look forward to having a new teacher and meeting new friends each year and may feel confined by the looping arrangement.  No one educational structure is right for every child, for this reason, Cherry View has created the looping choice to allow for different needs of students, parents, and teachers.

They do surprisingly well, in most cases.  Teachers have found that new students coming into the second year of a two-year class are very quickly brought up to speed by the veterans of the class, and are made to feel at home.  The level of acceptance engendered by students toward each other in this atmosphere seems to easily extend itself to newcomers.

A good multi-year teacher should:

• Want to teach children for more than one year,
• think developmentally about students,
• have experience teaching different grade levels,
• be able to manage risk,
• be open to change,
• enjoy challenging the status quo,
• have experience in effective classroom instructional and management techniques,
• respect developmental diversity,
• Enjoy collaborating with teaching colleagues,
• have high energy and common sense.

The most important quality of a multi-year teacher should be a love of children.

Most teachers find that by the second year they have solid backing from their parent group; parents are glad to see their children in a strong reliable relationship with the teacher and see themselves as partners with the teacher in doing what’s right for their children.  The teacher and parents end up monitoring the children and planning how to meet the children’s needs together.  Parents of children in a multi-year setting tend to become more actively involved during the second year, donating both time and materials to the classroom.  This parental involvement ends up having a profoundly positive effect on the children.  Educational consultants have noted that children of involved parents:

• do better academically,
• get along better with their parents,
• participate in more activities with their parents,
• have a more positive attitude about school.

As for parents who become more active, they are more likely to:

• feel more confident about school for their children,
• have positive feelings about the school and school personnel,
• be more willing to work for the school,
• be able to help their children to better in school.

In the case of a child who is having difficulties in school, the two-year span of the multi-year class can help calm parents who are concerned about their child’s success and the teacher and parents can work together, calmly, over a longer period to plan instructional strategies and home/school activities that will help get the child on track.