Space

Let’s look at childcare space. The Garden School can enroll 150 children and still be within the state’s codes for childcare. That space allotment is 20 square feet of space for each child as dictated by an elementary school standard. That’s 4x5 feet. That means we could legitimately cordon off our play carpet – circle time – and keep 15 kids there for the entire day.

Day cares are a little more spacious. The allotted space for childcare is 35 square feet per child. That’s the size of a king sized bed minus one corner. It’s an image most people are familiar with. So cordon off that carpet again and reduce the number to 9.

Now mentally charge the Garden School with this allotment: In the main room plant 100 children there. Put another 20 in Edith’s room and 25 in Rachel’s and 10 in the pet room and now squeeze five more onto the absentee list. What do you think? Other places do it.

Now change from elementary school to day care and reduce the numbers to 60 in the main room, 15 in Edith’s and 20 in Rachel’s and 5 in the pet room.

The Garden School’s motto is to take a child from wherever he is as far as he can go. That means we need to “know” every child. How can you know 150 children well? You can't.

The truth of the matter is our best number is about 30-35 children. We do our best work with 30 to 35 children. We’ve had as many as 55 in the plant, and it’s just too hard. There is too much toy replacement, too much dirt to sweep, too much time in the kitchen to prepare twice the amount of food, and then too much time cleaning up. The animals and other projects like the plants, and the repair work are neglected with too many children.

Edith and I come in on weekends to feed the animals and clean, and it’s just overwhelming. With 55 children, we spent all day Saturday and half a day Sunday repairing the damage from the week before.

When there is an art project with too many kids, instead of taking 30 minutes to teach, to plan, to do, and then to clean up, it has to be done in shifts, and the work becomes work and not pleasure. It takes an hour and it becomes a race to the finish line, and some of the kids just get railroaded into “quick, do this, do that, fine, you’re done.” And that’s not what art is about. Art is about expression, and you can’t do that on the fly.

With 30 kids, there is one adult for every 5 children when the whole faculty is there – for field trips. That’s an incredible ratio considering the school aged ratio is 1 adult to 20 children. During the day, our faculty is 5 adults in the morning and 4 in the afternoon.

In the morning, children are divided according to abilities and interests. Three teachers teach while the other two attend school chores. This is probably the highest ratio during the day. In the afternoon, I usually take the whole group for French, music while the other teachers stand by. At that point, we get a drink and the whole school does Literature, Bible Stories, Science, or History/Geography.

By team teaching, we can give our teachers a break to attend to personal matters, i.e. the toilet, a phone call, or more importantly, a few minutes to talk to another teacher about things that matter to us. Often, parents will hear us discuss art and literature, and other interests like philosophy and theology or a personal project like a painting, a novel or creating a nature center at home.

The question is still space, however. Do we have room to do what we do? The answer is yes if it is working and the children are learning and they are. The next question is would we like more space? You bet. I’d love to buy that wing of ground or have it donated which means the right call to the right person just outside the back fence and build two more classrooms side by side the two we have. I’d make the pet room a hallway with a door to each classroom, and put a pet area in each classroom and buy a chinchilla. Maybe a goat! The wheels are turning nicely now.