“Is That a Problem with a Small School?”

“It was the opposite for me and my classmates. In big schools, there are enough kids to fill out every type or group so you can gravitate toward and interact mostly with kids really similar to you. Everything is already established. At CCA there isn’t that grouping, and you all need to figure out how to get along and get things done together. The result is that (when I went to college) I didn’t just seek my kind of student or people within one set of interests. I knew from CCA that it was up to me to shape my experience. Having success with that at CCA, I took that confidence to a big college and now my life.”

In another conversation with a parent about a bigger school with more program offerings, I was reminded of the difference between joining someone else’s established program and helping to start, build, and lead something new. As an alumnus said to me this fall, “There’s always been the feeling at CCA that you could create whatever the students wanted that year. It wasn’t like working for change in a big system or having everything pre-programmed.”

We had over 100 people at our Open House last weekend. One of the highlights was a panel of students talking about how they have been able to start and lead new initiatives, clubs or programs at CCA. Current and prospective parents came up to me that day to say that is what they value, a school creating an atmosphere where students feel they can rise to the challenge of advocating for an initiative or starting something new, the challenge of stepping up and leading--for yourself and for others.

The last story is really a two-fer: two different people’s stories that speak to one truth about this small school and the misapprehension of a benefit of big schools...

A family told me this week that they were wearing their CCA Seahawk gear when shopping, and a grown woman told them she was an alumna of CCA but hadn’t graduated. She told the CCA student she should not make the mistake she had made, being attracted to a bigger school for the sake of more offerings or a bigger social pool. She said, “It was a mistake. I had taken for granted that the larger school would have the same kind of learning environment. It didn’t. Having more teams or more boys didn’t make up for what I missed in the CCA teacher-student relationship.”

A parent of a student who left CCA and later returned for our Upper School told me a similar story, “Nothing makes me happier as a parent than to hear my child say she realized that the quality of teaching and her classmates’ shared commitment to learning is what made her want to come back. That says a lot about what we should value and look for in a school. It says a lot about something people take for granted.”
--Tom Trigg