Porter 1

Jake Porter
ENG 231
Mrs. Stanford
13 October 2016
Small School, Strong Community
Imagine a small close knit community where everyone knows one another and cares for
each other. This is the atmosphere that Tuscarawas Valley High School gives off. Every student
in this school knew each other, and they were all friendly with each other. This also included
teachers, the students were very friendly with the teachers, and the teachers also had a very good
relationship with one another. The teacher had given constant reminders to the students about
stuff that needed turned in, how to turn it in, and what needed done. Everyone has a certain
amount of trust and expectations for the other to fill. The students trust their teacher to teach
them in the right way for them to pass and the teacher expects and trusts the students to pay
attention and gain the knowledge they need. Tusky Valley is a smaller school, but has a rich
community because all students have a familiarity with each other.
Tusky Valley is a smaller school out in one of the country rural areas of Ohio. The
school, being as small as it is, is around four-hundred to five-hundred students in size. The
school is located off of route eight hundred and down a couple of twisty turn side roads,
surrounded by cornfields and lots of farms. Each of the three classes that had been observed had
around twenty to twenty-one kids, which is a very good student to teacher ratio. Since the school
is so small, everyone is familiar with one another, and they grew up together and knowing each
other all their lives. Smaller towns with a low teacher-student ratio usually are closer than bigger

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towns and high teacher-student ratio schools. In a small town, almost everyone knows each
other, and having a strong community helps schooling to be easier for most kids (534 Louis,
Marks).
The teacher that was mainly observed was Mr. Love, a history teacher at Tusky Valley,
but also observed was how he interacted with other teachers that he saw. Mr. Love was a benign
teacher at that, he had communicated frequently with his students about their work that needed
turned in. He had also given his students a decent amount of time to turn in work from the
previous day that they missed. He had instilled a lot of trust in his students allowing them to
leave the classroom to take tests if they had missed the previous day, which is a good base to a
strong community, because in a good community everyone is trustworthy of the others. Inside a
school its very important that everyone participates, for example,Each party in a relationship
maintains an understanding of his or her roles obligations and holds some expectations about the
obligations of the other parties. For a school community to work well, it must achieve agreement
in each role relationship in terms of the understandings held about these personal obligations and
expectations of others (41 Bryk, Schneider). Also, he handed out guided notes, which is easier
for some students to follow along with. However, he gave his students options on whether they
would like to use the guided notes or they could take notes on their own with their own paper.
Communicating is an essential part of doing better, compliments, or feedback also help greatly,
Studies have proven in twenty four nationally selected elementary, middle, and high schools
that social support for achievement has a positive relationship with student success (532 Louis
Marks). The teachers gave their students a lot of support, and many people believe it helps that
they communicate mainly through face-to-face communication rather than through technology.

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They were not completely face-to-face communication only, they also used google classroom,
email, and other technology to communicate.
With all of the communication going on, the smaller, inner communities were also very
strong. The student-to-student and teacher-to-teacher gelled together nicely. All the students got
along and conversed nicely, not many were on their phones, rather they were speaking face to
face with each other. The teachers, instead of calling or emailing to ask another teacher a
question, would walk down the hall to communicate with one another. For example, instead of
eating lunch in his room by himself, Mr. Love eats lunch with another teacher and coach, Mr.
Jarvis, everyday and they talk about school work and football strategies. With this, it shows that
teamwork really does make the dream work when it comes to planning and helping teens
blossom into young adults in this community. Everyone needs to work together to get things
working, Through a combination of supportive structural conditions (such as shared decision
making and time to meet and plan) and human and social resources (such as facilitative
leadership, feedback on performance, and focused professional development), teachers can
coalesce around a shared vision of what counts for high-quality teaching and learning and begin
to take collective responsibility for the students they teach (535 Louis, Marks).
Inner-communities inside of the school are very important to keep the community working. A
key factor in why the community of Tusky Valley is so strong is trust, that everyone will do the
right thing and will help one another, Recent research shows that social trust among teachers,
parents, and school leaders improves much of the routine work of schools (40 Bryk, Schneider).
Teachers trusting their students is a major factor in helping to build a strong community, also

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students trusting their teachers to give them the proper education for the following years. All in
all this is a great community that the people involved are lucky to be apart of.
Tusky Valley, a small school with a strong community is the way it is because everyone
being familiar with each other and the trust built up from that. It seems that smaller schools, five
hundred students and less, almost always have a stronger community than a bigger school,
around five hundred students and up. This is because students at a smaller school seem to know
all of their classmates, while on the other hand, at a larger school you may only know half of the
students in your graduating class. This could lead to them not caring much for one another,
unlike in a smaller school where you grow up and care for everyone in the community. In a
smaller school it is also easier to trust everyone since you know almost everyone and grew up
with them.

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Works Cited
Bryk, Anthony S., and Barbara Schneider. "Trust in Schools: A Core Resource for School
Reform." ASCD 60.6 (2003): 40-45. Google Scholar. Web. 3 Oct. 2016.
Louis, Karen S., and Helen M. Marks. "Does Professional Community Affect the Classroom?
Teachers' Work and Student Experiences in Restructuring." American Journal of
Education 106.4 (1998): 532-75.Google Scholar. Web. 3 Oct. 2016.

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While writing this paper I wanted to focus on how communication in a small school and
small town make the community stronger. I wanted to point out that when students and teachers
communicate with one another face to face rather than through technology that it brings them
closer together. To do this, I researched how smaller towns affect communities and pulled in
some more information from those outside sources. I used two outside sources and pulled a few
pieces of information from both of them. This part of writing the paper was difficult because it
was hard to find what I needed to research. Also, after I found what I needed to search for,
reading the two pieces of literature and finding what needed pulled out to enhance the paper was
quite difficult.
A part of this paper that I think is a little lack-luster is my hook. It was extremely difficult
for me to write, and took me awhile to figure one out. However I believe that I made up for that
with the rest of my paper. Something that could have helped make my paper and the
observations better would be to lengthen the observing time. If the observations would have
possibly been longer and over more than one day, more information could be drawn from the
observations. This could help lead to a much stronger paper and more credible information.