Berkley

La Salette becomes first Catholic school in metro Detroit to switch to multiage education

By Jeremy Selweski
C & G Staff Writer

BERKLEY — Our Lady of La Salette Catholic School and Academy took a big step toward throwing out the rulebook of traditional education this year, and teachers and administrators are convinced that the change will improve student learning across the board.

By implementing multiage education for La Salette students in kindergarten through fifth-grade, Principal Dan Terbrack sought to move beyond the rigid structures of conventional grade levels. He created two groups under the school’s new model — the Searchlights program, which is made up of K-2 students, and the Lighthouse program, which includes students in grades 3-5 — and assigned two teachers to each classroom.

“When I took over last year as principal, the first thing that I did was transform the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grades into an academy in order to better prepare our students for high school,” Terbrack explained. “Then this summer, I was looking into revamping our elementary school education. Next year, I will take a look at our preschool program.”

Terbrack, who also serves as a member of the Berkley City Council, attended La Salette while growing up in the city. Although he values the education that he received as a young student, he wanted to move the school in a more modern direction by embracing new concepts like multiage education.

“The traditional educational model really has no pedagogy behind it,” he said. “Just because students are born within the same 12-month period does not mean that they have the same needs and develop at the same rate. (Multiage education) allows us to tailor our instruction to each student’s individual level, regardless of their age.”

Terbrack emphasized, however, that La Salette is not utilizing split classrooms, in which one teacher receives double the workload by taking on two different grade levels at once. At La Salette, all classes have a maximum ratio of 15 students for every teacher.

“Split classrooms are a quick fix that have negative effects on both the teachers and the students,” Terbrack said. “All the research shows that student learning decreases significantly under split classes, and I certainly wasn’t going to allow that to happen at our school.”

Making the switch to multiage education required that La Salette’s teachers undergo an extensive training program to adapt to the new system. But for Karen Fabian, who has been teaching at the school for 12 years and now helps run its Searchlights program, the transition was surprisingly easy.

“When I taught second grade here, I found that my kids were at all different levels,” she said, “so this was sort of the way I was teaching all along. Now it just has a little more substance to it, so we can group kids together regardless of their age level. We look at each individual child’s abilities and develop activities that help them move beyond the things they are struggling with.”

According to Fabian, one of the other major benefits of multiage education is that it encourages cooperative learning among students. The system is set up so that the younger kids can watch and learn from their older peers, while the older students can master the concepts they have learned by mentoring their younger classmates.

“I’ve already noticed more of a willingness for kids to share and communicate under this new program,” she said. “We’ve found that it’s sort of a family atmosphere where kids are working together and helping each other out. I think that by giving students activities to work on in groups like this, it will really pay off in the long run because they will be better prepared for today’s job market.”

While the choice to implement multiage education at La Salette was Terbrack’s idea, the final decision was not up to him. The principal first had to receive approval from the Archdiocese of Detroit. After he outlined and presented the program to them, the archdiocese awarded the school a $20,000 grant to enroll its teachers in the training program, which began in April and continued all summer long.

Terbrack is confident that the final results will be well worth the archdiocese’s investment. He believes that the multiage program, along with the concurrent switch to a standards-based grading system, could make La Salette a pioneer among Catholic schools in metro Detroit.

“We are the only school in the entire archdiocese that uses full-scale multiage education right now,” Terbrack said. “The archdiocese has been looking into this concept for the past year. Because of the state of Catholic schools these days, with student population declining, they were looking for a way to reinvent themselves. We’re proud to be the first school to say that just because a group of kids are the same age doesn’t mean they all learn the same way.”

For more information on Our Lady of La Salette Catholic School and Academy, call (248) 542-3757 or go to www.lasalette-school.org.

You can reach C & G Staff Writer Jeremy Selweski at jSelweski@candgnews.com or at (586)218-5004.