It’s an incontrovertible rule of life: every middle schooler will express a desire to go to a different school than the one they are currently in – any school – just as long is it is different. For small, private schools, this can be a worrisome proposition. Enrollment attrition is to be expected at key stages, most prominently advancing from 8th to 9th grade.

Parents who chose your school over all others now feel that their child needs to bear more of the decision for where to go. Bigger schools with more programs make it seem like tuition dollars get more value. There’s the hope that a different pathway will ensure college placement or perhaps scholarship opportunities. I know that my stomach sinks whenever I hear a middle school student confidently proclaim where they’re going elsewhere, which is quickly followed by sideways glances from the other students who are scanning to see if everyone else is getting on that bandwagon.

Administrators worry about their numbers for high school classes. Enrollment impacts so many different pieces of the operational puzzle of a small, private school. High school teachers likewise feel the loss of potential students they would love to pour into. Middle school teachers feel at a loss as to how to manage the mutiny on their hands. Should we shut down all discussion of school altogether? Do we hold an open forum where students get their school choice thoughts off their chest? Lingering in the back of our minds is the fact that the parents are ultimately the ones who will make a sensible decision about where their child goes to school, right? And since they chose to place their child here before, they wouldn’t just pull up stakes now, would they?

This article explores some possible strategies for addressing the problem of middle school attrition and retention, which hopefully will stimulate your own ideas about approaches to be taken to address the middle schooler who wants to go to a different school.

Strategy # 1: Press Your Advantage

Lots of schools spend thousands of dollars to raise their visibility. Lots of schools would love nothing more than to have access to a potential student. The education market is very competitive with lots of great options out there. You may be competing with a state-ranked public school district, a large, well-funded Christian school, a thriving homeschool community and innumerable online options. With all of the options out there, your students and parents are constantly assessing what is the best option for their tuition dollars and their long-term educational goals. But guess where that student is now? In your school. You have the access to them that all the competing schools are dying to have. This means you get to be the best admissions representative they have. Daily contact is an advantage, so press your advantage.

But this does not mean that you start pushing an agenda or give an impassioned sales pitch every day. Having worked with lots of college admissions reps, I’ve learned that the best admissions reps get to know the student, asking questions to find out how the school can meet their needs. This is an excellent strategy when working with middle school students. It might be the first time they’ve ever explored what it is they want out of their education. The grass that looks greener on the other side of the fence is rather attractive, but they need a trusted counselor to help them think through their values and give deep consideration to their options. So ask genuine questions.

“I heard you talking about going to school x. What’s got you thinking about going there?” The key here is to really listen. Are they attracted to impressive athletic programs, expensive science labs or high-tech classrooms? Maybe they have youth group or neighborhood friends who are planning to go there. Do they think that by going there they will have a better chance of going to their top college choice? Listen to what it is they are attracted to and what they are envisioning for themselves. Affirm the positives you hear from them. “Hey, you’re really taking your future seriously, that’s great.” “It sounds like you really like science, and that you’re looking for a place that will challenge you.” Then ask further questions, continuing to build on the student’s interests. “For someone who’s taking his future seriously, could we talk some more about what it might look like to stay here?” “Have you thought about what it would look like to do science here?”

Don’t make it an us-against-them battle. Instead enter into their set of interests and help them to see that our school could be a place that serves their interests. At the end of the day, they might still choose to go elsewhere, but you’ve built a bond of trust with another person centered on caring for their needs. A school versus school comparison will only make the child feel like a pawn in a petty battle.

Strategy #2: Talk to the Parents

As teachers, we interact most often with students who express their desire to go to another school. But the student is not the only decision maker. The parents have a say and may benefit from guidance as they try to decide what high school is best for their child. Building a good parent partnership over time is essential to any retention strategy. Education is fundamentally a service industry and the clientele we are serving is parents. Because we are interacting with students on a daily basis, this is something we too often forget. Therefore, effective communication begins way before questions of where the child will go to high school occur.

The key idea with parents is to build a trust bridge whereby they are willing to discuss their plans with you. This happens by repeatedly expressing your desire for their child to enjoy a happy and satisfied experience at your school. Just as with the student, you need to be an effective listener. The child might experience unhappiness or they might be dissatisfied. Can the parent fill in more of the picture for you? Are there good friendships emerging? Is the academic work challenging for them? How is the homework load? Even if you can’t fully resolve any of the problems that come up, you can effectively demonstrate your care and concern for the child and the family. If you haven’t put in the work of building a trust bridge through consistent communication, it will be difficult to rely on a good parent partnership when it comes to schooling decisions. The better part of being an awesome admissions rep for the parents comes through regular interactions about many other topics well in advance.

In and among these discussions with parents, it is quite natural to raise the question of their high school plans. Don’t wait until the students is in 8th grade to open up discussions about high school plans. Express enthusiasm about seeing the child here at this school through high school. Spell out the benefits you see, which means you need to have thought through the value proposition. Does your school have a great track record of college placements? Do you have a unique model that helps students solidify their faith? Are there aspects of your school that other schools don’t have that would give a parent a sense that their tuition dollars will be well spent here? You might have several different value propositions. If you’ve been effectively listening to the parents, you will have a sense of what’s valuable to them and can cater your program to their needs. Don’t stretch the truth or try to be something you’re not. Simply express your core values and let those stand for themselves. Not everyone will find the same value in them, and that’s okay.

Parents have similar interests to their students. Many will want their child to enjoy the same kinds of experiences they had in high school. In more cases, parents will have fears that are contributing significantly to their decision making. “If I choose the wrong high school for my child, will I ruin their chances of succeeding in college?” Validate both their interests and fears and empathize with them. Knowing that you care goes a long way toward helping the parents with their decision. Providing excellent information, though, is absolutely necessary. They will want to know college acceptance rates, average college entrance exam scores, and extracurriculars available to their child. But excellent information will fall flat if it’s communicated apart from a values-rich context and empathetic care.

Strategy #3: Utilize the Resources Available

So far I’ve talked about the two key relationships we can leverage when attempting to retain middle school students who are trying to decide where to go for high school. Beyond these relationships, there are many resources available to us that we shouldn’t overlook.

First, your current high school students made the decision to be here. They represent a valuable perspective for your middle schoolers to consider. Can you create a forum where the high school students can interact with the middle schoolers? In the past I have had a shadow day where I assign every eighth grader a high school student to shadow. I try to be strategic with those I partner. I find this generates excitement among the eighth graders as they get to see the high schoolers engaging in their work. I have also done a separate session where a group of high school students sit on a panel and answer questions from the eighth graders. I get the ball rolling by interviewing them like a talk-show host. That gives me the opportunity to frame some key ideas, such as our values, the great experiences students have that might not be seen by the rest of the school, and some of the ways students have grown in character, spirituality or life meaning.

Second, tell the story of your alumni. Even if you only have a few alumni, you have a rich storehouse of examples to share. Highlight how they have been shaped by the school’s values. Tell about where they are now, and share how your school has helped them to get there.

Third, parents of high school students and alumni are a great resource to connect your middle school parents to. They’ve walked this path before and can be another voice in their lives. Plus they lack the self-interested perspective you will be perceived to have.

Fourth, create special traditions. Is there some kind of ceremony that initiates the new high school students? Is there a right of passage or a new privilege that high schoolers get? Make these known to the younger students in the school. Help them to imagine what it would be like to be in this high school.

Fifth, show what your high school is all about with newsletters, social media posts, and social events. The values of your high school are often difficult to describe in words and phrases through conversation and correspondence. A picture is worth a thousand words and can open the eyes of many about what makes your school special. Have your camera ready to capture key moments that reflect what you would most want potential students and parents to see.

In the end, the most effective strategy for retention is to be as helpful as you can to your students and parents by keeping communication open, listening effectively and caring empathetically. You can’t keep people from going elsewhere and you can’t force people to stay. But if you’ve been a kind, empathetic companion on their journey, you have left a lasting impression that will remain with them even if they don’t remain at your school. That translates into good will toward your school, which can sometimes mean a student returns after leaving or a parent puts in a good word to a friend.

Retention and attrition are difficult for any school, but have a greater magnitude for small schools. Hopefully some of these thoughts will stimulate your own thinking about effective strategies to help your middle schoolers make the transition to high school. Do you have strategies that have worked? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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John the Baptist as Teacher

John the Baptist lived an austere lifestyle. He adhered to asceticism, wearing garments made of camel hair and restricting his diet to locusts and wild honey (Mark 1:6). John’s ministry lines up with the classic prophets of the Old Testament, as seen in his challenge of the political and religious elite in Jerusalem, but also in the manner of his address. For instance, he says of himself, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,” clearly alluding to Isaiah 40:3 (John 1:23). John the Baptist as a teacher draws upon the way in which discipleship or mentoring was modeled among many of the classic prophets. Martin Hengel notes particularly the relationship between Elijah and Elisha in his book The Charismatic Leader and His Followers. Hengel’s point was that Jesus calling his own disciples mirrored that of the OT prophetic tradition (see in particular pp. 17-18). This model, though, is likewise helpful in understanding John the Baptist, who also had a group of disciples (John 1:35), including Jesus of Nazareth.

John’s role as a teacher of Jesus might seem a bit of a stretch, given that John is never depicted as teaching Jesus. But the evidence that John played a formative role in Jesus’ life is seen in his inclusion at the beginning of all four gospels, right at the conclusion of Jesus formative years. Jesus’ baptism by John points to the familiarity between the two. In Jesus’ baptism at the hands of John there is simultaneously a submission on Jesus’ part to John as well as a recognition by John of Jesus’ superior role and mission. J. Ramsey Michaels bases the discipleship of Jesus to John on the phrase “he who comes after (ὀπίσω) me.” E. P. Sanders concludes after a close study of John 1-3, that Jesus’ mission “while independent of that of the Baptist’s, is similar in nature and near in locale.” The scholarly consensus is that Jesus spent some amount of time as a disciple of John before beginning his own ministry, but this consensus has not gone unchallenged. A recent PhD thesis at Edinburgh proposes that Jesus in all probability did not spend any time as a disciple of John. Max Alpin’s reasoning is essentially based on the fact that “Jesus had great confidence in his beliefs,” meaning “we simply would not expect him to have chosen to submit himself to John’s leadership.” In my estimation, there seems to be no problem with an individual having great confidence in his beliefs submitting to the teaching of a prominent religious figure. I think the prominent role John the Baptist plays at the beginning of all four gospels points to an essential influence John had on Jesus to frame his early ministry. The gospel of John elaborates by hints a closer connection, showing that Jesus chose his own first disciples from among John’s disciples (John 1:25). Seeing Jesus’ early ministry in light of time spent learning from John provides insights into some key moments in the gospels.

John’s message was simple: ““Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). People came from far and near to hear John and some received baptism, while others scoffed. The message is expressed with simplicity, yet is full of meaning. There is the call to listeners to an active response. The imminence of God’s heavenly kingdom evokes an emotional factor eliciting hope or impending doom. When we look at Jesus’ ministry, we see he proclaims the very same message. Matthew records Jesus first message: “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). Now this wasn’t a rote, memorized, dry recitation. Jesus’ proclamation has all of the conviction and passion that John expressed. The point, though, is that we have in this shared message a link between teacher and student. Viewed from the vantage point of models of communication, we can verify that the teacher’s message has been properly decoded and assimilated. John the Baptist, his role as predecessor completed, recedes into the background in the Gospels, perhaps as we would expect in a story centering on Jesus himself.

Jesus as Learner

Jesus as learner is a remarkable reality when we take into account his divine and human natures. Consider that the fullness of God (all knowledge, all power, everywhere present) became incarnate in a helpless baby (no knowledge, vulnerably powerless, physically present in one location). Paul expresses this as making himself “nothing” (Phil. 2:7). This humiliation meant that Jesus had to learn information he had called into existence. The author of all language had to acquire a mother tongue as we did. He learned the trade of carpentry from his father. He devoted himself to learning the very scriptures that he had inspired and that pointed to himself.

I think the incarnation tells us something profound about learning. Jesus entered fully into our human experience, validating something fundamental to our nature: to be human is to be a learner. We can fall prey to the notion that education is temporary, something to finish early in our youth before getting on with “real” life. True, much that has to be learned occurs early in life. Jesus’ training under John the Baptist was limited to a definite span of time followed by Jesus’ own career as a teacher. But Jesus’ learning is not isolated to his formative years. Hebrews 5:8 provides the insight that he learned obedience through his sufferings. Helmut Koester explains that “Jesus was never disobedient to God,” but that Jesus was able to “demonstrate obedience” by encountering difficult situations in his humanity “where the will of God was challenged and obedience was required.” In other words, the entirety of Jesus’ incarnate human experience was a learning experience, captured by the Greek word μανθάνω in Heb. 5:8. All of his life experiences, particularly those which caused him to suffer, were learning experiences. At one level, we can imagine that Jesus divesting himself of divine attributes to become human flesh (Phil. 2:7), was a form of suffering through the new limitations encountered in bodily form. But we can also point to the sufferings chronicled leading up to his crucifixion. The author of Hebrews makes this connection in 9:26, concluding that Jesus’ sufferings culminated in a one-time sacrifice to “put away sin.”  His entire life was a learning experience (just as his entire life is a teaching experience, but that is a topic for another time).

Learning is a profound aspect of human nature. Part of being image bearers is that we are learners. God incarnates himself in Christ into this nature. We must throw off the conception that learning is either for the ignorant or for only a short period of life. If learning is part of our nature, then all of life contains opportunities to learn. Learning doesn’t just occur in the classroom, but also in all possible spaces and throughout all possible ages. There is always something new to learn. This is not a result of the fall, but it is an essential aspect of our nature. In the Garden, prior to the fall, we see learning occur as God instructs the first man to obey the command to not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:16-17). Calvin refers to this event as “a kind of first lesson in obedience.” There is yet another moment of applied learning as God brings all the animals before the first man to be named (Gen. 2:19).

Learning and Teaching as Followers of Jesus

Today we have a tendency to treat education as a means to an end. Learning occurs for a brief spell at the beginning of life so that one can accomplish things later in life. Jesus’ incarnation as a learner, however, shows us that learning is something inherent to us as humans. Therefore, we must be careful not to compartmentalize learning as something to finish so that we can get on with the business of living life. The utility of education cannot be made to overshadow our human longing to learn. Learning is a creative and generative endeavor that reflects our own creation in the image of God. In light of this, we can consider several principles that enlighten our understanding of the nature and goals of education.

First, God’s revelation to humanity occurs through language. We see this first illustrated in Genesis 1 as all of creation is spoken into being by divine expression. The reflection on the incarnation found in the gospel of John expresses Jesus as the Word made flesh (John 1:14). Not only in the fact of God revealing himself to his creation, but also in the means by which he reveals himself, education and learning are essential aspects of our relationship with God. Divine truth is disseminated in language we can comprehend, making it possible for us to learn. This doesn’t mean that it is easy to learn God’s self-disclosure. That is why education must cultivate the intellect. God’s word is not only to be read, but also reflected upon, interpreted and applied. This is not to say that the spirit does not guide understanding of the text (a point which we’ll turn to momentarily), but we can at least say that a trained intellect is predicated upon the manner by which God reveals himself.

Second, through the incarnation God demonstrates his empathetic care for people. Jesus became human in the most vulnerable, helpless and powerless manner possible as a baby. Emptying himself of divine attributes, he enters into human experience and knows our sufferings (Heb. 2:18). Because of this, as the author of Hebrews drives home, Jesus is able to carry out his priestly role, supplicating for humanity because he knows through what he has learned, but also because his perfect life and divine nature gives him access to the throne of God that we ourselves lack apart from him. Empathetic care, then, must be a chief educational goal. Students must learn to care for God (reverence) and for other people (respect). Our daily work in each of our subjects must be imbued with care and devotion. We can cultivate a sense of our own priestly role in the world as caretakers of creation.

Third, Jesus, by entering into human form, entered into human structures of authority. Jesus became a child within a family, submitting himself within the hierarchy of the relationship between parents and children. Jesus at various points also recognized other authority structures, by having people he healed become cleansed by the priests (Luke 17:14), or by rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s (Matt. 22:21). We all live in hierarchies of authority, and Jesus entered into this aspect of our humanity as well. Learning the proper response to authority is an essential aspect of education. Obedience begins with self-discipline, learning to do what we ought in the face of competing desires to do what we want. But we must also learn how to obey teachers, employers, church authorities, government regulations. In order for these hierarchical relationships to work properly, roles of submission and authority have to be recognized. It is certainly the case that power and authority have been abused, and pushing back against authority in such cases can correct wrongs. But the throwing off of authority is not the normal operating procedure, it runs counter to our nature as humans. Jesus himself suffered from power wielded against him, but he still entered into our human structures. Considering who Jesus is, we can further explore this concept of authority. All authority is derived from some higher authority, a progression that eventually leads us to the authority that resides in God himself. Whatever role we think of—judge, president, teacher, parent—has a delegated or deputed authority to carry out whatever the role demands. The incarnation of Jesus Christ places the ultimate authority (God himself) within the hierarchy of authority. I think this points to something good and right about hierarchies of authority.

Fourth, human beings are soulful creatures, part of God’s physical creation, but spiritual just as He is. The temptation for those of us in education is to divide humans into physical, spiritual, emotional and intellectual components. We do damage to our students, though, when cut them apart in this way. We too often appeal to the intellect without consideration of the whole person. A child properly educated grows in all ways, in every part of their being. Caring for the whole being of our students means we help them develop a personal understanding of physical conditioning, of well ordered affections, and of their spiritual nature. By solely teaching to the intellect, we ask the student to sit still, to quiet their emotions, and, yes, our lectures lack spirit. Jesus taking on human flesh shows us our multifaceted nature. Not only do we see intellect, but emotions, physicality, and, of course, spirit.

Conclusion

It is with reverence that we contemplate the mysteries of the incarnation. Too many heresies attempted to sell short Jesus’ nature without fully articulating his divinity or his humanity. This meditation on Jesus as a learner obviously highlights his human nature, but hopefully not at the expense of his full divine nature. I believe the value we gain bears fruit in understanding our own nature as image bearers. We as teachers are created in the image of God, and we teach others created in the image of God. Jesus’ incarnation, his suffering, his death, his resurrection, all are part of the plan to accomplish our redemption. Jesus’ life also provides for us principles that can guide us as educators, giving us a robust educational philosophy.

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