On four-year-old Campbell Carlisle’s first day of junior kindergarten, he strapped on his backpack, boarded the bus and was transported several kilometres away to his new school.
His parents had been told there was no room for him at the elementary school in their home of King City, Ont., so Campbell, now 6, was enrolled in one in a neighbouring town.
But a few weeks into September, his parents found a letter in his backpack, informing them that – good news! – Campbell’s class would be dissolved and he’d be transferred to the school in his own town. But Campbell was less than thrilled.
“My kid went mental. He was so positive about school and then all of a sudden I get this letter,” his mother, Colleen Carlisle, 35, says.
Campbell adored everything about being in school: his teacher, his cubby hole, the daily routine. Now he had to let go of it all.
“I called the school because my kid was bawling. I begged the principal please let us stay in that school,” Ms. Carlisle says.
But nothing could be done. Campbell’s teacher had moved on to another position and all the kids in his class were transferred to the other school and split between two classes. It was the old September classroom shuffle at play.
It’s a practice that’s dreaded by parents, children, teachers and administrators alike. Provincially drafted targets on class sizes, families moving in the summer without informing schools and limited staff all conspire to create classroom chaos midway through September, with teachers moving to other positions and children shifting to new classrooms.
The reset button is hit on budding relationships between teachers and students as well as classroom friendships, sometimes causing major disruptions. In Campbell’s case, he was still with his friends but struggled to adjust to his new environment.
“When you’re four, that’s a big deal. He was crying almost every day until Thanksgiving,” Ms. Carlisle says. Campbell had also grown attached to his new teacher and was disappointed he didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.
Ms. Carlisle says she could have mentally prepared her son if the school had been clear from the start that a switch was a possibility.
For other children, the greater stress of a classroom shuffle is rooted in changing classmates. Some are devastated when they’re separated from friends, and others dread being reunited with bullies.
Maureen Turner, 38, says her stepdaughter Eleanor, 11, was pleased last year when she learned a girl who had tormented her the previous year would not be in her class. It made the first few weeks of Grade 5 enjoyable. But midway through September, a shuffle changed that, and the bully became Eleanor’s new classmate. “It started up again with the picking-on and the teasing,” Ms. Turner says.
Worse, the average number of students per class grew. Eleanor’s class of 24 students swelled to 29. “It does seem like every year they go through that teacher shuffle. You’d think they could figure it all out before the school year starts,” Ms. Turner says.
Kathleen Tilley, a 37-year-old mother of two school-aged children in Toronto, is now mentally prepared for the annual shuffle, but that didn't make it easier for her kids. The first few weeks her daughter Julia was in junior kindergarten, she was taught by five different instructors – a combination of supply teachers and educational assistants.
“Every single day she’d think this was going to be her new teacher,” Ms. Tilley says.
The school finally assigned a permanent teacher to the class. The next year, the same teacher was the class’s senior kindergarten teacher, much to the delight of parents and students. But administrators had lower overall enrolment than anticipated and the beloved teacher was given the boot, replaced by the school’s librarian with little advance notice given to parents.
