Looping is the practice by which a teacher follows his or her class into the next school year. As this is more common in elementary schools, I was quite a few years into teaching by the time I experienced it for myself. The IB Diploma Programme is a two-year course for grades 11 and 12, meaning I taught my grade 11 psychology and Theory of Knowledge students, as a cohort, again in grade 12.

This is quite different from the secondary school practices I encountered in the US. In that context, for example, if I teach grades 9 and 11, I might indeed teach a student for the second time in grade 11, but the entire cohort hasn’t moved up together. Teaching a student multiple times is a coincidence of scheduling, rather than a design. That being said, there are a number of pastoral care models in which a homeroom remains together with the same homeroom teacher over a period of years.

When I first heard about looping as part of an elementary school model, I could imagine the positives and negatives. Knowing the students, having ways of working together, and having spent a year establishing routines and expected behaviours makes for a smoother second year together. However, if relationships are rocky, classroom structures haven’t gone as planned, and certain individuals (adults or students!) just don’t click, that could make for a challenging round two.

Moving to Germany, I was introduced to a very different model of education. Student cohorts stay together for all of primary school (grades 1-4), and then again for all of secondary school (grades 5-9/10), after having been mixed up due to significant choice, including finishing level, in their type of secondary school. At my school, groups are mixed up when needed for social reasons, or to balance out the number of students in each cohort. Scheduling in the upper school, where we all teach multiple grade levels, is deliberately planned so that we loop with our students, either as homeroom or subject teachers. I have always followed my grade 9 students into grade 10, and will teach the ones who choose psychology in both grades 11 and 12. Considering I also teach grade 7 and used to teach grade 8, some students and I are beginning our fifth year together.

Obviously, we know each other very well, and that is precisely the point. My students understand my classroom structures and expectations, and they know how to meet them. And because I have seen the students grow up and change, experience good and bad days, and try out new friend groups, I have learned how to work with them however they present. They have had a lot of opportunities to make an impression, and I have years of evidence for what works and what doesn’t, who might need extra support and who needs a challenge, which friends work well together and which need to be separated. And as things change, we change together.

Another aspect of looping that I really enjoy is the relationship it has allowed me to build with the families. We have parent-teacher conferences twice a year, and there are some families who come at every opportunity. Knowing what to expect with these meetings allows me to approach them in a way in which the family will respond, and this helps us create better partnerships.

Naturally, there are also downsides. The students who pushed my buttons in grade 9 kept right on doing so in grade 10, and the families who have an antagonistic relationship with the school have minimal incentive to turn over a new leaf. Sometimes, it can be a real drag knowing that we are in it for two years rather than just one.

Overwhelmingly, though, I have found that this system of looping works. We celebrated our 25th anniversary at school on Friday, and the day culminated in a summer fair in which all members of the community took part. My partner attended, too, and could not stop commenting on the feeling of positivity and joy, the sense of belonging, the ways that the students presented themselves, and the ways that they interacted with me and with each other. The atmosphere was a particularly special one, given the face painting, raffle, and international food offerings, but in no way unusual. This is a school built on relationships, and we really are all in it together.