Do kids have to sit on the floor for us to recognize that we are heading towards rock bottom?
For anyone who says that class size does not matter, I say to them…
Well, this is a civil conversation so I’ll bite my tongue. But come on, in the rush to hoist the notion of “teacher quality” to the top of the educational flagpole, we are allowing ourselves to pretend truthful things are not really truths.
And one truthful thing is that class size does matter. A lot.
Here’s an article from the Los Angeles Times about how some classes at Fairfax High School have 50 students crammed into classrooms built for 30. When kids sit on the floor, on filing cabinets, and the such, is anyone really going to say that “teacher quality” trumps all other factors when it comes to successfully educating students? My second period class this year has 43 kids while I only have 34 desks. (I do have some chairs however and right now, no one is sitting on the floor.) But am I the same teacher I am in my 8th period class where there are only 29 students on the roster?
The answer is, I try to be but no, it saddens me that I am not. I believe I am a better teacher in the class where there are less students.
Why? (Like you have to ask.) Because at a certain point the volume becomes unmanageable to individualize and attend to the unique needs of all students. With 29 it’s hard. With 35 it’s threshold. With 43, it’s approaching ludicrous. I get spread too thin and they get less and less and less of me. And with 50, as they cite in the article mentioned above where kids are sitting on the floor, let’s be honest, those kids are being short-changed.
And so is the teacher. And so is the school. And so is the community. And so is our country. Do kids have to sit on the floor for us to recognize that we are heading towards rock bottom?
It sounds like you are making one [valid] point in an attempt to make a totally different [and not so valid] one. The fact that each and every student in the classroom should have (and needs) a chair to sit on and a desk to work on goes without saying. Your argument that it’s harder to teach 50 kids when 15 of them are without these tools is a valid one, and one that should certainly be addressed by your school’s and/or district’s administration. But to suggest that you cannot be “the same teacher” for a class of this size is a non sequitur at best and an outright fallacy at worst. Say those same 50 kids each had the proper tools to learn and you have excellent classroom management skills. Do you mean to say that you would not be as effective a teacher with them as with a smaller class? Let’s try not to hide behind the popular argument that smaller class size is better for students. Good teaching trumps smaller classes in every case. The transverse argument to the one I made earlier also applies…a bad teacher is no better with a class of 20 than with a class of 40, plain and simple.
Angel, I disagree. I mean the fact is that it’s just not possible to keep up with all the demands over the course of the year once you hit a certain point of student volume. After all, there are only a certain amount of essays you can grade before you are cutting corners simply out of the sheer necessity to sleep… and thus the kids are getting less of you as a teacher because you can’t be as thorough… which therefore means the quality of my ability to be as responsive as I need to be to the students in my class in order to help improve their skills is jeopardized, if not sacrificed outright. To teach a class of 20 gives me the opportunity to dive deeply into each student’s work. To teach a class of 50 does not provide that same opportunity and thus, I am forced to, as mentioned, seek shortcuts to navigate the demands of this job.
And to be as immensely successful as I need to be, taking the “path of least resistance” is not really a best means to this end.
I agree, a poor teacher is not necessarily a better educator with 20 as opposed to 50 kids but a great teacher is less so when they are charged with 50 per class as opposed to 20.
Class sizes do matter and I think the only people who ever say that they don’t are people who have never actually had to step up and teach impacted classrooms — cause I have yet to meet a real teacher in a real school who thinks that HUGE classes hold no sway when it comes to their own ability to perform.