Anyone who says that size does not matter is not a classroom teacher. The notion is pure and total BS!!

And when I hear stories of how middle school class sizes are now averaging 40 to 1 in San Francisco, I recognize in myself a raging anger at the indignity being suffered by a generation of kids.

With teachers serving as the punching bag all along the way.

It’s a humiliating affront to parents, educators and kids that middle schools in one of the planet’s wealthiest nations have ballooned to this level.

Ain’t no way to try and defend it, either. Instruction suffers when class sizes elevate to these levels. I know. I’ve been there.

You give out a simple assignment and you get a phone book worth of papers to grade.

You try to take a moment to work one-on-one with a kid and 15 other kids don’t get the same opportunity even though they need it as well.

Taking attendance consumes a quantifiable percentage of instructional time. Keeping up with kids who missed class becomes labyrinthian. Teaching the word labyrinthian becomes Herculean because the kids do not have the mythological background knowledge to understand the reference to either a labyrinth or to Hercules beyond a mere cartoon (as opposed to a Greek hero with actual labors).

Additionally, we all know that the L.A. Times is “outing” educators right now (in an effort to drive controversy and thus readership and thus ad sales to their sinking enterprise). But will class sizes show up.

Does a teacher with 22 students not have an instructional leg up on a teacher who has 39 in her class? Will any of the value-added rankings mitigate for that? Anyone who says it doesn’t matter has never stood in front of a sea of public school kids and tried to move their academic mountain.

BTW, I know all the tricks. I had to learn them. I learned how to cut corners on grading papers so that I didn’t need to get hauled off to the loony bin. I learned how to assign things like Daily Oral Language activities at the beginning of class so that I could take attendance while still making sure my students were being productive. There are scores of “little secrets” one learns.

Because when you teach in impacted classrooms, sometimes you are simply trying to survive and the idea of prospering feels Pollyannishly out of reach!

It’s just such a farce what is going on and though I don’t think I would homeschool my own kids, I do see a growing reason why it’s a very real, very legit consideration. Being a faceless number in an over-taxed teacher’s class is no recipe for scholastic excellence!!

But yet, we’ll still pay for the bubble tests. Millions and millions of dollars for them, flawed as they egregiously are.

The blood boils when I think of this stuff. Truly, we have reason for shame.

Being at NCTE once again proves the point that mandatory conference attendance and professional development needs to become a prime focus if we are really going to elevate the performance of our schools.

I can’t even begin to cover the amount of dynamic, sound, invigorating and readily applicable-to-my-own-classroom-ideas that I encountered today.

From big things like learning how to better thematically connect disparate texts to one another in student friendly and intellectually smart ways to being re-energized about my choice of career paths (look, as I have said before a thousand times, teachers in America today are suffering from a crisis of morale — being the whipping boys/girls of the media as if we are the prime cause for all that ails our schools is not only unfair and inaccurate, but untrue and dispiriting as well) to encountering so many good teachers with so many good ideas in such a keenly organized venue… well, like I said, conf attendance should be mandatory in this country… instead of something so many teachers have to either beg, borrow and steal to attend – or simply miss – due to the lack of foresight by admins who rule the bean-counting roost.

I mean if we know that great teaching is one of the most effective ways to elevate student classroom performance and this entire conference is dedicated to sharing best practices (i.e. NCTE is filled with great teaching; suck as much of it up as you can while you are here because there is more than you could ever drink and only the unmotivated ever leaves thirsty) then why don’t more teachers get to attend?

Districts want better performance but they don’t want to pay for the training that will empower their teachers to deliver it.

It’s a silly cycle that we need to figure out how to break. When I look around my English Department, I realize there is not a person on staff that would not benefit immensely from being here with me… and it’s not because they are weak teachers. It’s because schools have changed, kids have changed (uh, hello — liked digitally wired and socially networked in a manner that didn’t exist as little as 5 years ago) and the world has changed.

Conferences are how you keep up.

NCTE, bay-bee!! I know I am privileged to be here — and more should enjoy the same.