Received as a comment:
As a 1st grade teacher with 28 students, I can empathize with the parents concerns;
however, we have been forced to become managers rather than teachers. The class is too large, there is little room to move around, the students must be kept working at all times in order to maintain control, and most of the work is repetitive and boring for them.
We do our best with what we have to work with. It is a challenge just to get up and go to work every day. This is my second year as a teacher which is long enough for me to see this is not my career of choice. I have creative and artistic talent that I cannot use and I am becoming desensitized to this job. I love working with children and I am sad to see how they are also being neglected by the system. I have just completed my online application for the Peace Corps.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How I empathize with this teacher.
It’s also important to recognize that we’re moving away from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side,” so it would make sense according to the emerging educational philosophy that class size matters less – the teacher is not SUPPOSED to do anything other than manage. (Not that it’s a great thing. Just an observation on unintended consequences of polarized educational philosophy – taking an idea to its extreme, for the idea’s sake rather than the children’s…)
I have always thought that teachers should teach; inspire; guide; encourage; enlighten; set a standard of civility and ethical behavior.
The goal today is to replace teachers with newbies and tablets. Cheaper than professionals.
She just needs more grit and higher expectations:
Arne Duncan @arneduncan 5 Nov
Visited a class in Haiti w 110 7th graders in one room- and you could hear a pin drop when the teacher spoke. pic.twitter.com/2aYuHBORjh
Is this a goal of reformers, I wonder? Frees up a lot of money for 21st century assessments, I would imagine- also, IPads!
Tell her to buy them all an IPad, or just pass around her smartphone.
Teaching staff converted into “managers” and “you could hear a pin drop” —
Chiara Duggan: are we talking about trainers at a dog obedience school? Shepherds herding sheep? Prison guards keeping order at a penal institution? Nurses and security staff at a lock-up facility for the violently mental ill?
Okay, so I’m overreacting, but how long has it been since you’ve heard “education rheephormers” talking about the “joy of learning”?
My bad. You’re right. You can apply that phrase to…
The schools that THEIR OWN CHILDREN attend. For example—
Link: http://www.harpethhall.org [re Michelle Rhee]
Link: http://www.lakesideschool.org [re Bill Gates]
Link: http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu [re Mayor Rahm Emanuel]
Link: http://www.delbarton.org [re Governor Chris Christie]
Thank you for your comments.
😎
@ Teacher. If you love teaching, why not consider teaching at an alternative school? I realize that this will probably require some new training in the new approach but maybe this would be a fit for you. You’d be surprised how many people do a mid-career change to becoming a teacher in an alternative-type school once they have their own children.
Chiara,
That photograph does not show a classroom. That’s a large bunch of kids sitting and standing to hear from the visitor, Duncan.
Funny: this sort of thing happens fairly frequently when one looks into the background of sneering letters like yours. You have a common style, and you share your disrespect for verifiable fact.
Duncan’s boast, “You could hear a pin drop,” is about the fact that they were listening to him. Typical edu-crat on the road.
-dlj.
A school board member in my district repeated the canard about class size does’;t matter as much as a having a high quality teacher.
BTW, does anyone know of a few studies that make that argument, as well as the debunking of said studies? Thanks in advance
Diane’s book, Reign of Error, chapter 25 “Class Size Matters …,” footnotes 7-11, provides many studies on many dimensions of class size.
I think the critical factor with class size is how much autonomy the teacher has to design learning activities that meet the students where they are and that the children don’t have such widely differing levels of capabilities. This latter bit is the responsibility of the school system.
With all of this measuring of students there seems to be no attention paid to how better the standard classroom model works when most of the students are at the median in terms of developmental readiness, skills and behavior/executive function. All anyone seems to be interested in is pushing the median higher, forgetting that no matter where it is outliers pose a problem in the standard classroom approach. It seems to me that larger classes can work when most of the students fall within a small and predictable range of abilities.
In other words, in cloud cuckoo land, where all the children are above average.
Emmy, I teach at a Title I school and I will state unequivocally that class size matters a great deal. Children of poverty have needs that most people cannot grasp. When they come in the door they carry with them hunger, homelessness, a lack of a caring adult in their family, medical problems, emotional problems, proper clothing, and these things never go away. They have little exposure to many things and experiences. They arrive at school and head to breakfast. If they come in late, they go without because there wasn’t anything at home to eat or anyone willing to fix them something.
They are often needy and demand constant adult attention or they are withdrawn and need extra encouragement. They are sick and nobody will come to pick them up. They are hyperactive and in need of medication. They don’t follow directions when they first start school because they have never been told to brush their teeth and get ready to go to bed. They are angry with their lives and each other. I could go on but poverty trumps just about everything in their lives and for them, class size is important.
This idiotic idea must be floating around the world. The Minister of Education in New Zealand last year proposed an across-the-board increase in average class sizes using the exact same claim. She proposed to spend the money thus saved on…professional development for teachers!! What a pity for her she didn’t have the Haitian model at hand to illustrate the point. The public outcry and condemnation was so overwhelming that she dropped the proposal like a hot potato a few weeks later (but is still pursuing charter schools etc).
I agree with Ms. Cartwheel 100%. When my students arrive sick, they stay sick. Nobody can pick them up. I have many, many needy students.
Chiara,
That photograph does not show a classroom. That’s a large bunch of kids sitting and standing to hear from the visitor, Duncan.
Funny: this sort of thing happens fairly frequently when one looks into the background of sneering letters like yours. You have a common style, and you share your disrespect for verifiable fact.
Duncan’s boast, “You could hear a pin drop,” is about the fact that they were listening to him. Typical edu-crat.
-dlj.
I hate to say this, but large class sizes have been around a long time. I taught first grade classes of as many as 32 years ago.
Well Robert, I was in large classes when I was young. We all sat there and did what we were told. Those children aren’t around anymore.
Exactly. I recently looked at my elementary school yearbooks, and was shocked to count 32-34 children in my classes. But then again, I don’t remember classmates going bananas and throwing chairs, computers, etc. when I was in school. I don’t remember having ESOL children in my classes. I don’t remember seeing the principal carry children kicking and screaming from the classroom. I have literally seen these things as a teacher, but not as a child.
When looking through my student’s information cards, I counted exactly two children who came from a two-parent home. All the rest were in single-parent homes. These kids get very little attention at home.It’s a different generation now, a generation with very little self-control raised by the tv and internet instead of mom and dad.
I was in a first-grade class of 40. But there were no ELLs and no children with disabilities. And almost every child lived in a stable two-parent family. Times have changed. We must respond.
All the elite private schools have small class sizes of anywhere from 8 to 15 pupils. That is one of the selling points of the elite private schools, small class size and individual attention. When I started teaching eons ago, I had 38 fourth graders. Lots of time spent on behavior problems, the logistics of moving the class from point A to point B in the school, taking them to the lavatory, taking them to the lunch room, my actual eating time was about 15 or 20 minutes. Marking papers and record keeping was monumental. Thank goodness over the years, conditions did improve in the school system and class sizes did come down, though it was a slow process. Believe me, class size does matter.
Joe,
I went to Upper Canada College (on scholarship) for six years. Every class was 24, 25 or 26 in size.
Just one data point for you…
-dlj.
I left teaching for nursing school. In nursing school, we are not allowed more than 12 students in a clinical group, so we can get the proper education. Imagine that: 12 adults is the max in college, but 30-something children in a classroom is fine. What a world!
My teachers were never expected to put on a dog and pony show. We sat in our neat little rows and did our worksheets. The teacher stood in the front and taught and called on us to answer questions when we raised our hands. The room was generally very quiet. We often traded papers for grading. I lived in a suburb, so our classes were smaller than city schools with about 26-28 students per class. If we didn’t do well, it was on us not the teacher. I can think of a few exceptions to that pattern as I got older and perhaps more aware, but in general, there were fairly conservative standards that we were expected to follow and as a rule we did. There is no question in my mind that much more is expected of teachers now, but my perspective is different. Class size definitely makes a difference in what you can do even if you are the world’s foremost, creative, grouping specialist.
I probably sat across the aisle from you. Your description could be mine.
Did you have to memorize and recite Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees”? Everyone in the class had to recite it in front of the whole class. It was a major accomplishment not to lose it when saying breast and bosom, especially for the boys. I think it was sixth grade.
Not “Trees” but “Paul Revere’s Ride”. Also the states and capitals- Juneau was new and weird to me) Then there were the presidents in chronological order, the Preamble, at least part of the Gettysburg Address etc. I don’t think I could do the presidents now, they’ve added a few in the last 50 years.
This is so disheartening! My son is a very high functioning autistic child in a special ed class in an affluent school. It is very close to what a private school would feel like, with a very involved and wealthy collection of PTA members. We are very thankful for all of the community support…BUT… He is in 5th grade and his class consists of 3rd-5th grade students with varying disabilities. For the past two years my son has had the same, wonderful, nurturing teacher and no more than 10 students in the class. This year we have 18 students with all different types of conditions and disabilities. It is so unfair to our kids and our teacher because there is no individualized attention and so much for our teacher to do through out the day. It is difficult enough having to control all the different personality types, let alone teach them and help them develop. Due to cut backs, special ed has lost classes in other schools within the district so our class size has increase by almost double the amount of students we’ve had in the past. Something has to be done. Not to mention the fact that more and more children are being diagnosed with autism, it just doesn’t fair to all the kids to combine them with children with different learning challenges. Really that idea should be considered for all children, not just special ed. We would probably see an increase of innovative, well equipped and highly educated students if we focused on how to accommodate the individual’s preferred methods of learning. This cookie cutter, pack them into a classroom like sardines and see who survives it, institutional, privatized prison system just isn’t cutting it any longer!
My son’s kindergarten classroom has 34 students in it. The percentage of ELL kids in the school is 85%. I complained to the principal and he told me how much he enjoyed my children, blah, blah. He said that the teacher was so good that it didn’t matter.
So, I went over his head to the Denver School Board, the Superintendent(s), Community outreach, etc. They were quick to get back to me, but the principal sent another letter saying that the excellent teacher made up for it.
They keep trying to put it back on the teacher because it takes the heat off of them for poor planning. The principal is a TFA 3 years in charter school, then on to admin, with a grand total of 6 years in education. Each time I report on this, I emphasize that I really like the teacher, but that things would be really great if there were an appropriate number of students in the class.
I’m up for suggestions on how to best push back on this.
“Back in the day,” when class sizes were very large, and kids sat in neat rows, and one could hear a pin drop, classroom management was maintained due to the fear of punishment within the school and outside of the school. Teachers were allowed to paddle students, and kids who got in trouble at school often got it again at home. Back then, children played outside for hours at a time, and there was limited television. Kids today have an unlimited supply of media-entertainment, short recesses (if at all), and often very little discipline at home or at school. We live in very different times.
Although corporal punishment was not allowed in my schools, there definitely was a “healthy respect” for adult authority. Funny, the only times I remember getting paddled at home were unjust as far as I was concerned. 🙂 I am not nostalgic for those days except for the freedom of heading out the door to play until dinner. There is a book in how in how media-entertainment has changed our culture. There might even be a book in how adults remember their own school days.
I was watching an old “Bozo” TV show from the early 1960s. All of the kids were sitting there in their Sunday bests. They sat there quietly with their hands on their laps. There was an audience of over a 100 children. Oh well, that was before parents warehoused their kids at daycare, wasn’t it? That was when kids actually learned their “mother tongue” from their mother’s own lips. When mothers went to work and abandoned their children (had strangers raise their own children), it was the end of communities, good behavior, neighborhoods, etc. Progress is great, isn’t it?
You’re kidding, right? You equate women working with abandonment.
Working mothers are the ilk of society. They can be blamed for everything. I’ll bet they are teachers. That explains it.
Change “ilk” to “scourge”.
At this time of night, my brain cells have maxed out.
Dads can stay home too, ya know!