Part #2 of a series
1. Two Denver teachers – “that’s just the
way it is” – fall 2021
One teacher I met with currently has 155 students in her 5 classes, plus 25 in her once-a-week advisory class. Another teacher spoke of colleagues with 135, 148, and 155 students. A few of their comments:
1) A new colleague arrived from
teaching in another state. “Before the first day of school, she looked at her
class roster and asked me, ‘We teach 35 students in a class?’
‘Yes we do.’
‘What?’
‘Yes, that’s
just the way it is.’
‘No it’s not.’”
[She said she had never seen class rosters like this in her previous
teaching experience.]
2) “If you want students to be engaged you need to build
relationships with them. To really know a student, it takes a lot of time,
effort, care. If you want to reach out to parents, it takes a lot of time.
“If you think of how many people in your private life that you can know
well and care about … it’s not 175. To
have that kind of relationship with 175 people a day, that’s very hard. I don’t
think anyone can do all that. It’s not
that you’re a bad teacher, it’s that you’re human.”
3) “I am teaching, we’re all teaching, way too many human
beings… We have spoken with our administration, it feels like ad nauseum, about
the class sizes. I don’t see it changing ever. We bring it to the union. We’ve
talked about this every year I’ve been there. I don’t know when it will change.
Often we complain with our co-workers. Then we stop talking and just do the
job... It is what it is.”
2.
“Editor
walks at least a mile in English teacher's shoes”
Rocky
Mountain News, Nov. 18, 1998 (Jeffco)
|
Winter’s
experience teaching writing to 8th
graders reminds us why the National Council of Teachers of English adopted
this policy: “secondary teachers of English should teach a maximum of 100
students per day…” https://ncte.org/statement/why-class-size-matters/ |
“For homework, I
made them write a news story based on
10 facts I’d listed randomly on a sheet of paper.
“I’m up until midnight two nights in a row grading (those) 110 news stories. I mark each ‘proficient,’ ‘partially proficient,’ or ‘excellent,’ and try to put a comment or two on each.
“Here’s where my
eyes are opened. The amount of time it takes me to grade papers is
significant – as in five hours for one little assignment. I have vastly underestimated
the time and energy a teacher must spend outside of class.”
“Collander says she
works 60 to 70 hours a week and you believe her. She says she deals with 150
kids each week, and you know she does…”
|
Throughout, bold is mine. |
3. “Class measure”
By Kevin
Simpson, The Denver Post, May 27, 2012 (Adams 12)
The
number of students per teacher gets less emphasis from some
as
schools struggle to identify what’s most critical for a good
education.
At Mountain Range High School in the Adams 12 district, Brandi Potestio teaches five English classes heavy on writing. Three years ago, she averaged about 25 students per class. That number now hovers around 33. The difference, multiplied by five, comes to roughly another class-and-a-half of pupils based on her former averages. For her, class size isn’t just a factor. It’s the biggest factor — especially in a subject like English that often requires complex student evaluation.
“Grading
is insane,” Potestio said. “It’s always time-consuming, but when you increase
class size, it’s overwhelming. I can see why some teachers don’t assign a lot.
I wish I could (assign less), but it’s not in my DNA.”
The
result can be burnout, if the current trend continues.
“They’ll
lose good teachers,” Potestio said. “If you’re a good teacher, you know that
this is not possible forever, unless you want to have zero life.” [See Retention, p. 4.)
4.
“Smaller
Classes Serve a Larger Purpose”
By Marc Vincenti, Commentary, Education Week, Oct.
25, 2017
(Vincenti taught English
at Henry M. Gunn High School in Palo Alto for 15 years.)
“… I often didn’t have small classes—I
sometimes had upwards of 30 to 35 students at a time. And many of them
needed more attention than I could give. In recent years, clusters of student
suicides in Palo Alto’s two public high schools have rocked our community. A
dozen teenagers have taken their lives since 2009. Many others contemplate it.
The city’s adolescent suicide rate is four to five times the national average.
Gunn is also a high-achieving school in an affluent community, and seniors are
supposed to end up at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT—not gone from this world. In
the midst of sorrow, guilt, and fear, the district has been seeking answers
and solutions to focus on students’ mental health and wellness.
“…As a teacher, I know that 20 students in a classroom feels like a team, 25 feels like an audience, and anything above that begins to feel unmanageable.”
__
|
One response to Vincenti’s Commentary: “People outside of the classroom who argue for large class sizes are intent on providing education on the cheap.” Education Week, 11/15/17 |
5. “Class size is a nuanced problem”
By Jennifer Portillo, Schools for Tomorrow Blog, Feb. 23, 2009 – (Teaching in Denver Public Schools)
“.. I did find myself teaching certain
sections that had over forty students.
“…large sections of ninth and tenth
graders in a high school always led to a higher number of students who
stopped attending school altogether. The transition to high school can be
very difficult. This is particularly true in schools where the majority of
students come from homes where parents or older siblings are not high school graduates,
for students who have significant financial or emotional responsibilities at
home, for students who are undocumented, and for kids who suddenly feel lost –
in other words, for the majority of students who are currently attending DPS
high schools…
“In large classes I had far less time to
concentrate my attentions on the students who seemed to be losing focus, who
began occasionally ditching class – occasional ditching typically leads to
more serious attendance issues, and in just checking in with kids (informal
assessments) of where they were both in class work and in their lives.”
6.
“Less Is More: What Teachers Say About Decreasing Class Size &
Increasing Learning”
By Anne Reynolds, Marlene Reagin, Kenneth
Reinshuttle, American School Board Journal, v188, 30-32, Sept. 2001
“I find that there are many times that I can’t give each student the extra help he or she needs during class time,” said a high school math teacher in our survey, who recalled a recent trigonometry class with 33 students. “It was overcrowded, and there was no way to deal with individual needs… Even with a team teacher to help, it’s hard to meet the needs of our LD [learning-disabled] and ESL [English-as-a-Second-Language] students. Many of them are slipping through the cracks.” (p. 30)
“An elementary ESL teacher in our study described her work in a [low-income] school where teachers ‘were the only teachers for many of the students, perhaps the only person who spoke English to them, perhaps the only person who paid attention to them, perhaps the only person who listened to them read or did math with them…. Many parents worked two jobs to make ends meet and were just too tired or overwhelmed to attend to their children’s needs.’
“All children benefit from smaller
classes and more attention, the teacher said, but impoverished children ‘desperately
need smaller classes. Their parents cannot help them at home and certainly
do not have time to volunteer at school to help the teacher. I don’t know how
to handle this in a way that is politically correct, but when we
begin to reduce class size, we need to realize that it’s more critical in some
places than others.’” (p. 31)
|
Similar points were made in a
2018 survey of 700 Colorado teachers – see Addendum. |
“When we asked separate questions about each task, 90 percent of teachers said 24 was the maximum class size that allowed teachers to ‘get to know students as individuals,’ and 57 percent said 24 was the maximum for allowing teachers to ‘assess student work using multiple-choice, matching, short-answers, or other easily scored measures.’
“Our survey indicated large classes cause many teachers to consider
changing careers.” A fifth-grade teacher stated: “The larger the class gets,
the more I find myself discouraged and frustrated at being unable to meet
individual student needs, and if this combination of increased size and
stronger needs continues, I will leave teaching. It is simply not worth the
exhaustion I feel.” (See Retention, p. 4.)
“As one high school math teacher in our
study said: ‘We didn’t become teachers for the money or the summers off. We became teachers so we could teach and work
with young people. Lower class sizes and increased planning time would make
that an attainable goal.’”
7.
“What
works, what doesn’t: Teachers speak their minds”
By Maisie McAdoo and Rhonda Rosenberg, New York Teacher, March 27, 2014
The UFT survey invited teachers to
rate a slew of education reforms. We asked, on a scale of 1 to 4, how effective
would each be at improving educational outcomes for New York City public school
students?
The hands-down favorite was reducing
class size. Ninety-one percent said it was a highly effective reform and
another 8 percent rated it somewhat effective, for a total of 99 percent of
all respondents saying that smaller classes would lead to more learning for
their pupils.
8. “Colorado’s education paradox:
Preparing our kids for college”
Letter to the Editor – The Denver Post, Jan. 21, 2005
“As a middle-school teacher for the past 10
years, I have rated my success on how many of my students go on to college… Perhaps
the public doesn’t understand how funding affects my ability to prepare my
students for college. I average more than 30 students per class, and more
than 130 per day. How much individual attention do you think each one
receives?”
Ed Epstein
Denver
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Retention – fears for the future
of the profession - 2021
By Joe McQueen, The Pueblo Chieftain, Feb. 23, 2021
A recent report from the Colroado Education Association found nearly 40% of teachers across the state are considering leaving the profession after the 2020-21 academic year.
The
report found the main sources of teacher dissatisfaction are the increasing workload,
current working conditions during the pandemic and low salaries.
“The class-size workload is
overwhelming," Amy Spock (President of the Pueblo County Education
Association) said. "That's been a huge learning curve for teachers this
year from remote learning."
10. “Retaining Great Teachers in a Time of
Turmoil”
From “Principals and Teachers Don’t Always
See Eye to Eye. Can Getting In Sync Reduce Turnover?”
By Denisa
R. Superville, Education Week, May 5, 2021
“Why do teachers teach, and what can
principals and superintendents do to keep them?
“When [teachers were] asked what actions
districts and school leaders can take to keep teachers from leaving, 57% said
raise salaries; 43% said slash administrative burdens, like paperwork and
meetings; and 31% said reduce class sizes.” [When the same question was
asked of school and district leaders, the same response:] “31% named reducing class sizes as important to retention.”
Addendum
- CEA Teacher Survey
“Teacher Voices: Teachers Know What Their Schools and Students Need,” Oct. 29, 2018
(over 700 teachers responded, from over 400 schools in 80 districts)
https://www.coloradoea.org/wp-content/uploads/CEA-My-School-My-Voice-10.18-Final.pdf
Cathy Keller, a Cherry Creek teacher who has had up to 36
students in a World History class, explained, “The bigger my class sizes, the
harder it is to provide individual attention. The harder it is to have time to
grade their written work. [Decreasing class size] is, in my opinion, the
single most important thing we could address to improve educational outcomes, and it’s the thing constantly ignored.”
In the fall of 2018 over 740 Colorado teachers took part in a
survey developed by the National Education Association, My School, My Voice.
The Colorado Education Association’s analysis of the survey made the case—with
the impending vote on Amendment 73 in mind—that the teachers’ concerns gave
additional evidence for support of the ballot initiative.
Because Colorado underfunds public education by over half a billion
dollars per year, the
Colorado Education Association wanted to
ask teachers a simple question: What are the
greatest needs identified by teachers for
schools in Colorado?
Their answers show they know exactly what their students and schools
need: 74% of teachers
in Colorado report that schools need to
reduce class sizes and allow staff time to collaborate
if we want to provide students with the
education they deserve.
CEA collected data from over 700 licensed educators. The needs are
clear.
• 74% of
educators need smaller class sizes.
• 63% of
educators need more time for planning and professional collaboration.
Denver teacher Suzette Montera-Smith [one of those who selected
smaller class size], has taught 36 kindergarteners in one class. “It is
more like crowd control rather than differentiated instruction when there are
more than 18 five-year-olds in a classroom. With larger class sizes, it is
very difficult to meet my students’ needs.”
If we're serious
about every child's future, we must create a learning environment with class
sizes that enable teachers to connect one-on-one with each student.
SMALL CLASS SIZE MATTERS MOST FOR STUDENTS
Teacher Voices survey finds Colorado students benefit most from small
class size; shows why funding increase and Amendment 73 are needed
https://www.coloradoea.org/small-class-size-matters-most-for-students/
Colorado educators
identified ‘class sizes that allow for one-on-one attention’ as the most critical
need for their students.
“If we’re serious about
creating schools our students deserve, we must have class sizes that enable
teachers to connect one-on-one with each student,” said Amie Baca-Oehlert,
president of the Colorado Education Association. “We have a tremendous
opportunity before us with Amendment 73 to increase funding for public
education and address issues such as class size.”
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