Small Town Survival

I finally got moveable type installed. I may at some point try and configure it the way I want it, design and all, but that remains to be seen. If you're still checking, cheers. If not, you won't see this anyway. The goal: to have an easy place to post photos and daily thoughts. Working on both.

Just to let you know: I'm now doing journal stuff here and photo stuff over at scatterjoy.net. I may combine at some point, but so far I think this will work. Thanks, it's good to be back.

There's been a lot on my mind lately. Two things of most importance are updating and class sizes. I've been thinking about updating a lot lately... but I have this issue where I'm not doing a lot besides going to work and putzing around at home. I don't feel comfortable talking about work because it just seems like good practice. Plus I work with kids and their business is their business and not really up for public discussion. Although they do really silly or very clever things and I suppose those bits would be ok to share.

What I can share that is school related and work related is class sizes. I'm thinking about the meeting that we had after school today about next year and class sizes were mentioned. What scares me about that is they are talking about numbers like 40 students to 1 teacher. We see so much about raising testing scores and educating kids as much as they need but when we have that many students there is little chance of helping a handful let alone all of them. There just isn't enough time in any day for that many students to get one on one with a teacher. This also doesn't take into account the amount of time you spend on behavior issues and making sure kids are doing what they are supposed to. Right now I think that freshmen english classes should cap at about 24 students. 30+ is not okay with me.

So, take a moment and think about fourty 14-year-olds in a room with one adult. Now imagine you are that adult. Go one step further and pretend you are going to teach them something that on the worst day they are not interested and as far as they are concerned it's boring and stupid. How happy are you? How much learning will take place?

Exactly.