Crowded Class

I realize every teacher and every department has their own set of problems within a school. Sometimes, there are issues that you just deal with and go on — isn't that the name of education in our country?

But, one thing I have really been mulling over is class sizes. This year — unless my rosters change tomorrow — I have two classes with 28 students and one with 27. People who aren't educators don't understand how nearly 30 students can be too much in a classroom.

According to the Missouri School Improvement Program, state standards for class sizes have been set as follows:

GRADES	MINIMUM STANDARD	DESIRABLE STANDARD
K-2	25	20
3-4	27	22
5-6	30	25
7-12	33	28

I'm not sure how 28 is considered "desirable standard." I'd like for people who have established these standards to come in and teach listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills for a foreign language class with 28 — or better yet 33 students. Not so easy.

I'm going to do some more studies on the correlation between class size and student performance, and of importance to me, teacher performance. I'll try to post some conclusions later.

For now, however, for the first day of classes with students tomorrow, I'll just deal with it and go on. I don't really have a choice.