D.C. Teacher Firings

I subscribed to the EducationNews.org for one of my RSS feeds and might have found just something to keep me interested for hours. The articles I have seen so far touch on topics that make me want to read more. The first was about D.C. firing teachers for poor performance, D.C. Teacher Firings and the second is in regards to classroom sizes being unmanageable, "Some New Orleans Teachers feel 'helpless' as classroom sizes grow" by Timothy Martinez. In the article, the author interviewed teachers who stated "You cannot in clear conscience cram this many kids in a classroom and make sure their needs are met (Martinez, 2009)." Though I am not able to relate to having 3o kids in a classroom as this teacher had, I can understand based off of conversations I have had with my friends who are teachers in regular education classes. Thinking back to when I was in elementary school, if there were more than 25 in a class, the class was considered too big and a split class might have been formed with 2 different grades being taught in the same room, by the same teacher. Now, a room of 20 to 25 is unheard of and when rooms get that small, schools start thinking about moving those kids into another classroom, making the other classroom larger and having to let that teacher go. I fell victim to the same sort of thing last year as my room, of 10 special needs students, was dropping down to 5 returning students. At that time we had no clue how many students would be coming into my program. So, my school decided to drop my classroom and combine my low functioning special education classroom, called Community Based here in Phoenix, with the Multi-disabilities classroom made up of even lower functioning students. I was lucky and was given another position but I would have lost my job had another not opened in my District. Anyways, the teacher with my previous students and her students is now overwhelmed trying to meet the needs of 15 very different students and still keep sanity. Even in the world of special education, 15 students in the class is 8 students too many to actually have a chance to meet all of their needs.

I fully understand the money issue that is taking over in this country but I also think there is only one way we can immediately improve our education system, and that is to provide students with smaller classrooms so they can be successful and be given the attention that they need. I also think it is important to look at classroom sizes for the happiness of teachers. Schools will start losing great teachers who are over worked, over stressed and do not feel that their needs are being taken into consideration. American schools are going to continue to go downhill if we do not start looking at classroom sizes and teacher happiness before we start implementing longer school years, longer school days and all for less pay.

Reference:
Martinez, Timothy. "Some New Orleans Teachers feel 'helpless' as classroom sizes grow. December 26, 2009. Nola.com. Retrieved on October 23, 2010. Link to Helpless Teachers