“WORST OF ALL, THERE WERE DAYS WHEN I DIDN’T EVEN GET TO HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH SOME OF MY STUDENTS. THE FOUNDATION OF GOOD TEACHING, IN MY OPINION, HAS ALWAYS BEEN RELATIONSHIPS. HOW WILL MY STUDENTS FEEL VALUED IF I DON’T EVEN GET TO TALK TO THEM, INDIVIDUALLY, AS PEOPLE, AND NOT SIMPLY AS A MEMBER OF THE GIANT UNIT THAT IS MY CLASS?”
WHAT’S DIFFERENT?
A group this large means fewer hands-on learning opportunities. In past years, my students have made sculptures to represent characters in books we’ve read, built models of various types of communities, sewn sock monkeys and created biodiversity dioramas. With a group of 32 students this kind of cre- ativity is simply not possible. Not only is it easier to manage a group this size with seat work, the cost of such projects (and we all know teachers largely buy their own supplies for these) becomes prohibitive. Furthermore,
it is much easier to as-
sess lower-level thinking skills, such as basic comprehension, over creativity, analysis and synthesis, so when it comes to needing to as- sess 32 students across 15 plus subjects and strands, handouts make it easier. It was particularly challenging for the
teacher who provided planning to my class. In 40 minutes a day (which quickly dwindles to about 35 when we factor in transitions), she simply didn’t have time to do anything requiring creativity. As she was teaching them science and writing in that time, that meant that students didn’t get to do many experiments. Yes, the curriculum was taught, but the joy of science for many students is getting to actually figure out how things work, not simply read about them. Another area where I felt the impact of
the class size was in any task that required one-on-one attention. Individualized read- ing assessments and running records take about 15 minutes each, so when I tried to do one a day, it took me six weeks to complete them. While I was doing those, no one else in the class got my attention. Any other one- on-one attention is thinly spread. I’ve had to give my attention primarily to the stu- dents who were struggling to master certain concepts, which means those working at or above level weren’t always getting valuable
14 ETFO VOICE | FALL 2019
conference time with me to find ways to im- prove their work. It’s been a struggle to provide students
with descriptive feedback in a timely way, especially on their writing. I’ve always used feedback portfolios and had students tran- scribe my suggestions into a chart for future reference. I can see the whole year’s feedback at a glance, and there was a marked decrease in both the quality and quantity of feedback I gave, compared to previous years. I started to dread due dates, because I knew it meant clearing my week to work on my marking at home if there was any hope of returning the assignments before the students forgot what they’d been working on. Another difficult part of that year was the
physical and mental gymnastics required to incorporate technology in meaningful ways. Each classroom started the year with 8 mini laptops. I eventually brought my own lap- top from home to increase the computer to student ratio to not even quite one to three. We were not coding. We were not problem solving. We didn’t even have time for basic word processing skills and limited time for research. For the two times that year we did technology-based assignments, I had to bor- row from four other classrooms to complete a set, managing overlapping schedules and of course keeping other classes from having access to technology. Students are lacking basic computer literacy skills. In June, I was still teaching students how to log in. I teach French Immersion and half of
our day is meant to be oral to increase con- fidence in and mastery of the most essential
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