Well, the semester is officially over. I handed in my grades a couple of hours ago - I was pleased to see that only 4 of 44 English III students failed the course
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Junior year had two classes of fifteen students each, but apparently that was uneconommical so they smushed us all together in one class, and it sucked.
Oh, they do some -ridiculous- things with classroom numbers due to scheduling and lack of money for sufficient faculty and stuff like that. I had a friend who nearly had to teach 40 in an Honors English II class, until he told them that they were either going to split the class or he was going to quit. (They split the class.) The worst I've had was 30 in an English II, and it was a NIGHTMARE for classroom management.
Only normals, though? No honors? I always found my high school honors classes better behaved than the normal ones, regardless of how many students there were. I hope for your sake that's not still the case.
No honors. The class behavior was like that when I was in school, too - it doesn't seem to be that way here, though. Class size has definitely had more of an impact than class type. I found last semester that I could keep 17 standard English students in line much more easily than 26 honors English. This was my first honors class, though, so it may be as easily chalked up to my inexperience or to this particular group as to any general rule. Ask me again in 10 years or so, when I've got a more valid sample.
As an almost-scientist, I appreciate your hesitation to give a firm answer before acquiring an acceptably large sample. I look forward to your answer in several years. =)
Have been enjoying reading your teaching stories (came via your metaquoting). Would have loved to have taught classes that small, although it does sound like you pulled the lucky straw this semester??? Here in my state of Australia classes are capped at 30 for junior classes (years 7-10) and 25 for Senior classes (years 11 and 12), but that means that you pretty much always teach the capped number in every class!
My last year of teaching (06, before i "retired" ;)) i had 35 year 12s across two classes, 32 year 10s (one class, i agreed to overload because they were great kids, got yelled at by the union) and 230ish year 7 and 8's across 8 classes!!! Needless to say, report card time was hell! We taught 6 period days - but taught 45 periods a fortnight with 15 "planning" periods over the same timeframe - so one day you might teach all 6 periods without a break, and the next you may only teach 2 periods with lots of break times.
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Junior year had two classes of fifteen students each, but apparently that was uneconommical so they smushed us all together in one class, and it sucked.
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Here in my state of Australia classes are capped at 30 for junior classes (years 7-10) and 25 for Senior classes (years 11 and 12), but that means that you pretty much always teach the capped number in every class!
My last year of teaching (06, before i "retired" ;)) i had 35 year 12s across two classes, 32 year 10s (one class, i agreed to overload because they were great kids, got yelled at by the union) and 230ish year 7 and 8's across 8 classes!!! Needless to say, report card time was hell!
We taught 6 period days - but taught 45 periods a fortnight with 15 "planning" periods over the same timeframe - so one day you might teach all 6 periods without a break, and the next you may only teach 2 periods with lots of break times.
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