My Oh My. These Classes Are Huge.
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September 25, 2009
Filed under News
As the summer came to an end and school began, no one really expected to walk into a classroom early and still not be able to find a seat. This year Mountain View has 1420 students, the majority of them freshman, with an outstanding 395 alone. Due to the large number of students, class sizes have sky-rocketed. Many teachers are saying the average was 28-33 students and is now 38 to 42 students in a single classroom. A lot of teachers are absolutely AMAZED how large these classes are.
Mr. Yeatman, the Foods teacher here at MVHS, teaches a Foods 1 class, with a ridiculous 38 students. The ideal number of students in a foods 1 class should be 28 students, four to each of the seven kitchen stations in his classroom. Right now there are 5, if not more in each of the kitchens. This is a safety hazard having the kitchens jammed back, which leaves Mr. Yeatman worried about his class. There is no way he would be able to choose which kids to boot and which ones to keep, so there is really nothing to do about it.
Teachers like Mr. Vallarga say their class average is now about 40 students compared to the 28 that it was last year. He says “having almost twice the students I had last year is definitely difficult, but not as bad as you’d imagine “it’s just more students for me to pick on” he says as he starts laughing “ no, but really it’s not that hard. Maybe I just got lucky and my classes are easy to teach to a large group..”
The teachers aren’t the only ones who’ve noticed these increased class sizes. Some students had a few words of their own on this topic. Chelsea Gibson, a Senior here at Mtn. View said, “ it makes it really hard to concentrate when you have like 40 kids in your class. There is always something going on around me and it catches my attention, then I end up spacing off.”
So is there anything we can do about these super big class sizes? Or do we just have to suck it up and learn how to work around it? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
By: Hayle Hudson
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