something's dreadfully wrong

[psi20]

My classes last year were pretty good classes. The classes had no more than 30 students or so. The parking lots weren't too bad, except on days when everyone got out of school at the same time. Then it was pretty bad.

 

But now, my classes have 40 students or so. The parking lots are scary because they are so full of cars and most people have tight schedules, so they're on a hurry. My junior high school, which was a California Distinguished School 2 years ago when I was back there, is now crowded as heck. The parking is full and the 2-way streets are crowded. People are stalling traffic , turning this illegal way, parking in that illegal spot, holding up traffic, etc. But they can't help it, the school is overcrowded as it is. There was a letter to everyone a couple years back when I was in junior high that several schools were closing down. This is the result. My new math teacher this year says that some classes were cut by the administrators "up there" to save money. It's pretty bad.

 

I see students running across the crosswalk rather than walking across it. If I were in their shoes, I would probably do the same. It's because they sense the same thing I do. The traffic is really bad and congested. I see the drivers of the cars, like 4 feet away from me when our cars are less than 1 inch apart, and their faces show so much anger and stress. Someone trying to get back into their car can't do it if the car door is facing the street because cars are right there.

 

I think there's going to be some pretty bad statistics for car accidents, car injuries, suicides, stress level, blood pressure, heart disease, etc. if this keeps up.

 

It's pretty bad. Is it the same for you? What's the solution?

[badchad]

public transportation. Have parents bring their kids to "Satellite" drop-off stations. Then bus them in. Either that or rework the traffic system (e.g. stoplights etc.).

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

That doesn't solve the crowding.

It's happening at my school. My school is as crowded as heck. The solution? The local government is spending $15 million on a new ELEMENTARY school, not junior high. Plus 117 million dollars for other improvements. No new junior highs.

The worst problem is that our building has no air conditioning. I'm going to leave it before they install a new system, and I'll end up in a high school with air conditioning. But it's a set of 3 high schools with 5000 kids total. These high schools aren't very big. They're full.

Ugh. I hate the school system.

[badchad]

I think a quality teacher can make up for a large amount of students once high school hits. In college, you'll have a single professor lecturing to upwards of almost a thousand kids.

[Glider]

That would be ridiculous.

[Dapthar]

I think a quality teacher can make up for a large amount of students once high school hits. In college, you'll have a single professor lecturing to upwards of almost a thousand kids.

The only way I see this happening is if you count the total number of students a professor lectures to in one semester, and if the professor is covering several different introductory lectures.

 

In my experience, the largest lectures I have attended had a maximum of 300 students, and those were introductory classes, like first year Physics, Computer Science, and EE courses. After the first year, the lecture sizes drastically drop, and by the time one gets to their final (undergraduate) year, about 30 students is the most one will see in a class.

[badchad]

The only way I see this happening is if you count the total number of students a professor lectures to in one semester' date=' and if the professor is covering several different introductory lectures.

 

In my experience, the largest lectures I have attended had a maximum of 300 students, and those were introductory classes, like first year Physics, Computer Science, and EE courses. After the first year, the lecture sizes drastically drop, and by the time one gets to their final ([i']undergraduate[/i]) year, about 30 students is the most one will see in a class.

 

Agreed. My intro to psych. class was 350-400, and I went to a very small school (about 8,000). A buddy of mine went to Penn State and had over 800 in intro to bio. My point was that I still learned a lot from my intro classes, so it's possible for one professor/teacher to educate a large amount of people. For argument's sake, after you get over 75-100 students there isn't any personal interaction between professor and student, so 100 students isn't much different from 1,000.

 

Yes, in my later years of undergrad the classes were much smaller. Even in higher level education, there is very little, (if any) one-on-one student professor interaction however. In my graduate classes we'd have a single professor teach one lecture then leave.

 

I guess my point is that teacher pupil interaction (and the quality of teacher) is most important in the youngest years (K-8th grade). A potential solution is to shuffle the balance of teachers, and have class sizes remain small until high schoolish age, where I feel a teacher could handle a large class.

[psi20]

But the problems in my classes is there isn't enough seats for everyone. Actually now, the district is going to take kids out of certain classes, in my case honors chemistry, and putting them into regular chemistry or physics or something if they don't voluntarily change their class schedules. Secondly, if there isn't enough students in the honors physics, then the class will be gone.

 

So that's tough right there. I'm going to voluntarily change to the honors physics one, but I don't even know if that class is going to still be there in a week.

[DeoxyriboNucleicAcid]

Your district must have cut the budget down. That can be a b*tch. It almost happened in my HS, but luckily it did not. Unfortunately, AP/ honors classes are not required for schools to offer by most states, so they can be easily droped because of money matter and/ or low acceptance rates/ class sizes. I suppose you don't have too many electives available either.

Well, good luck next year.