Size matters

Ok, so my last blog wasn't so popular. My actual readership has been laid bare for all to see. How embarrassing. So my mom, a few of my friends, some people who know me from the Yahoo! IM Live contest, and an occasional random person tune in now and then to see what's going on in my "life." And sometimes not even them.

But who needs fame? In my classroom, I'm quite famous. Although lately I've had to adopt Machiavelli's "it is greater to be feared than loved" ideology to keep things moving.

One of my original motivations behind buying prez2012.com was to give some insight into what it's like to be a teacher, so maybe I'll make that the theme of the next few blogs. Maybe...

Consider: I have 50 students. Just imagine having to do anything 50 times. Well, yes, ok, there are a few things I can think of that, when done 50 times, wouldn't be so bad. But imagine grading the same test 50 times, filling out report cards 50 times, scheduling 50 parent-teacher conferences, bugging 50 kids to have their homework done every day, etc. When I make copies, I make 52 (just in case).

Consider the student work I go through for informal assessments. Stored in my classroom there are 50 writer's notebooks, 50 interactive journals, 50 math/science notebooks, 50 writer's workshop folders, and 50 language/word study notebooks, 50 word study folders, and 50 poetry journals.

We have a formal reading assessment. Each kid gets tested twice a year. The average time for each test: about 30 minutes. So that's 50 kids, 30 minutes per test, twice a year. I have to give that reading test 100 times. That's 3,000 minutes of my life giving that test, just this year.

We took a math test on Friday. Grading each test will take a relatively brisk 3 minutes. That's 3 x 50 = 150 minutes or 2 hours and 30 minutes of mind numbing grading, the same thing over and over and over and over again. I also write letters to each class every week. That's 25 letters. Each letter takes about 5 minutes or 5 x 25 =125 minutes or 2 hours and 5 minutes to write those letters. Every week.

So now try and tell me class size doesn't matter.