My own personal insights about education and teaching have often arrived in interesting contexts. Earlier this summer I shared the case of the insight I received in mid-sentence in the middle of a calculus class early in my career. Today’s anecdote wasn’t quite that dramatic personally, but it was probably funnier, at least to an outsider.
It was the early ‘90s. I was between stints at institutions of higher learning, and was working with community education in Branson. For one month, on Saturday mornings, we ran a class called “Fun with Math” for youngsters. We had nine 1st and 2nd graders in the class. It was the first time I’d gotten to work directly with that age level, and it was a fun and instructive experience for me. The kids were eager, curious, and had not yet fallen prey to the seductive ‘one right answer/method’ syndrome, so they were anxious to learn. Their behaviors were refreshing and enlightening.
On the 3rd Saturday it seemed that the nine students and the cloudburst of a thunderstorm arrived at exactly the same moment. I suspect it was the weather, but suddenly it seemed that each youngster had been introduced to caffeine for the first time earlier that morning!
I think the humor that hour would have come from watching me trying to deal with those extra doses of energy and activity. Remember there were only nine students – and one of the youngster’s mothers (who was also a math teacher) was helping me. We maintained both control and a small amount of decorum, perhaps barely, but there were a couple of brief moments when I remembered why I was glad our own two children were almost grown.
The aha-type insight arrived sometime during that hour and continued after the class, and it was sobering. As I thought about the marvelous energy, eagerness, and curiosity of those kids, I also thought about how I was curbing those qualities to maintain some semblance of order and sanity.
And as I pondered, I instantly thought of how our school systems routinely assign at least two (and often three) times as many of these same children to our classroom teachers. And I was sad – for both the teachers and the children.
My younger sister is probably one of the three best kindergarten teachers in the entire St. Louis metropolitan area. We talk often on educational matters and I’ve been in her classroom. I constantly marvel at what she can do with youngsters that I could never pull off at that level. She has often told me – sometimes directly, sometimes in so many words – of the devastating effect that a minor increase in class size can have on what she can accomplish, not to mention the energy she has with which to accomplish it.
We know the realities. Like it or not, class sizes are now more of an economic, rather than educational factor, regardless of schools’ visions. What district could get a bond passed to cut class size in half (and thereby adding teachers and buildings), even if they were passionate about it?
But I’ve seen the educational (and human!) price we’re paying for classes of ‘only 20’, and I can’t help wondering: “What if . . ?”
