Wear Red for Ed

Today several thousand teachers rallied on the Indianapolis Capitol Building in what was termed as “Wear Red for Ed” day.  I had talked to a few of my teacher friends from Milford and knew that one or two of them would be in attendance today.  Their intent was to let legislators know that funds for education needed to be increased as Indiana was listed at 51st for increases in teacher pay since 2002.  No other specific demands were made, but ways to improve education were plentiful.  In the end teachers felt that they had made progress in their plight to made public education better.

I do believe that the teachers and school systems that participated today felt as though they made a difference.  I, however, was more skeptical that any real change would happen.  My experiences with public education had made me a cynic both as a teacher and a parent.  Even so, I did spend some time thinking today about what change I would ask for it I was at the statehouse today.  It wasn’t about a pay raise, although I totally agreed that teaching as a profession was grossly underpaid.  Although there were multiple issues that I had during my tenure in the school system, the one that I thought would solve most problems was class size.  If the state would mandate that classes would be capped at eighteen students, a teacher’s ability to teach curriculum, handle discipline and be a mentor to the students would greatly increase.

I learned this firsthand as the last year I taught I had thirty-two in my math class.  Discipline was ever a problem and it was challenging to help students individually.  This class had so many students that needed my full attention, but it was virtually impossible to spend enough time with each one of them.  My ability to education and support them waned as the year progress.  This didn't surprise me as there are numerous studies that support the idea of smaller class sizes as a mean to improve education.  For some reason, however, our local public education system hadn’t quite bought into the theory.  With all of the curriculum ideas, changes to testing and professional development sessions that I sat in on during my six+ years at Wawasee I never once heard mention of trying to implement change in class size.  I had even brought it up in an administration meeting as Meg’s Pre-Calculus class her sophomore year had thirty-three students without enough seats for each of them.  I was told that the students were smart enough and that they would be fine no matter the size of the high ability classes.  Meg sure appreciated that Bethany did not follow the same philosophy and demonstrated perfectly my suggestion with the majority of her class sizes under fifteen.  Cam also noticed a huge difference.  He felt that in public school that he was "sent to a corner to work quietly on an iPad while other students received more attention." That has never been a complaint since he started at Bethany.  In fact he felt he actually received more interaction with his instructors due to his knowledge of the subject matter and created even stronger bonds with his teachers due to their attentiveness.  I realize that my suggestion would increase a need for more teachers which would in turn call for additional funds.  Even so, I truly believe that that would be money well spent.