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Originally Posted by para transit fellow
My general observation from another community: I don't understand why parents work to get their kids into the nearby school then drive their kid each day instead of walking 5 minutes they used as their argument for choosing the school.
In one community we drive a kid in a wheelchair to a school that is two blocks away. Every morning, 3 cars from that same street travel to the same school. (One of those driving parents feels the school's disability parking space nearest the door is unfair to those without a disabled kid...)
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I don't understand why parents insist on walking their kids the 5 minutes. I've had to field a few phone calls from the school panicked about them "concerned about the kids supervision" this year. They're fine. I trust my kids to walk 5 minutes in broad daylight now and again. Sometimes I even let them play outside and they're out of my sight as well. Please don't call child services on me....I practice what I call "letting them experience childhood" and them not needing me hovering over them 24 hours a day!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashartus
If it really was 17 kids in a class then sure there'd be room for a few more, though each additional kid limits some of that one-on-one time with the teacher. My wife teaches grade 3 and has 29 kids in her class, and that isn't out of the ordinary talking to other teachers I know and seeing the classes at both my wife's school and the schools my kids are in. At that number it starts to get pretty unmanageable for the younger kids, particularly when half of them don't speak much English or have special needs.
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I wrote a lengthy post last night about the student/teacher ratio, but deleted it. I am firmly in the smaller class sizes camp because I think that teaching children the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic is best accomplished in a small classroom with lots of individual attention. There are a lot of factors that go into student success, but small class sizes and the individualized learning that goes with them is pretty hard to argue against.