Take My Breath Class Away

As any teacher will tell you, one of the most exciting (or frightening as the case may be) things about a new school year is getting to know your new students.

How many students will I have? Will there be more boys or more girls? Will there be more pint-sized terrors or potential "teacher's pets"?

After a few days of school this year I wrote about my new class with fingers crossed. Maybe, just maybe, my third, third grade class could be the charm.

Now that we are settle a bit with 30 days in I still see a world of difference. I have a good mix of high, average and lower students and just your guardian variety occassional forgeries and good old-fashioned third grade disagreements. This might not seem ideal to you, but when you come from having classes with kids who crawled on the floor and students who needed severe mediation counseling, you'd be relieved, too. The worst I can say about this group of kids is that they just don't shut up. There's good reason for this though.

There's just so many of them.

I started off the school year with 24 students. A few that were on my roster never showed up or it could of been more. This is par for the course though in the town where I teach. A few days in I got a new student, making the grand total 25. Then a few weeks later I got another new student, bringing me up to (all together now) 26.

Then one day last week I went to a workshop. When I returned I received the cum folder for my latest new student to fill out in my mailbox. Only I noticed it didn't say that she was coming, but going. I assumed it was an error, but it wasn't. She transferred out again. She was in my class six days. I wish I could say such transient behavior was uncommon, but I'd be lying if I did.

Which brings me to this week. On Tuesday morning a co-worker of mine asked me how many students I had now. I said, "25. But ask me again at 10:30 cause it's always subject to change".

And change it did.

That day I got yet another new student. The good thing about this was I didn't have to rush around finding new supplies and a desk for her. She just took the place of the girl who occupied it for six days prior to her arrival. She came from a school in district and so it was easy to get background information on her. Imagine my surprise when I found out she was a high student and smart! Where I work transferred students often come with more baggage than just a new backpack, if you know what I mean. Getting a new student who is smart is like finding gold. It's rare and it's beautiful and you hold on to it for dear life.

Which brings me back to the crux of this post, how big my class size actually is.

Over the summer a few of the other teachers and I were talking about how potentially large the third grade was going to be this year. We didn't understand with so many second grades filtering in to third why our principal didn't great another third grade section. And then the new year started and we wondered the same thing. While I fluctuated between 24 and 26, the other two regular ed, third grade teachers were feeling the same crunch, carrying between 25 and 27 students with multiple adults in the room given they both house resource students.

Meanwhile there is another bilingual teacher in my school who had low enrollment. And when I say low I mean L-O-W. She had a whopping four students. Now that will probably change after January as much of that population comes to us straight off the boat then. Still having four students indefinitely just wouldn't do. So my principal waited until the deadline before deciding to combine two bilingual classes. The solution wasn't ideal, but it made sense.

But now that left a leftover classroom, just waiting for students.

So this got my principal got thinking about what the rest of us were thinking about months before, opening up another section. Only she kept faltering between opening up another second or another third. The second grade is crowded too, but third is a testing year. Plus if second grade is crowded now that will only make third grade crowded again next year. We might as well look ahead for once. They say planning like that works but what do I know? I'm only a teacher.

Now the decision has been made all that's left is the painful transition. If this had been last year's class, although a smaller group, I would have been able to easily give 75% of them, no problem. I keep trying to convince myself that less is more, but I honestly don't want to lose any of my students, crowded or not. For once I finally have a class I like. The idea that some of them could concievably no longer be "mine" by the end of next week is a horrible thing to think about.

Not only is it horrible anticipating the inevitable, it's worse when you imagine not knowing who is going to go. It's like my classroom has suddenly transformed into some pseudo reality show. Who will stay? Who will go? Tune in next week to find out! My principal says she will "take our input into consideration" but that she has the final say. But she doesn't know these kids they way we do. She thinks that is exactly the reason why she should do it, but that's exactly why I disagree.

Finally there's the worst part of all- explaining it to the kids. If there's one thing my principal doesn't have is a lot of tact. We have no timeline for when all of this will occur, but prolonging it only makes things worse. Still, I want to be the one to explain it to all of my children before it does. I could just see my principal coming one morning and asking me in front of the children who I want to get rid of. I know it sounds absurb, but stranger things have happened.

If only they had thought about all of this back in August. The kids would have been none the wiser and the teachers better equipped to handle it all.

And we would have known just how many damn Halloween goodie bags to make, too.