In college I took "social swing" with my college "sweetheart". It was an actual class and yes, my college sweetheart and I were pinned, serenaded, and fire sided. It was almost the 1960's good girl Faber College romance except for the weekends of televised football, trips to country joints to speed up the swing dance and well, some other Animal House practices.
In Social Swing we learned to Waltz, Cha Cha, Tango, Rumba, Fox Trot, Swing and the dreaded Polka (our instructor likened it to a fast waltz; I likened it to well, something I could never do). But the Cotton Eyed Joe, now that was a dance. A spoke wheel dance meant to be mastered, savored and danced at full speed. It's glaringly like the polka but I think I was able to master the Cotton Eyed Joe from fear of being trampled by the ensuing couples. We had enormous fun and found this skill actually translated outside of college.
However, this University had very large classes. I remember my first upper division history seminar had about 150 people in the class. There were so many people in the class and the professor had slides, oh so many slides. He kept the lights low. So many people. So many slides. So warm. So sleepy from showing off new dancing moves.
I somehow magicked a B from the class but I was not proud of my performance in the class. I could have done better and I had wanted to do better. The professor knew so much. I wanted to spend time with him and talk about my paper and the history of England, about his original research. There was no time though. He had 150 people in just that class.
I traded that University for an even larger one. My first seminar in Eastern European history had 12 people in the class. 12. The professor was a young guy who was an expert on all things former Yugoslavian. He has written books, consulted on movies and is now the head of the history department. I took a class on Modern China and another on South Eastern Asian Problems where there were no more than 30 and 20 people in the class respectively. The professor spent less time lecturing and more time directing our thoughts on our reading as each one of us took a few minutes to talk each week. This professor is also an expert in his field and highly regarded. You wouldn't know it, but he tells you anyway that he didn't speak English until he was 21 and a few years later he had a Ph'D. There was a stint in there about Baskin Robbins but I think the whole English thing was a story just to make us work harder. And we did. My graduate experience progressed like that. Classes were usually no more than 20 students although there was a very popular history of Modern Sub-Saharan Africa class that was well attended at about 30 people. It was one of my favorite classes. Maybe my favorite was my Gilded Age class? Ooohh...the film class....
The class size mattered. All of those professors knew us. They knew who talked too much (me) and who needed to be broken of the habit post haste (me). They created people who knew that listening was more valuable than mindless chatter and that when you spoke, it had better be good. Graduate school is not a place where you get to have a "bad semester". I got a B, once. I attribute my success to my access to professors and the attention they could pay to my work. My work.
Thinking back it reminds me of the 3rd grade. I was the kid every teacher didn't want in their class. I had a bit of test anxiety, would finish too quickly so I was prone to exam errors but I could read 2-3 years ahead of my peers. This is NOT what you want when you're 8. We read from our readers individually. Before Christmas I was done with my assignment, well, actually, the whole assignment. The whole book. I devoured the next and the next. The teacher was perplexed with what to do with me. She had 30+ kids. (The class photo shows 30 but there had been an outbreak of chicken pox so I have no idea how many there actually were.)
What do you do with this precocious child who obviously can't be skipped up a grade because of test scores but when printed material is put in front of her it disappears? As a teacher, she had to attend to the other students having trouble and then there were times when the class would have to work on reading assignments together. For the most part, the other students were all on the same page. What to do, what to do? Oh, the solution is so easy! We'll just put her in the closet and let her do her reading there undisturbed! Yeah, because singling out a child by sticking them in a closet, even if they are an "exceptional" reader, is a GREAT idea.
I look at how my son's reading groups are taught at Whitney. They have broken them down into manageable groups according to abilities. There aren't so many students in the class that this is unreasonably difficult. At 24 students, my son's class manages this as I wish my teachers had. Without repercussions for being in the bottom or the top margins. All of these kids will become excellent readers in their own time. No closets of shame.
...and this is one more reason I'm supporting the Supplemental Boise Schools Levy on March 13, 2012
Because nobody puts Baby in a corner!
Nikki Rutledge
-Whitney Parent
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