Chapter 6: Schools

Your college classroom has little in common with the one you experienced in fifth grade. Your relationships with your teachers may be especially different. Why? Although a psychologist might explain these differences in terms of the personalities of people who chose to be elementary school teachers and those who chose to become professors, another way to look at it is structural. How big is the school? How much time do teachers spend with each student? How many students do they have? How many teachers do the students have? This exercise is designed to help you think about the classroom from a teacher's perspective.

• The questions raised below will help you to think about how changes in the structure of schools may be reflected in adolescents changing experiences in their classrooms as they move from elementary school to middle school to high school and college. Put yourself in the place of a teacher in each of the different types of schools. How do you think you would react?
  • What are your job demands in addition to teaching?
  • How many subjects do you teach each student?
  • How many students do you teach each week?
  • How much time do you spend with each student each week?
  • How many years are you likely to know each student?
  • How likely are you to know how well the student is doing in other classes/subjects?
  • How flexible is classroom time management?
  • How many students are likely to missing on any given day?

• You can find excellent review articles discussing the complex issue of school size by searching the Eric Database. The key words 'school size' provide a good selection of background material.
  • A suggestion: If you limit your search by checking FULL TEXT ERIC DIGESTS on the search page, you will be able to access all the materials you find on-line.
• Note the important distinction between SCHOOL SIZE and CLASS SIZE. A series of articles, research summaries, and policy reports on this topic can be accessed by searching this Education Week site. Excellent resources are available at the bottom of the page.

• The US Department of Education provides information on many facets of the educational process in the US.
• The National Center for Education Statistics provides an Encyclopedia of Education Statistics, including a particularly broad indicator of the status of education in America, Youth Indicators. The Common Core Data provides information on individual schools, while Quick Tables and Figures provides a rapid summary of easily accessible information. Take the time to browse the site to learn more about the diversity of educational experiences in the US as well as your own high school.