The Ever Growing Population of LMS...

Think of having one parent, with 31 kids. Well, that's what it's like for Mr. Ratekin and Mr. Bergquist. Every day, in 5th period they are in command of 31 CRAZY 8th graders... all by themselves! It's hard for them, you can imagine. They are staying strong but still it's hard not to complain.

Around 12:05 (when lunch ends), over 30 students file into the Social Studies and English block classes. With every single seat filled, the ruckus begins. First, the teacher must calm the kids down, because it's SSR, where every student in the school reads for about 20 minutes. Then, the teacher has to start class, which is probably the hardest task of all! As many of you may know, kids have a hard time being quiet for long, and 20 minutes...IS LONG! That brings on a whole new round of challenges for the teacher!

A couple of the LMS Bloggers had a nice interview with the superintendent Mr. McCarthy. Here is one of the ideas he has for the large class sizes: "Most classes are supposed to have about 25 children in them. If a class, because of its nature, has only 8 or 9 kids in it, then you have to balance it out by adding more kids to other classes." So maybe that's why the class sizes are humongous!

But, you know, to me that just sounds like some excuses. My theory is that since the school doesn't have enough money to pay a lot of teachers, they had to cut some. Then they had to keep adding kids to different classes. It also doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Personally, I don't know any classes that have 8 or 9 kids in them.
-Alina