I find it very hard to believe based on my experience in high school that class sizes dropped from 1990 to 2008. I was in high school from 2004-06 and I can tell you that my classes certainly did not get any smaller as time went on. If anything, they only got larger! I had 25-30 people in my AP US History class, and there were easily 25 people in my physics and chemistry classes during high school. Also I was not aware that states and districts had imposed limits on classroom sizes. I suppose that makes sense, and that it is a good way of curbing excessive spending on programs that may not be needed etc. I find it interesting as well that the study that was cited as having the greatest effects and benefits from smaller class sizes are minority groups. Oddly enough, it is, or I am largely led to believe, that minority groups are the ones who are in the largest classrooms. Think might be a result of media and television coverage depicting urban, overcrowded schools though. The concept of having sixty kids in a single classroom is crazy to me, much less having 60 first, second, or third graders. That sounds like absolute chaos. I can't believe that the novice teachers in those classrooms get paid 50K a year though. I don't know how long it will take for me to make that much money but I can guarantee its going to be quite some time, and thats even with having a masters degree under my belt!
I'm just wondering: does the Willamette Masters in Teaching course fall into the residency category described in the article New Vigor Propelling Training. It sounds like we are, based on the fact that we have to do the preteaching hours and have to the the actual hours in our fourth semester here. Based on what I have read in the article, it seems like our program is pretty ahead of the curve. I am definitely glad about that. I wouldnt want to get a year into the program and then find out that it isn't good enough to help me get hired as a teacher because the standards were too low or whatever. This is an area in which I feel our program really excels: a majority of teacher-educators see accreditation as a compliance-based process rather than a standard of quality preparation. I feel like I wouldnt have been nearly as good of a teacher if I had tried to go right into teaching from my undergraduate studies. I would also say that it would even be possible that I would have given up teaching after a year or two had I not done this program... I want to be a quality teacher and understanding it more is extremely important to me, and will hopefully keep me in the profession until I retired :D
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