[neact] Re: How do you handle Large class sizes in chemistry?

Hi, I teach at Arlington High School.  When I had colleagues with
professional status (hasn?t been the case for about 5 years), we would write
a letter to the Superintendent and Principal that we cannot be held
responsible for the safety of students in the chemistry laboratories if the
numbers exceeded the numbers for which the room was designed (20 really, 24
in a pinch).  Administrators do not like to have these on file with the
liability issues involved.  Our Superintendent just didn?t care, but our
protest was registered and they rarely go above 24 (perhaps as a result).
Denying labs to students and communicating directly with parents is a good
way to alienate all administrators ? if I were an administrator, I?d tell
you to do the lab and fire you when you didn?t ? you would not win the
battle.  Another approach is to have practice problems/lab activity that can
be done in either order and only have ½ the class doing labs at a time.
Good luck!

 

Jack Duranceau

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: neact-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:neact-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Richard Boucher
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 9:03 PM
To: neact@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [neact] How do you handle Large class sizes in chemistry?

 

Hello

This being the beginning of a new school year, brings up a question that is
happening at our school, and I suspect other  schools.  Due to increasing
enrollments and budget constraints, the class sizes are increasing. This
year I will have 3 sections of chemistry with 28 students.   

Chemistry teachers are aware that 24 students represent the class size that
should be set as the maximum that allows teachers to safely supervise the
laboratory experience.  So does anyone have suggestions on how to handle the
larger class size and still include the extremely valuable laboratory
experience?

Some questions that I would like to raises are 

1)      How do you educate administration to the importance of the
laboratory experience as well as safety in the laboratory (including the
liability to teachers and the school is something goes wrong) They are
concerned about class size in general, but do not have any training in the
sciences. 

2)      What do you do, as a teacher, with a large class size.  For example,
some demo?s and write up lab reports?  If so which ones?

3)      I know of some teachers who have sent letters to parents stating
that larger class sizes make it impossible to perform lab experiments
safety, so the class will not include lab experiments.  What do you think
about the best way to communicate with the parents?  I would assume there
may be administration fall out from this type of communication. What is the
best way to handle this (and still keep your position)  Thank you, for
taking the time to read this. If you have any past experiences, or
suggestions , could you please respond?

Richard Boucher.

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