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Read Letter - stop the cuts
By karen lindsay
Written Feb. 24, 2010
A letter written to Mr. Tony Vandermeer, Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview
Good day As a teacher of Division one children I am very concerned with the proposed cuts to education. Cuts in the past have had huge affects in the classroom. As class sizes increase the effectiveness of what I (and every teacher like me) do day in and day out decreases. Alberta Education wants us to use a discovery approach (hands on) for teaching as much content as possible, but as class sizes increase it becomes more difficult to do this. The end result is that more teaching is done in the lecture or seatwork sytles, which isn't in the best interest of children and ways that they learn. The government has established class size targets and helped fund school boards to make it possible for achools to maintain these optimum class sizes for a few years. I personally have only taught within their perameters once in the past 5 years, however I have had class sizes of about 20 students. This is a managable group that I am able to read with in small groups daily, allow them to have stations (hands on experiences) in math and science. I have been teaching for 29 years and am truly worried about what the cuts are going to mean to the children in the school system for the next couple of years. Increasing class sizes to save money is risking the next generation of students. I remember teaching classes over 30 and definately do not look back at those years as being my most effective years. Creative solutions in budgets and in the administration staffing(upper levels) of school boards may be the best way to keep the teacher to student ratio close to Alberta Education guidelines.
Written Feb. 24, 2010
Good day As a teacher of Division one children I am very concerned with the proposed cuts to education. Cuts in the past have had huge affects in the classroom. As class sizes increase the effectiveness of what I (and every teacher like me) do day in and day out decreases. Alberta Education wants us to use a discovery approach (hands on) for teaching as much content as possible, but as class sizes increase it becomes more difficult to do this. The end result is that more teaching is done in the lecture or seatwork sytles, which isn't in the best interest of children and ways that they learn. The government has established class size targets and helped fund school boards to make it possible for achools to maintain these optimum class sizes for a few years. I personally have only taught within their perameters once in the past 5 years, however I have had class sizes of about 20 students. This is a managable group that I am able to read with in small groups daily, allow them to have stations (hands on experiences) in math and science. I have been teaching for 29 years and am truly worried about what the cuts are going to mean to the children in the school system for the next couple of years. Increasing class sizes to save money is risking the next generation of students. I remember teaching classes over 30 and definately do not look back at those years as being my most effective years. Creative solutions in budgets and in the administration staffing(upper levels) of school boards may be the best way to keep the teacher to student ratio close to Alberta Education guidelines.
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