Reply to HB-- focus on writing?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Each grade in high school has the same English teacher so that is the entire class load, you can see exactly how many students the teacher has based on how many kids are in that grade and all kids in a grade are getting the exact same instruction unless some are doing the AP track (which is usually offered the same time as the regular class, with extra assignments and some in-class breakouts). Some English teachers also teach an elective like film or Shakespeare.

H-B focuses a lot on research and writing. They do year-long projects where they break down how to write a long paper, they spend a whole year doing an English research paper in 9th and a whole year doing a paper on a historic person in 10th. They also spend a lot of time on different kinds of writing--persuasive, descriptive, argumentative, etc. Science classes also require papers.

But what I really appreciated was the very structured approach to writing in English classes, to help them develop the skills to develop college-length research papers: they had to develop a topic, come up with research questions, then an outline, then an introduction, then the body, write the paper, and do a presentation--all over two semesters with a very specific rubric and feedback at each step.

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So one English teacher at HBW has about 100 students. Therefore, if the other high school teachers had 100 - ?? 120?? students, they would no longer be able to blame # of students for not being able to assign more, and more significant, writing? Thank you. I'm glad to finally get an idea of a feasible student load, since no teachers have ever offered a number that would allow them to do this.[/quote]

That's a much smaller number than they have though--right? Isn't average class size in high school more like 25, and they teach 6 periods? So more like 125-150 now? [/quote]

75 rising 6th graders admitted and then about 25 new spots offered to rising 9th graders. So it seems like 100/grade is about right.[/quote]

https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2024/02/Class-Size-Report-SY-23-24.pdf

This data is publicly accessible! And you are severely underestimating the number of students that APS teachers are responsible for. Check out the latest class size report (belatedly released by APS). There are many classes in high schools that are ~29 students. Teaching five sections that big means over 140 kids, which is absolutely going to make it hard for teachers to give each student significant attention and feedback. Regardless of where your kids are enrolled, if you want teachers to have bandwidth for each student to get more attention (in writing, math, executive functioning, etc), then please advocate to the Schcool Board to reduce class sizes. [/quote]

They're talking about HB. If there are only 100-110 students in a grade, and there is one teacher per grade level, then the grade level English teacher can't have more than 100-110 students. [/quote]

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