Teacher Discussion Forums

[busayna]

Hi Everybody:

I've been teaching in intensive English programs for seven years now in universities and community colleges. The classes I've taught have had sizes of as little as 4 and as many as 17. I've been teaching in the same program now for about 1 year and class sizes have been around 16, which for me, was a pretty workable size. This semester, the class size has jumped to 27 and I feel like that is too large for an IEP.

Any thoughts?

[Sally Olsen]

Do you have a union? If not, start one. What is in your contract?

Just typed in Google, "Class size for Intensive English" and got pages - looks like the class size varies from 8 to 25 for the two first two pages. You should make a survey and present that to your committee.

Wouldn't hurt to have a student rep on your committee too because it will affect the students.

If you can show that other institutions you are competing with have lower class sizes it might help as well.

Keep track of everything you do and for the first while try to do the same as other years. Show the committee how much more time it takes for 27 students.

Change your pay so that you get paid per student. They are making more money, so you should too.

Get all the teachers on board.

[busayna]

Thanks for the reply and all of the great suggestions! I will take them up with our team leader.