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Concerning class sizes – Australian teachers have battled for many years with large classes and have only recently succeeded in gaining a few concessions from the politicians (who hold the purse strings – both state and federal). Many opponents say that they were in classes of 35 or 40 students or more and it didn’t harm them. They fail to realise that education has changed, society has changed and most importantly, children have changed. For a whole raft of reasons, teaching IS far more complex and demanding today than, say, even a decade ago.

The year after the one I related in this post junior primary classes (Reception to year 2 – ie ages 5-7) were cut to a maximum of 18 (down from 26) in SOME schools – only those most in need. And only here in South Australia. There was a complex formula for determining which schools benefited from this move. In practice, however, the formula tends to be more a guideline than a watertight policy, despite many union protests (read hollow talkfests – teacher unions here in Australia are largely ineffective).

As for children with special needs – don’t get me started on that topic. A few facts on the South Australian scene: most special needs students have progressively been mainstreamed over the last 15 years due to budget restrictions. Special classes are only for those with severe learning difficulties – the qualifications are very tight. Being in mainstream classes throws a heavy burden on classroom teachers most of whom have little or no training in this area. To put extra SSOs (teacher-aides who are not trained either) in the classrooms is something but merely a band-aid move, in my opinion. Some of these SSOs are fantastic but there are far too few for so many children. In effect, the most I ever had was about 10 hours per week.

As to journal writing, I believe this is very important as outlined in my post. Perhaps what I didn’t emphasise is that it is only one component in a whole range of teaching strategies. It was complemented by a wide range of other writing, reading, listening and speaking activities – a language rich environment undergirded by praise, encouragement, patience, more praise, still more patience and heaps of practice.

Q: How do I learn to write?
A: Write!

The other thing I notice is you had 28 children in your class (approximately the same class size when I was in primary school in the 1960s) and eight of these had special needs. Current US teachers would be complaining that with that many students of average intelligence and school, they wouldn’t be able to teach them anything.

When my oldest son was young he was diagnosed with ADHD. Our friends used to call him ‘demon child’ (as did I at times. The teacher at the first public school he attended when he began kindergarten had him sitting in a corner by himself within two days. We took him out of that school and put him in a Catholic school even though we aren’t Catholic. The teachers there were much better. He also wouldn’t read due to his inability to focus. He did like video games, though, so just to get him to read something, we got game magazines for him. He still isn’t the best reader of the world, but the motivation of trying to get information he really wanted enabled him to learn to read at a level adequate to anything he will likely need and understand what he was reading.

I wish we had thought of the journal writing when he was little. Maybe if children were raised with the concept of journals as daybooks, rather than diaries, the idea would catch on, rather than being seen as a stereotypical girls’ pasttime as they are in American culture.