How many students is too many students?

An interesting article from the Daytona Beach News Journal online tackles the question of how many students is too many in an English Composition class. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) recommends no more than 20 students per class--and that no teacher has more than 60 writing students per teacher per term. As this article explains, though, with so many schools encouraged to increase enrollment (without increasing the number of faculty), the stress on these general education courses is growing.

My composition classes here at Shepherd are capped at 25. At UNCG, we were capped at 22. At Richmond it was 15 (what a treat that was!). Fifteen was awesome--as a teacher, I could give each student and each paper lots of time and attention. We could have meaningful discussions about writing and revisions. Twenty-two worked just fine, though, too. And even 25 isn't too bad--but it's clearly not ideal. (I can't remember how many students were in GST 101/102 classes at Roanoke--do any of my fellow alums remember?) Here's an excerpt from the article explaining why--and why there aren't any short-term solutions to this growing problem:

"Here is how it works: La'Shonda Broxton, an 18-year-old DBCC student, wrote a process essay on what it takes to be a successful high school freshman, and she was proud of her work.

Her professor, Carolyn West, wanted her to do better.

"She said I wasn't specific enough," Broxton said. "I wrote that it takes a good attitude and self-esteem. And she asked, 'How are you going to get attitude and self-esteem?' I wasn't specific enough."

That kind of individualized attention takes time, which is why the English teachers' council guidelines for a professor in one semester is three courses of no more than 20 students per class.

Evan Rivers, chairman of DBCC's English Department, said comp classes' enrollment was capped at 22 when he took over last year. This year, the cap was raised to 25 (and in one case 26) mostly because of the enrollment surge and the fact that English composition is a requirement for so many other classes.

"There's nothing I would like better than to follow National Council of Teachers of English guidelines. Nothing would make me happier . . . but there's nothing we can do," he said.

As I said above, 25 students is manageable, though not ideal. I am just worried that soon it will be 26, or 27, 0r 28--you get my point. As my previous posts about weekends spent grading indicate, the work load for these classes can be quite daunting. I hate to complain about my job because, as I've also written about before, I feel pretty darn lucky to get to do this for a living. But I do think there is a point where the quality of instruction will suffer too much to justify increasing enrollments. On the simplest level, as a teacher, I am a lot happier having to read 20 papers than having to read 25. That really isn't fair to the "extra" five students in my class.

Emerson Place

As an English teacher, I find myself wondering every once in a while what difference my work makes in the world. These are only temporary doubts, of course--I am a firm believer in the value of what I do, but it's nice to see results, no matter how unexpected. Today I got an email from one of my former Richmond students. I'll paste most of it below, although I've changed his name and taken out some of the cheesier parts:

"Dr. Hanrahan,

Hello! It's John Smith, one of your students who wishes you were still at Richmond. I just thought you might find it amusing that I'm interning for an advertising and marketing agency in Washington, DC, and we are doing all the brochures and signage for a community in Lebanon, NH called Emerson Place. Inspired, I proposed that the floorplans be named after his contemporaries and those who he influenced, which was approved. So now there are some two-bedroom, one and a half bath apartments in Lebanon called the Alcott, the Poe, the Melville, and the Thoreau.

Also, the art director incorporated a bit of Emerson into the brochures; the quote(s) "Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart" are in an Emerson-looking font around the borders of each page.

I hope everything is going well for you where you have landed. If you have any additional reading recommendations in the vein of anything you had us read in the class (esp. American Gothic like Lippard) please do let me know. Keep up the good work and keep inspiring people!"

Okay, so I left in some of the cheese. Sue me. (This is the spot where my always hilarious mother would jump in and say, "What, did you give him an 'A'?" She says stuff like that any time I tell her anything nice my students say about me. It's so very funny.)

Seriously, though, how strange (and amusing) to think that someday the upwardly-mobile in New Hampshire will be living in rooms named after great nineteenth-century American writers--all because of a class I taught one semester at the University of Richmond. Not exactly my ideal idea of changing the world, but I'll take what I can get. Too bad they didn't take it a step further and name one "The Fanny Fern." I guess that's asking too much. And no, I have no idea what that (wonderful) quotation from Emerson has to do with apartment layouts. I suppose the art director thought it sounded nice and intelligent. Emerson is so very quotable, but lots of times the contexts seem strange.

Here we go...

I've been thinking about this blogging thing for a long time now. So why start? Well, here's a simple reason: my friends Heather and Burt started a blog for their baby (due any day now), and in order to post a comment, I had to sign up for my own blog.

But the other reason is entirely self-serving: I think I am at a place of transition in my life. Big changes and all that. And it feels right to document it (for me more than anyone else--believe me, I know I am not all that interesting to others) in order to better understand it all--in order to be a better person. Yes, the writing teacher in me really does believe that good reading and careful writing can make you a better person. So here we go. I want to start kind of small, though, with a bit of "Where I've Been" and "Where I'm Going."

Where I came from:
Rocky Point, NY (birth to age 17, 1977-1995)
Roanoke College (undergrad, 1995-1999)
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (MA and PhD and a lectureship, 1999-2006)
The University of Richmond (a one-year visiting position, 2006-2007)

Where I am going:
Shepherd University (a tenure-track position in the Department of English and Modern Languages)