Due to COVID-19, the school went to a hybrid block schedule to keep students safe. With two groups of students going on different school days, the class sizes obviously had to get smaller. With a range of fifteen to eight students per class, students will have to adjust after years of being used to thirty people per class. Switching to full-time, classes got bigger, but some did not get much bigger. The school requires that there will be less students in classes because of the pandemic, but would making classes smaller after the pandemic ends be the right thing to do?

I think making class sizes smaller is logically the smart thing to do even when it is not required because of COVID-19. There are a lot of good reasons to have smaller classes. Some of the reasons would be that each student will be noticed, students have more opportunities to participate, more ideas can be shared among classes, and it will be easier for students and teachers to have one on one time during class work time. 

Obviously, some students do not want to be noticed in class, but being noticed is one of the only ways you can learn. Even if a student answers a question wrong, they will at least learn from their mistake. With more students in a class, it is harder to answer questions and be noticed by the teacher. Participating only encourages growth. Once again, being wrong and making a mistake helps you learn, and if there are too many kids in a class, some students might not feel comfortable participating. The smaller amount of students in a class will help kids learn better.

Personally, I love smaller classes for so many reasons. I feel way more comfortable talking in front of the whole class, and I feel like I get to know my classmates and teachers better. I also feel like I am learning more and contributing more to my peers’ insights. I enjoy the environment of learning with only ten or so other kids. I think most other students also like the learning environment of a smaller classroom.

As much as I like the idea of keeping the classroom sizes smaller, others enjoy the idea too. “Overwhelmingly, as much as the students like it, teachers also like it,” Superintendent Laura Kacer said. “If you can take a classroom that was thirty students and reduce it down to fifteen, there is an ability to make a closer connection with the students.”

Our school district is much too large to actually keep class sizes down when COVID-19 hybrid plans go away, but obviously, teachers and students enjoy it. If there was a way to get the class size number down, you bet I would be on that as fast as I could be.