As a student, I have a lot of questions throughout class. Maybe because I get lost in the lecture or I simply don’t understand what was going on. Normally, someone will raise their hand and ask a question. But I don’t want to feel dumb by asking a question everyone already knows the answer to. My real question is, would I feel better about asking the question out loud if there weren’t as many people in the class? Or if I personally knew everyone who was around me? Or would I still have to wait until the end of class to finally figure out what had happened halfway through the lecture.

Throughout Liberty, there are about 100 classrooms. There are about 1,300 students who attend Liberty. On average, there should be about 13 students per teacher per class. There are classes around the school that will have six students and other classes that will have 34. I understand that there are some classes that more students won’t take, whether they don’t have the prerequisites to take that class or they have no interest in the topic of the class. But teachers who teach the same class multiple hours should be evened out to a reasonable number of students.

Personally, I prefer a class with a small amount of students. I’m not talking five or six because that would still be weird for some classes. I’m talking 15-20 students per class. Having 30 students in one classroom doesn’t leave much room for anyone to move around. Also, when talking out in class, I feel more pressured to say the correct answer and it makes me anxious that I might answer wrongly. I just won’t say anything, which doesn’t benefit my questioning.

The amount of students in a class could also reflect on the student activities or learning. A class like weightlifting has limited resources. There are only so many bars and weights for everyone to use, so if there were an unreasonable amount of students in that class, it would take longer to get the workouts and activities completed. Having a smaller amount of student in the class would benefit the students who choose to take it. Another class that would benefit with smaller numbers is any science class. Most science classes have some type of lab work throughout the year, and there are limited stations and supplies in most science rooms. Having fewer students in the class would benefit each student because more students would be able to do hands-on work during the lab instead of watching two or three students do the few steps there are.

A solution to the overcrowded classes would be to have a limit to each class. Obviously, the limit would be flexible because some students have to have specific classes certain hours of the day. However, most students change their schedule and ask for a specific hour, which causes very crowded classes. An example of this would be someone switching their P.E. class to be 8th hour. It’s understandable to why most students wish to do this, but it causes the class to have too many students in it.

In the end, I feel as if class sizes are too big and should be spread out more to prevent overcrowding and give students the help they need in their particular class.