[NefCanuck]

habmann,Mar 7 2006, 10:55 AM Wrote:Altho i do agree that the union is being greedy. Yes its about class sizes, but the other major issue is prep time. The union wants their full time teachers to teach about 13 hrs a week, with the rest being prep time. Now really i know what my teachers teach me, and its the same thing they've taught the class the year before, and the class before that. My teachers pull out a binder of notes that they've prepared and teach from those. So yes the first few years of teaching a course there's alot more work, but once you've taught it a few times, I'd argue that the amount of prep that teachers do for a class is reduced quite alot. And if you want to include marking tests and assignments in prep time we could do that too. But looking back to how much more teachers had to mark in high school compared to college, I'd say college teachers have it pretty good. And high school teachers have to teach way more than 13 hrs a week.

And with regards to class size, what does it really matter whethers there's 40 people in a lecture or 200. Bigger room is all that changes, doesn't effect what the teacher teaches. Yes labs are limited in size, but generally you can only put the number of students in a lab that you have space for. So I don't think that's as big an issue as its made out to be.
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Okay those are valid points, but let's look at it from the other side for a minute.

Take a course in computer sciences for example. In your scenario after the teacher draws up the lesson plans and they teach the course a few times, the prep time should be a non-issue right?

Except for the fact that in a course like computer science, things are always changing and evolving and students want to learn the newest material (Which is also a fair demand, it's no use learning skills that won't help you out in the work force) so back up goes the prep time to keep pace.

Class size, again in theory, the class size is immeterial, the teacher can teach the same thing to a class of 30 than they can to a class of 100 right?

Except for the fact that as you pointed out, computer labs (using the comp sci example again) are not infinite in size. That to mark 100 tests takes longer than 30 tests, even if you dumb down the tests to simple True & False answers (The tests having to also be changed to keep pace with the material being taught) Or the fact that the instances of students needing extra help statistically goes up as the class size grows.

Not that I agree with the idea of a strike to solve the problem (I would prefer binding arbitration on both sides) but I can understand why the teachers are doing this.

NefCanuck