I started out this summer with only 13 students in my writing in business course. In the first week, the enrollment has dropped to 8. This is the smallest class I’ve ever taught — well, tied with an 8th grade exploratory creative writing course I taught my second year teaching middle school. I’m excited for the extra attention I can give students, especially as I’m only teaching one course this summer (well, I’m also covering Sara’s class for a week later this summer, but there are only 6 students in that class). It will be interesting to see the new challenges and rewards with such a small class.
About Michael J. Faris
Assistant Professor of English with research areas in digital literacy, privacy and social media, and queering rhetorics.
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I had a class that had the same results, but it went from 14 down to five by about week 8. It was a developmental course. The most challenging part of this was facilitating discussion with a group of students who were not terribly interested in discussion. Plus, planning time for questions, discussion, and answering questions totally throttled my plans.
That experience was amazing in how challenging it became.
This past term, one class dropped from 24 to 12 regular attendees. I found the 10 or 12 students to be far easier to work with than five or six students. Having more personalities makes fluidity and discussion much easier. Then again, with smaller classes like this, the nature of the students’ personalities really come out.
It can be incredibly empowering. Let us know how it goes!