Costa Spanish department suffers from overloaded class sizes in Spanish 1 courses

Kali Mashayekhi 

Staff Writer

Over the past few years, Spanish 1 classes have been filled with up to 30-36 kids per class. The Costa administration has tried to even out class sizes between semesters, yet the problem has not been fixed, Spanish teacher Felise Shapiro said.

Spanish Teachers Erin Doyle, Felise Shapiro and Anita Rossell have been teaching Spanish 1 for many years and have noticed this problem reoccurring over the past four years. This year, each of Doyle and Shapiro’s classes contain at least 32 students except for their sixth periods.

“The adminstration needs to find a way to make a way our Spanish 1 classes smaller, as the kids enrolled in this class will not want to change their schedule after a whole semester,” Shapiro said.

The issue begins with students enrolled in Spanish 2 who realize they are not at the right level, leading them to switch to Spanish 1. Another factor contributing to overcrowding classes is that students from other school districts are automatically enrolled into Spanish 1.

“We always had an issue with how many students are actually enrolled and how many students appear to be enrolled,” Shapiro said. “The adminstration has tried to give us some leeway so that there is more room, but it ends up not working in the end.”

This issue has caused disruption not only  for students, but teachers as well, leading the adminstration to take action, Shapiro said. Vice Principal Jessica Lubs has asked students to either switch out of their class or move to the sixth period class, which is recomended because of its smaller size.

“On the second day of the semester  Ms. Lubs came in and asked everyone if they would be willing to switch out or move to a smaller sixth period class,” freshman Shane Geller said. “I considered moving classes if my current schedule would not be switched around.”   

In an immersion class, all students learn to speak the language, which is a struggle with 36 students in a room, Shapiro said. According to Shapiro, this results in students being unable to acquire important information, in addition to teachers not being able to equally give students the necessary attention they deserve.

“Being how this class is run differently than previous years as a teacher, this is a challenge as well as for the student,” Shapiro said. “It is an unfortunate situation because I cannot get each and every one of the students to talk and participate in class with the class sizes.”

Costa’s adminstation is working on solving this issue for future years to come. According to Shapiro, Lubs is responsible for students’ schedules and deciding how to go about evening out classrooms without causing disruption.

“Most students in these classes are not able to switch out as some kids have a sport sixth period or are not willing to change their entire schedule, which leaves us in the same spot we were with most classes reaching their maximum capacity of 36 and some just under that number,” Shapiro said.