Schools Need More Than Monetary Help
(Dianne Klein’s April 19 column) certainly hit home. As a kindergarten teacher of 19 years in California, I’ve seen the decline of assistance--paid and unpaid in the classroom.
When I began teaching in 1973, a paid aide was in my classroom for the entire morning, plus parents. The class size ranged between 25 and 28. As the years rolled by, class size went up, assistance went down. Now, I am lucky to have paid assistance 1 hour and 10 minutes, two times per week.
Many nights I’m exhausted and frustrated. How can one person meet the needs of the 30-plus little children? Parents are the glue that hold it all together.
Thanks to (parents), (pupils) get their bunny glued right-side up, papers get stapled, homework gets collated, shoestrings get tied, I can give one-on-one help to students and more of the public is aware of what is going on in that magic place called kindergarten.
MICHELLE PRENTICE-SMITH
Yorba Linda
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