. . . And Then There Were 34 : Pupils, Teachers Both Vie for Attention in Increasingly Crowded Classes

Like Gulliver on his legendary travels, Marie Gruver is awash in little people.

One tugs at her jacket, while another waves his arms in her face. A third stands plaintively in front of her, face upturned, awaiting the answer to a question she could not possibly have heard in the din.

Thirty-one others form a restless swarm of ponytails and jeans, their chatter slowly rising to fill the room from floor to ceiling.

The tall one there in the blue pantsuit is Gruver, a first-grade teacher. She takes a deep breath. This is a typical day in a typical, overcrowded Orange County classroom.

This friendly, no-nonsense teacher and her colleagues all over California are juggling bigger and bigger classes.

The youth population is swelling, but school districts, their budgets pinched by an increasingly tightfisted state government, can’t hire enough teachers or build enough schools to reduce the crowding. As their class sizes continue to grow, teachers worry about students’ unmet needs and their own exhaustion.

In Orange County this year, elementary school classes average 29 students. In 1980, they hovered closer to 27. California’s classes already rank among the largest in the nation, and they swell each year. Education experts believe big classes erode the quality of learning because teachers can’t sufficiently tailor lessons to each child’s needs and abilities.

A recent day at Olinda School offers a window on the reality of crowded classrooms. In the first 10 minutes alone, Gruver reminded two children to put their names on their papers, answered six questions, repeated two answers for an uncooperative boy, assigned several children to return books to the library, took attendance, praised two students, told two others to sit down (again) and taught an entire language lesson.

The lesson was interrupted 16 times. Don’t ask why. It takes too long to explain. Just know that 6-year-olds demand everything. And Gruver has 34 of them. Every day.

“You hit yourself over the head because there’s not enough of you to go around,” she says.

And Gruver is luckier than many teachers. Her gray-washed wooden school, hidden in stands of eucalyptus in a rustic corner of northeast Orange County, is made up of children who have few obstacles to their learning. None of her students struggle with English or come to school hungry. They live in comfortable homes where parents have time to help with homework.

Even without those added challenges, Gruver’s day is an exercise in controlled chaos. Yes, there are many minutes of sentences well read and applauded, math problems solved, songs rousingly sung. But not without the constant pressure of impending disorder.

Again and again, minutes are lost just lining up 34 bodies to go outside, for recess, lunch, excursions to the library down the hall. In class, she circulates constantly among the desks in her flat shoes, praising and correcting, but she cannot connect with every student.

The children sit facing each other in groups of five or six. They would be less tempted to talk and tease if they sat in rows, but Gruver has no choice. The room can’t hold 34 desks, each with a bubble of insulating space. As it is, she trips over charts and chairs as she rounds the corners. If we had an earthquake or fire, she wonders, could I get them all out safely?

The ambient noise created by the wiggling and whispering of 34 children is enough to drown out the attention of these distractible souls. As Gruver stands at the blackboard, one soft-voiced girl reads aloud from her seat, but half the class cannot hear her; they slide into idle chatter.

“Does the tooth fairy come to your house?” Pink Hair Ribbon asks Yellow T-Shirt.

“Nah, my mom gives me my money,” T-Shirt says, before Gruver shushes them both.

Nearby, one girl secretly applies nail polish while a boy topples over backward in his chair. These things happen in direct proportion to how far away Gruver is. And with 34 kids, she’s always a distance from half of them.

But mid-morning brings a vivid demonstration of what is possible with a smaller class. A parent volunteer rounds up 10 of the children and takes them outside to a sunny picnic table to work on troublesome math problems.

Inside, the difference is stunning. With only 24 students left, the volume level plummets. The contagion factor--noise spreading feverishly from child to child--is gone. There are actually long moments of silence while children write sums in their workbooks. As hands shoot into the air, Gruver herself becomes a lesson in math: with 24 kids, far fewer questions go unanswered than with 34.

During the brief peace of a morning recess, Gruver reflects on her daily worry about the unmet needs of her students.

“I just don’t have the time for the one-on-one attention,” she says. “If you have an advanced learner, that’s fine. They pick it up fast enough in group presentation. But if you have a remedial learner, they can get swept up in the tide. And if they don’t learn it now, it’ll just get harder for them as they go along.”

She can’t monitor her students’ progress as closely as she would like. She had one boy, for instance, who really impressed her in September with his reading skills. She let him “cruise,” she said, because others needed so much help and he needed so little. But at Christmas, tests showed his reading had slipped.

“It really frustrates me,” she said. “I just can’t give each one the time they deserve.”

During the entire class day recently, only four students received more than a few minutes of Gruver’s undivided attention. And those reading-aloud sessions with her were stolen in a quiet corner while the rest of the class worked, the clock ticking until the noise began to rise once more.

One boy is happily reading to Gruver from his storybook when she stops him.

“OK, thank you, Patrick. That’s enough,” she says kindly.

“But there’s more,” he protests, with wounded-deer eyes.

“Sorry,” Gruver says, her hand on his shoulder. “We’re out of time.”

The day comes to a clattering, yammering close as the children put their chairs on their desks, talking all the while. Straining to press down the noise, Gruver dismisses first the Brownies and the children bound for on-campus day care. Then the walkers. The car-poolers. Then she walks the remainder out to the yellow school bus.

Alone again in the sunny room, Gruver listens as the last few children’s voices waft in through the open window, then fade, leaving a tangible quiet. She heads for her desk, envisions slipping off her shoes. She will design lesson plans for tomorrow, knowing full well she never manages to complete the lesson she so optimistically laid out the day before.

But just give her a few hours in the quiet, surrounded by the cheerful drawings of the children who fill her days, and she will try again.