The students in Helena Shirai’s German I class at Boulder High School respond to prompts by drawing objects onto a worksheet depicting a nearly empty room: The mat is in front of the door. The dog is on the floor. The lamp is above the window.
And the students are crammed elbow-to-elbow in a room that held 40 kids at the start of the year. One transferred schools and another dropped the class, leaving Shirai with a still-robust 38 in the introductory language course.
The high number was a product of both economics and logistics.
Budget cuts originally necessitated a single large class. Stimulus money could have allowed the class to be split, but by the time it arrived, Shirai already had committed to teaching four periods of German, plus another of Japanese. She needed to schedule prep time for five different curricula.
She could have capped enrollment at 35, but with German already disappearing from middle schools, and given the natural attrition from foreign language classes, Shirai thought the course should be open to as many kids as possible.
Now, she’s challenged, stretched to the limit — and grateful.
“In these tough economic times where it would be easy to say, ‘German is a smaller department, we can get rid of that,’ Boulder High is trying as hard as it can to maintain some of the specialized classes that we offer the kids to have diversity in our curriculum,” she says.
“The fear is, if we cut programs now, even when the economy gets better, they’ll be lost.”
With her packed German I class, Shirai figured — naively, she now observes — that she could adjust for the larger number of students simply by working more quickly.
The illusion lasted for about half a semester.
Preparing and performing skits in class used to take a day. Now it takes two. Recording work in the language lab used to be a half-period activity. Now it consumes a full period.
“I’m at least a week behind my curriculum compared to where I was last year,” she says. “Now I’m having to decide which things I’m cutting and compromising so I can get through the bare minimum. Giving more exercises and more individual attention has all gone by the wayside — which I’m grieving.”
And yet she’s been lucky in some ways.
Two interns from the University of Colorado help out three days a week. For six weeks at the beginning of the year, she leaned on the teenage daughter of a professor on sabbatical from Germany. A visiting German relative of a local family arrived a few weeks into the second semester and has helped with correcting papers.
“I grab at whatever straws I’ve got,” Shirai says.
In some respects, Boulder Valley School District represents a best-case scenario in lean budget times. Voters passed a mill-levy override that, combined with a surge of stimulus funds, has allowed schools to tread water and even backfill some cuts.
But items such as professional development and funding for substitutes so teachers could meet to collaborate on curriculum — those felt the ax. So Shirai now meets once a month at a coffee shop with other German teachers — on their own time — to compare notes.
In a few weeks, principals will receive next year’s budget numbers and begin planning.
“We made decisions as best we could to try and keep (cuts) out of the classroom,” says Boulder High principal Kevin Braney. “I’m not sure whether or not that’s sustainable, given what’s happening. Once the budget arrives, that’s when we’ll know where we’re going to have to come to terms.”
In German I, Shirai tries to keep her instruction as much like a regular class as possible. But she makes adjustments.
After introducing the new prepositions, she has students pair off and quiz each other. Later, when the kids are writing sentences, Shirai and her intern squeeze down the narrow aisles between desks, offering some individual attention.
“That was a lot to present,” she says as the class ends and her students spill into the hallway.
Eventually, the new vocabulary, prepositions and grammar will come together when each student produces a poster that illustrates and describes the features of their dream home.
What’s German for “elbow room”?
Kevin Simpson: 303-954-1739 or ksimpson@denverpost.com
