With over 1,017 freshman on campus this year, it’s no surprise that the school is more crowded this year than it was last. Freshmen constitute over 30% of the 3,231 students on campus, which has led to problems with scheduling and class sizes.

The effect of this inordinate amount of new students heavily weighs upon the English department. All students have an English class, no matter what grade they are in, as  it is required to have four English credits for graduation. The dilemma is that there are only eight freshmen English teachers.

Ms. Leah Gentry, teacher for Freshmen standard and Pre-Diploma Programme students comments, “My sixth period has 34 [students], and my seventh period has 31 [students] in it. I’m teaching bell to bell, and I’m not able to sit at my desk and grade. It’s stressful for the teachers because we have more of a workload outside of our contracted hours.”

The sheer amount of students left some without desks during the first week of classes When classes are supposed to have an average of 25 students, those extra six students disrupt the learning environment, making it more difficult for teachers to teach and students to learn. The more students in a room, the less one-on-one time with the student the teacher is able to spend, ergo a poorer learning experience is for the student.

Junior Jorge Castano says, “This year, there’s so many freshmen on campus. It was already enough of a hassle trying to go back and forth in between classes, but now it’s even worse, especially during the first week of school.

The effects aren’t simply limited to the classroom, either. Grading assignments with a regular class size is hard enough. When you have 40 more students than usual, it becomes an even more arduous task. Even if a teacher dedicated only five minutes of time to grading essay for each student with average class sizes, that would be five minutes for 125 students, nearly six and a half hours.

Alongside the teaching issues, there is also a problem with supplies. During the first week of school, Gentry had students sitting in her class without desks, because she was unprepared for such a large number of students.

Seminole’s teachers and administration have been hard at work to resolve these issues, but it doesn’t take away the difficulties that come with resolving the issues. The freshmen class is large, and there’s no way around the problems that a large class is sure to cause.