As MCPS class sizes have now increased to a maximum of 33 students, difficulties of getting personal attention from teachers has been a vastly huge downside of overcrowding. But, students aren’t the only ones who feel the effects of the overloaded school. For more than 10 years, many teachers have not had their own classrooms. This is because of the massive increase in students, meaning that WJ needed to hire more staff to keep the MCPS mandated student-to-teacher ratio. With WJ over capacity on both a student and teacher level, there has been an increase in disorganization, but also an increase in communication between teachers like never before.
Classroom sharing is highly common among teachers at WJ. Most teachers have another teacher use their room for at least one period. In fact, some teachers don’t even have their own classroom and are known as “floater teachers”. These teachers may change rooms every single period that they teach, meaning that they have no “home base” or no room for themselves at all.
Some teachers just need to move rooms for one period, meaning that their “home base” is in one room, and they need to transition their learning materials to another room just for a short period of time.
“I always forget my papers [when moving classrooms], ” math teacher Rachel Zussman said. “If someone’s absent and they need a worksheet, [and we are in the other room], there’s a chance I don’t have it.”
Teachers have learned to make the best of the situation, and most are very flexible on sharing the space. Decorations are usually decided among all the teachers using the classroom, and overall, going with the flow is the mindset that most teachers have been able to adapt from this experience.
“I’m type B, so I don’t mind if desks need to get moved or if papers are left out,” English teacher Sarah Gayman said. “I basically tell Ms. Kaminski to do whatever she needs to do.”
Teachers have also gained some new positive connections from being able to meet new colleagues each year when sharing their classroom. Being able to share a space creates a forced interaction that teachers may have not been able to encounter without it.
“Sharing a room with Ms. Thoms helped us become very close,” Zussman said. “It’s really nice to have someone be able to be there if you need to run out for a second, like go to the bathroom or grab something from the printer.”
Some teachers think that there isn’t a need for a resolution to the problem of multiple teachers needing to share the space. However, with this entire problem stemming from the overcrowding issue that has been a continuous growing problem in the last 10 years, Charles W. Woodward High School opening down the street hopes to fully solve this issue.
“When the new school opens, Woodward, we should see the student population decrease, and then, teachers should hopefully get their own rooms, and not have to float so much,” history teacher Tobias Meier said. ”But right now, I don’t know if there really is a solution beyond just what we’re doing.”
