With an extra group this year, Andres Arboleda, the 10th and 11th grade pre-calculus teacher, now has more groups to teach, giving him less time to give individual feedback, and making an already challenging class even harder.

The High school administration gave Arboleda, who now has 6 classes, an extra one this year. This change was made because Kevin Valentin, who was supposed to be the new pre-calculus teacher, was needed in the learning center to help other math teachers. Now, Arboleda has to be available to assist his 141 students, but has less time to do so.

“I think this change affects both positively and negatively. Now each student has to be a lot more responsible of their grades and talking with Andres by their personal means and not him approaching you, which is what I think happened before,” Juliana Mesa, 10th grade student, said.

For the administration it is a beneficial decision because adding Valentin to the learning center means having greater support for the kids who require extra help in all areas of mathematics.

“Kevin was needed in the learning center to support other professors, not only pre-calculus but also statistics, mathematical logic and mathematics in general,” Arboleda said.

However, some students are concerned about how this change can affect their learning and their grades for this class.

“I think the quality of his lessons may decrease, since it’s a lot harder to teach more people and concentrate in the process of each one. Also, a lot more people can fail because it is not going to be as specialized as it used to be,” Mesa said.

Although Arboleda attention can be divided, the students are the ones responsible to put in the effort to pass the curses inside the school. At the end an individual’s grade does not depend on the teacher.

“Regardless of whether there are more or less, 70% of the effort has to be given by the student with the work they do at home and their class work,” Arboleda said.