Panel Discussion

I attended a panel discussion involving the budget cuts and the impact of the educational defunding. This event was titled “Writing Under the Ax”. During this discussion the panel mentioned numerous important factors that will be affected by these drastic budget cuts.

With all this education defunding classrooms are going to contain a massive increase of students. Depending on the subject of the course a larger amount of students can be extremely difficult to teach rather than a smaller group. The panel was going over some of their own techniques they use in their teaching and with their students. Many professors have conferences and individual time with their students to give them more one on one time to help them better understand the materials. With larger class sizes conferences, more one-on-one time, as well as many other small class common factors, will seem almost impossible.

I know in many students opinions, as well as my own, I need the individual attention at time and conferences when I do not understand. We will be lost in a big crowd and these larger classrooms will have students basically be a number rather than known by a name.

While listening to the ideas and opinions of these panel members I realized them as well as many other professors and students are extremely passionate for what they do and these restrictions are going to prevent many students from doing what they wish to achieve. It was mentioned that people question what a teacher really can be. Some believe that anyone or thing that can deliver context from a previous source can be a teacher. I don’t believe this for a second. A teacher to me has to be someone who knows and is very passionate about the material they are teaching as well as connected to it in a way that will benefit students in a whole.

This is just a brief preview of a few peoples ideas and some affect of what these budget cuts will do. There are so many more factors to it. Many people are still hoping that this drastic change can be stopped. Life is full of cycles and economy is a major example of this. All we can do now if hope for that cycle to continue and bring us back around to the better end of this track.