How do you learn and unlearn in a small class setting?

Reflections on my One program

As an “alumnus” of a One program, I should start by saying that having an immersive small class experience in first year really helped smooth my transition from high school to university. It allowed me to develop closer relationships with my professors by getting to know them more personally, and it helped me meet some wonderful, brilliant people along the way. Looking back, I doubt that the bumbling mess of nerves that first year Hasaan was (and, I suppose, second year Hasaan continues to be) would have been able to form the close friendships that he did, had it not been for the small class sizes.  It was easier to turn to the person in the desk next to me and strike up casual conversation—an experience that was galaxies away from the intolerable, near-asphyxiating sound of hundreds of laptop keyboards in my other first-year classes.  

One of the main academic selling points of small class sizes is the flow of ideas, though the flow was not always bi-directional. Starting school at UofT was perhaps one of the most anxiety-inducing experiences of my life, and the transition, though helped in some ways by the social and relational payoffs of small classes, was not the smoothest. The crushing anonymity that I felt, which I’m sure others also feel among the tens of thousands of incoming students, is difficult to shake. This depersonalization often leaves first-years dazed, disoriented, and, yes, depressed. That feeling, in my experience, is often exacerbated upon the realization that many of your peers are just as academically accomplished as you are, if not more so. It tricks you into thinking that perhaps you’re not really all that deserving of your admission letter, and that UofT isn’t really the place for you.

Now, when you take all of that confusion and self-doubt—the sense of being set adrift with no one there to help you steer back to shore if the waves get too rough—and concentrate it in a class of 20 bright, charismatic 18-year-olds, it makes you question your self-conception in ways that you never have before. Suddenly, your thoughts are either unoriginal or unintelligent, and you can’t really express them properly because your speech is garbled and nonsensical. The way people look at you when you begrudgingly force yourself to say something (after all, participation is worth 25 percent of your final grade) is now a mix of second-hand embarrassment and silent signals begging you to shut up.  

In so many ways, small class sizes amplify the anxieties of first year and provide an often uncomfortably intimate scale for social comparison. These nerve-wracking experiences can cause small classes to produce the opposite of their advertised intent; instead, their environment can end up stifling ideas rather than encouraging intellectual discussions. This is particularly true for students who are struggling with the transition into this next stage of their academic lives. Being forced into a small space in which measuring myself against my peers was a nearly unavoidable consequence made me excruciatingly aware of the spaces that exist in and between conversations, and often made me rethink whether making contributions would at all be meaningful.  

So, where does this leave us? How can we make small classes more comfortable and inviting spaces for more students? To be honest, I’m not sure. What we can all start doing, however, is checking in on our classmates and being more conscious of the different conversational dynamics that often form early on and persist indefinitely, both in small classes and in our social spaces, to make more students feel welcome and able to share their thoughts in educational settings.