When you walk into Chapman High School, you are surrounded by approximately 900 students, while a school as such as Dorman High School boasts around 4000 students when you add their two campuses together.

This can be very intimidating for students about to enter Dorman and similar schools.

In my opinion, I feel that school size tremendously affects students self-esteem and can even determine how students adapt to society, and grow as humans.

For instance, a student a smaller school can become familiar with more people and become closer to their teachers.

I also believe that a smaller school gives students a better opportunity to be successful in their academic career.

Whenever I have been in a larger size class, I feel that it is not as “one-on-one” as a smaller class. You get less of a chance to really have your teacher explain how to do things in the class.

Not only does student numbers affect the classes at the school but also the amount of student resources needed, athletics and simple things as such as field trips and college visits.

For athletics, there is classifications by student number that will make a school 2A, 3A, 4A, etc.

But there is no classification in terms of academics, which schools are all grouped together when it comes to things as such as test scores.

If the school averages the test scores, there is a greater chance of outliers, and just more students to make a school’s average look better.

Every student is different, that’s why I think an individual approach is important to insure success in every student.

That is why do not take for granted the small size of our school; instead, I cherish it and appreciate the fact that you don’t have to deal with that many cars in the parking lot.