Good Books - Angelina Stanford/House of Humane Letters feedback

[SoCal_Bear]

I had signed my son up for the Good Books class this year after hearing so many good things about Angelina Stanford's classes over the years on this forum. While her content is great, her decision to double the class size this year has had such a negative outcome on the quality of the class. I think it must be between 40+ students per section - had I known the sections were going to be this big I would have passed on this class. The chat feature is disabled because there are far too many students abusing it so it has to be shut down and there is very little student engagement. I didn't expect a great deal of student engagement verbally because of the nature of her classes but I thought there would be engagement via chat...but it has basically turned into a rather passive experience since chat is shut down completely.

While I appreciate her insights, I can't spend this kind of money on this sort of class experience. I gave this feedback to them last fall, and I hope they heard me. I realize she wants to accomodate more students, but it would have been better to offer more sections than to dilute the experience to this extent. I also think that extending the grade level down to 5th grade has probably detracted as well as it appears there are a lot of immature students which is frustrating to my 7th grader to see chat disabled because of their behavior. I honestly don't usually post such strongly worded reviews but I know people are started to think about planning to the fall already. 
 

Edited January 8, 2022 by calbear

[ScoutTN]

This makes me sad because that class was such a great experience for my Dd 3 years ago! I hope AS listens to the critique!

[SoCal_Bear]

@ScoutTN I am assuming what I described is not what the class used to be like because I could not for the life of me figure out why so many people on these boards thought so highly of this class.

Edited January 8, 2022 by calbear

[cintinative]

I understand where you are coming from with this. Last year was our first class with her, it was the medieval class, and I think perhaps there were 20-30 students. This year the same kid is in her Early Modern Class and there are at least 40 students, probably up to 50. And they have had the same issue where she has had to shut down the chat box because there are just too many students and she can't keep control of it.

My youngest is in the ancient lit class taught by her husband and I don't even think there are 10 students in there.  

I am not sure what the deal is. 

@ScoutTN  how many are in your daughter's medieval class?

Maybe we should all contact them. I agree that it is too much to pay for what ends up being almost like a live recording. There are just too many students to get participation in. 

[cintinative]

I sent her an email asking if she expects the classes to be as large next year. 

I don't know what the situation was prior to last year, but I wonder if the students that would normally do the ancient or modern lit classes are choosing the others because they don't know Mr. Banks or just prefer Angelina.  He is a very different teacher.  

[SoCal_Bear]

If she thought she could increase income without diminishing quality....this completely missed the mark. I'm borderline ticked off because I signed up thinking I was getting X because of past reviews and getting exactly what you said what passes for basically a live recording. No thank you. Hard pass.

Edited January 8, 2022 by calbear