How many students?
If you are the main teacher in a self-contained special education classroom, how many students do you have in your class? How many teaching assistants or student aides? What is the age range? What type of disabilities do you students have?
I moved to a new school last year and our school is very tight on space, so I've been in a smaller room with a small group of students. Next year, I'll be moving into a larger classroom and will have more students. I've just gotten the final number of students & support staff I'll have, and I'm wondering if this is the norm? This is a K-5 school, so all students are young and have very high needs.
ETA: Thanks for the quick responses! It looks like what I'm being asked to do is totally normal. Around here, elementary schools are very small and inclusion in the mainstream classroom is done whenever possible, so there are usually only a few self-contained students at each school. In previous schools, I've had 4-6 students with 1 student aide. We'd sometimes have another student or two for part of the day. At this school, there are much higher needs (though it's not intentional, just a very low-income area near the hospital) - around 22 students with ASD who are nonspeaking. Two of the classrooms are tiny (meant for small-group pull-out, not actual classroom sized), so there are 5 students in those classes (1 teacher, 1 student aide). The youngest students and students with most severe needs are in those groups. I'll have 12 students in my class, with 1 teaching assistant and 1 student aide. They're all nonspeaking or speak in short phrases, all use AAC, all require support with toileting (so the one student aide will be kept busy!). Three of the students are boys I taught last year, so I have them in a good routine. The others have been in the larger class, and it seems like it was chaos this past year with a teacher who was about to retire. Just seems like a big jump!