Is it easier to teach at a small school or a big school?

not certain but most likely the larger school will have higher pay.

I can't think of any high schools that have populations of under 100. We have 750 and are considered small. I guess elementary schools could be smaller. We have some country schools that feed into my high school with only a handfull of kids in each grade.

As far as pay goes, my district (one of the smallest in our county) passed contractual language that our salaries would remain in the top 1/3 of the county. So our pay is pretty good, but with the exception of one district that has been mismanaged and is trying to avoid a state takeover, most districts in our county pay within a fairly narrow range.

Small Schools-

Pros-You get to know the kids. The kids in small towns are not anonymous, so they tend to behave because mom and dad will find out if they don't. Most small towns are agricultural, and kids that are up doing chores at 5:00 AM are hard working.

Cons-You won't be anonymous, you won't have a lot of resources, you will likely teach some classes out of your comfort zone.

Large Schools-Pros-There will be a larger number of higher performing kids. If 5% percent of kids are "gifted" a class with 100 will have 5 smart kids. A class of 500 will have 25. These kids will feed off each other. I think 25 is a critical mass. 5, not so much.

Cons-Anonymity, drug and alcohol use (though that happens in small schools too, just not as prevalent)

Oh, wait....I didn't see 100 per graduating class...ooops. I saw 100, total.

it all depends on the area. A small school near Baltimore is going to be worse than a small school in Fairfax County. Actually neither locale will have small schools, you need to go to a rural county for those. I really see this as a matter of rural vs urban. 200 would be considered a small graduating class in a lot of cities. Rural kids tend to be more well behaved and have less problems (drugs, distractions, skipping school (wtf is there to do if you skip in the country)), but at the same time if you want to teach an AP class, a rural school will have the bare bones minimum number of them probably being taught by a teacher who's been there 10 years and plans to stay another 20 or more. If you can find a rural town with a big trail system/state park it might be pretty fun living there (assuming you still run), if not it could suck.

Public schools are pretty much the same everywhere. In extremely depressed areas like Baltimore or parts of DC, all the schools are bad, all the kids are bad and the reverse is true as well. But if you get a teaching job at an elite private school it might be worth living in a bad area. I'm generalizing a bit.

Before you move somewhere evaluate what is there to do outside of work. Before I started teaching, I had job offers from a handful of school districts, a few of those were rural. A couple of the schools I could have taught at were in small towns, about 2-4x the size of your average suburban neighborhood. If I moved there, I'd be running the same loop over and over and over again day after day. There were no state parks or anything nearby and to leave the town on foot would have required running on a 55 mph highway. I know of another small town that has a state park 5 miles outside of town. If I'd gotten a job there, it might have been worth it to move there.

In a city with big schools like Arlington or Alexandria, running is ok, the trails are dull out and back bikepaths, but there is whole foods. There are movies and plays, cinemas that show artsy films, restaurants and bars. Compare this to the small town where there was a walmart, an applebees, and some local hole in the wall restaurant. Most of your time will be taken up by teaching and school related activities. Most of what you remember about life will be related to the stuff you do outside of work, like any other job. This is all bunk though, if you've got a private boarding school job lined up or something.

I almost taught at a small school and would have taught:

Social Studies-

9th grade

10th grade

11th grade

and 12th grade Economic AND Participation in Government.

I now teach at a mid size school and I teach:

9th grade and 10th grade by choice.

It's the number of teachers in your department.

Where I live (Upstate NY) smaller TEND to be more rural and are typically the schools that struggle- students aren't as motivated, more problems outside of school, etc

The larger schools tend to be more urban and have similar problems.

My school is a class of 200 (typically) and is suburban and (as far as schools go) a dream.

Other teachers are jealous of my clientele.

"As far as pay goes, my district (one of the smallest in our county) passed contractual language that our salaries would remain in the top 1/3 of the county."

If they all have this type of language in their contracts, very soon all districts in your county will soon pay the exact same amount.

I graduated from a school with 30 in my class. My wife has coached and taught at several schools with 50-75 per class. I'll just comment on the school side and leave out the details of rural living. But I will say running in a small town can be great or extremely bad. Sometimes there are endless dirt roads to run and trails at the lake or state park. Sometimes you are confined to the same 5 mile pavement loop.

This is my experience living in rural Texas. I'm sure things vary by region and demographics.

pros:

You become very ingrained in the community. It doesn't take long for you to know everyone and for everyone to know you. You get close to the kids because you've seen them grow up and there are very few parent problems unless you cause them.

The kids are great. They usually try, are well behaved and respectful. Class sizes are small.

For coaching, the above applies. Plus, most coaches at schools that size don't know what they're doing and don't care, so it's easier to stand out from the crowd. Talent isn't as much of a factor since so few have it.

Cons:

You become very ingrained in the community. You can't go to the grocery store without seeing parents or kids and having to stop and talk. You'll spend extra time having to make appearances at sporting and community events to show support. People notice if you are never there. Small town gossip is real, but not a big deal if you don't do anything worth gossiping about.

Here, teachers usually have two preps, like chemistry and physics or two different maths. One or three preps are not quite as common. Four is rare. The easy classes and PE are reserved for the football coaches. The school can only offer a few advanced classes and academic programs.

Coaching is probably the biggest con if you are serious about xc. You will have to coach several sports. i.e. xc, assistant basketball, track, plus summer off-season conditioning. Kids are discouraged from doing just one thing (out of necessity) so are in several sports, band, ag, cheer etc. The training has to be highly reduced/modified and is very rarely done year round. Talent is hard to come by just due to odds, so if you like coaching fast kids go bigger. Many small schools just don't care about track and especially not xc, but that varies a lot school to school.

Pay hits both ends of the spectrum depending on where you are.

Thanks for all the info, guys. I went to a pretty big high school (500 of us my freshman year but ~130 either dropped out or transferred to the alternative school) and have a little teaching experience at three other schools that range from 35 graduating seniors to 70 to 350. In my experience with those schools, the kids at the larger school had much more available to them, as did the teachers. More kids means more at the bottom, but it also means more at the top. At the small school, all kids, regardless of ability level, were in the same classroom together, so I had kids in there who could do calculus and I had kids in there who could barely read. Because of the small size, there weren't really programs in place to focus on either group. It made things tough, and it bothered me that kids weren't getting the special attention they needed (both the high- and low-ability level kids).

I was always in the honors and AP classes when I was a kid, and I am in a MS program now. Not only would I rather teach the advanced kids, I really think that's where my talent lies. When average teachers try to teach advanced kids it generally doesn't work because there will always be a few kids that are significantly... "more able" than the teacher to understand things. I heard a story of a woman basically having a nervous breakdown because she was trying to teach advanced math she didn't understand very well and one of her students understood it perfectly and gave her a hard time. I've seen less extreme examples of this in other subjects also. At the other end of the spectrum, I've seen teachers who despite not being geniuses were excellent teachers because they could relate so well to average and below-average kids, were compassionate, and never gave up on them. People like this are critical as well. I just think it's better for everyone if teachers are placed with students they are best suited to work with. How I explain that to people without sounding like an Ahole is kind of a mystery though.

Finally, with rural schools, I've found there are generally a lot of redneck families that don't really care about anything but pigs and mountain dew. I'm not even trying to be condescending here; I really have run into a lot of students and families like this in rural school districts. Because I'm big into hiking, travel, just "getting out there," I don't think I'd be greatly suited for a rural school, but maybe kids in urban areas are the same? Just caring about video games and movies? I don't know.

Well, since you are into hiking you are obviously ill-suited for both large city schools and small rural schools. Sounds like you need to go to the stereotypical suburban school with a bunch of rich white kids and a ton of resources. That way you won't have to deal with all the dumb hoodlums in the city and the dumb rednecks in the country.