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Do the Teachers Still Teach 900 Shows A Year?
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(Yes, The Biggest Question of All Answered!)
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Hey Alumni!
The title of the book 900 Shows A Year, written by Mendham's
own social studies
teacher Mr. Palonsky about his teaching experiences, refers to how many
classes the teachers taught in a school year.
If you were at the school before (I think) the late 1990's, Mendham used
a 9 period day schedule. (If you were there in the 70's, I think you
had some sort of 11 period day at one time? Anyone remember?).
In the 80's, each teacher usually taught 5 classes,
and there are 180 days of school. So multiply 180 by 5, you get 900
classes, or "shows" a year. Got that? Good!
Fast forwards to today
- now the school switched to this confusing
4-day rotating schedule. The 9 period day has become a forgotten relic
of the past, just like our gym-day-offs and the Grove.
With the rotating schedule, basically every class only meets 3 out
of every four days. So not every class meets every day like it used to be.
If you want to see the schedule rotate for yourself,
click here!
So here's the question - are the teachers still teaching 900 shows a year?
Is the title of the book still relevant? Let's find out!
I know alumni probably don't want to
look at math equations at this point in our lives, so I'll attempt to be
brief (yeah, right!). But I have to show my work, because the math
teachers always made us do that.
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To start the calculation,
here are some variables that perhaps
may be helpful to figuring out the problem:
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FOR ROTATING AND 9-PERIOD:
Number of days in the school year = 180
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FOR ROTATING SCHEDULE:
Number of minutes per class = 58
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FOR ROTATING AND 9-PERIOD:
Number of courses a teacher teaches = 5
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FOR ROTATING SCHEDULE:
How many days in a full rotation = 4
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FOR 9-PERIOD DAY:
Number of minutes per class = 42
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FOR ROTATING SCHEDULE:
Number of times each class meets per 4-day rotation = 3
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Pi = 3.14159265
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Length of Mr. Grossman's best tie = 62 inches
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Number of chairs in the lobby in 1982 = 51
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# of kids caught cutting class in The Grove in 1982 = 113
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Ok!
That should be enough variables to get this solved!
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For the 9-Period Day,
we already know that the 9-period day had 900 classes (or "shows")
taught for the 180 day school year. (5x180=900). Ok.....
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For the rotating schedule,
each course a teacher teaches meets
3 times every 4 days. So we would need to divide 180 by 4 to get how
many "groups of 4 days" are in a year, so 180÷4 = 45 (I think?).
I am already
confusing myself. Ok, so each class would meet for the year 3x45, which
is uh ... 135. I think? (Math teachers, am I doing this right?)
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So to finish the calculation,
we know that teachers in the rotating schedule usually teach 5 courses.
(Some teachers only teach 4 classes, but we won't worry about that, we'll
use 5 here.) Soooo to calculate the grand total of classes taught per year,
we have 5 courses that meet 135 times a year, so we get .... 675! Yes!
We got an answer, and it doesn't have decimals or square roots or pi
in it - It's a normal number! 675!
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Yeaahhhhh!
So the teachers today only teach 675 classes (or "shows") a year!
But now we wonder - with fewer classes, do they spend less time teaching nowadays? That
one is more straight-forwards to calculate (I need my calculator now).
In the 9-period schedule, a teacher teaches 900 classes for 42 minutes
each, so that's .... (punching in the numbers here) ... 37,800 minutes!
For the rotating schedule, a teacher teaches 675 classes for 58 minutes
each, so that's .... ummm .... 39,150 minutes!
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| Some Super-Duper In-Depth Analysis:
So it seems that the teachers teach less classes nowadays (675),
but spend more time teaching overall per year (39,150 minutes now vs.
37,800 then). In Palonsky-speak, the teachers perform "675 shows a year", but
spend more time doing each "performance". Do they know this? They teach even more now than then?
The difference is 1,350 minutes, which is 22 hours and 30 minutes!
Yikes!
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So to wrap up this page
(and to spare you any further math equations), the teachers don't
teach 900 Shows A Year anymore. If Mr. Palonsky wants to finally
write a sequel to his book, He will have to name it 675 Shows A Year!
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Click here for Looking Back at 1982 (900 Shows A Year) Home Page
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Click here to go back to our Home Page (oldmendhamhigh.com - An History & Alumni site)
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Oldmendhamhigh Main Page |
The De-Evolution of the Mendham High Grove |
The Journeyman Page |
Looking Back at 1982 (900 Shows A Year) |
The Long Sad Story of how Mendham High Was Built |
The New Construction 2006-2008 |
Photos from Journeyman Yearbooks (places and things) |
No Place Like Home! |
Old Blurry Photos of the School |
Old Mendham High Stuff found in my House |
Mendham HS Official Site
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This page is part of oldmendhamhigh.com (A MHS History & Alumni Website)
The absolute address of this page is http://home.att.net/~suelighthouse/teachnow.html
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Updated: February 2008
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Sue Willis (with some other alumni help) - Class of 1988!
Mendham Borough Historical Society, lifelong Oldham ... oops, I mean Mendham resident -
Email at:
suelighthouse@att.net suelighthouse oldmendhamhigh
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