Numbers

I've had numbers on my mind recently. Since my last column, we have begun a new semester at ConVal, which means a whole new array of students -- 90 of them, to be precise. I can measure my growing experience here by the number of photos I have to take in order to learn their names -- only 53 this time.

All 26 in my new Freshman English class had to be photographed, of course. Fourteen in Creative Writing were new to me, and glory be -- I could recognize, from previous classes or the casts of plays I directed, 27 of my 40 in Mythology. It's a relief to be able to fit names to faces right away, and besides, those Polaroid prints cost a buck apiece.

I have 40 in Myth because I volunteered, as an experiment, to try teaching it as a college-style lecture course. We meet in the Lucy Hurlin Theatre because no other classroom would hold them all. Myth attracts large numbers because it is open to all four grades and all levels of academic achievement. The vast majority are freshmen and sophomores, who are not otherwise eligible to take most English electives. If my experiment doesn't work, we may have to consider closing Myth to those students, especially as next year, freshmen and sophomores are projected to represent 628 of the estimated 1,168 students at the high school -- 54 percent.

It's too early to tell if it's going to work. I have a couple of former Mythies who volunteered to serve as classroom aides, and I plan to ask them to do a lot of the correcting of homework and tests. I don't assign any essays in Myth -- if I did, this would be impossible.

As it is, my 24 in Creative Writing will have to generate a minimum of 432 drafts of poems, essays and stories in nine weeks in order to pass the course. My last class produced 858 drafts, each of which I read, edited, and wrote comments on. I used up a whole package of red marking pens. Last week a student asked me if she could join the class late and, for the first time in my brief career, I said no. I am learning.

If I learn well and fast enough, perhaps I can avoid becoming one of the 27 percent of newly hired teachers who leave the profession in the first five years of employment, according to a new report from the state Department of Education.

That same report tells us that 40 percent of all New Hampshire teachers are over 50 years old (guilty). "In an industry that allows and provides for some early retirement opportunities," said Education Commissioner Nicholas Donohue, "that¹s a daunting prospect." From 500 to 700 teachers retire annually, and that number is expected to double in the next three years.

One of the most striking figures in the report is the number of certified teachers in New Hampshire who do not choose to work in this state's schools. Twenty years ago, it was 12 percent. Last year it was 40 percent. "It's not all about pay, but it's about pay in part," Donohue said. New Hampshire ranks fifth among the six New England states in average teaching and starting salary, leading only Maine, which is also facing the loss of many teachers to other states or retirement in the next five years.

At last week's first part of the ConVal District Meeting a voter, alarmed by the size of the proposed budget, expressed the hope that next year, we'd be looking at a reduction in the numbers. Based on the numbers in the report and in my classes, my advice is: Don¹t hold your breath.