Academy High School - Academe Yearbook (Erie, PA)

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A book review in Honors English 12 prompts Steve Bookman, National Merit Winner, to elucidate on the popular novel Airport. Using the overhead projector in Mrs. Massing’s English 12 class becomes a painless method to teach students specific composition skills. Class discussion in Religious Literature Class centers around the role of the Ten Commandments in today s society. 29

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Form and Eloquence mold arts of communication Pondering a punctuation riddle, sophomore English students Carolyn Duckworth and Tom Argeny decifer the nonsense maxim. English classes pondered over the problems posed by Shakespeare's 40,000 word vocabulary; students in Religious Literature of the West wrote their own Psalms; and speech students furthered their practical knowledge through a speech on how to uncork a wine bottle. Regular English classes in all grades aimed for clarity in writing and good reading habits. Honor courses offered accelerated study and deeper approach to literature. In Religious Literature of the West, an experimental course initiated last year, students studied the litera- ture of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Varied re- ligious backgrounds provided lively class discussion and offered unique opportunities for becoming more familiar with these three traditional faiths. Amateur actors, salesmen, and politicians gave re- peat performances throughout the year in Speech classes. Moods ranged from moving to hilarious as creative talents were used in interpretive poetry, forty- minute programs, impromptu speeches, and round- robin storytelling. Improved oral expression and voice projection are goals attained by Diane Opatich and Dave Biser in English class.

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Teaching a class comes easily to Aron Arkon as he differentiates between personal pronouns for his German class. Awareness of cultures In language classes Academy students tried to over- come their English background as teachers en- couraged them to think the language, not just speak it. Latin pupils attempted to organize and categorize the many different declensions and conjunctions in their minds, Spanish and French students struggled to in- corporate the native idioms into their vocabularies, ana German scholars straightened out the confusion which arose when they discovered they were to capitalize all nouns. Academy Latin students, while studying a verbal expression that is still used as a universal tongue in scientific terminology, learned about the culture of the greatest empire in world history. Classroom Spaniards involved themselves in dialogues, laboratory recordings, songs, conversation and skits. Advanced students concentrated more on in- dependent reading and theme writing. Although French is similiar to Spanish in origin, its people, literature, and structure are quite different. ALM books were used for beginning instruction; novels, plays and more complex grammar eventually replaced them in French 3 and 4. German students practiced the hard, gutteral sound necessary to properly speak this Germanic language and found satisfaction in mastering a difficult script form of writing. 30