Binghamton North High School - Wampum Yearbook (Binghamton, NY)

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Uut of The IW lot North High is Working all night for defense. North Highls Night School plays a vital part in the city, state, and even national defense pro- gram. The night school classes have trained, are training and will train many men and women to take key positions in defense industries. North High, open both day and night, forges ahead at full blast doing its part in winning that ultimate victory. The defense classes have trained and graduated many hundreds of men and a few Women. These men and Women, some inexperienced, and others with a little experience, entered these classes and in a comparatively short time left for immediate openings in the field in which they had trained. During the time they were in the classes they acquired sufficient experience and skill to enable them to obtain a defense position. The training is as specific as it can be made. In other words, these trainees are in the classes only four-hundred clock hours at the maximum, and in most cases do not reach this figure before they obtain a defense position. They obtain these positions in industries all over the eastern part of the country. Several concerns making tanks, airplanes, munitions, and ships have in many instances employed scores of these trainees. There are at the present time some sixty teachers employed on the program. About one-third of these teachers are employed in the all day program as vocational teachers which includes practically all of the voca- tional and technical teachers on the staff at North High School. In addition to the regular day school teachers, there are also employed some forty odd men and Women from local industries. They work during the day as machinists, toolmakers, sheet-metal workers, Welders, garment machine operators, etc., from local industries such as the IBM, Link Aviation Devices, Inc., Agfa Ansco, Endicott-Johnson Corporation. These men teach from six to fifty hours per week varying with the teacher and with the ease with which they are able to be released from part of their regular Work in the factories. The first class meets at three forty-five, immediately after North's conference period. This class is dismissed at six forty-fiveg following a fifteen minute interval, the next class convenes at seven o'clock. This class is dismissed at ten o'clock. The next and last class meets at ten-fifteen and is dismissed at four A. M. This ten to four shift is appropriately called the 22

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gain as much education as possible before they were called to active ser- vice. Teachers of North High had a part in the greatest registration in the history of the nation when thousands of families were registered during the Week of May 4-8 for sugar ration books. At North High whole- salers and restaurants were alloted their books. Gas was next to be rationed. Many pupils in our schools will be busy this summer raising Victory gardens. As a result of a national effort to increase farm production, several boys and girls are assisting farmers in this locality. To get every Worker available busy on a machine, special machine courses are being given Saturdays and during the summer. Senior boys and girls are given a short course of instruction preparing them for I.B.M. With the rapid expansion of the Air Corps under the present day war program, the government has deemed it necessary to appeal to the youth of America for the building of model airplanes. North High boys have stepped into the national defense ad- ministration and are building scale models of airplanes to help fill the urgent demand. The miniatures that are coming from the schoolis wood- shops assist future fliers in their training courses. Large numbers of them are also used to train plane- spotters who identify the different types of aircraft in flight. Every little amount of saving will help Win this War. For example in school the back of homework papers are used for test papers also. In other classes Writing on the black- board saves paper. Accuracy in Writ- ing not only saves rubber on erasers but paper also by saving recopying. A great deal of tin, tin foil and paper is being collected by many pupils in North. In the shops, soap and paper towels are used carefully to conserve the supply. Waste helps the enemy. In North High gym classes the girls and boys are taking exercises to strengthen their bodies for defense emergencies. They are also learning many things which would be impor- tant during an air raid. W ' Top: Model Building. Center: Raid Drill. Bottom: Sugar Ra tioning

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Owl Shift . There is a great variety of subjects offered including the fol- lowing: Electrical Installation and Main- tenance, Machine Shop Practice, Strength of Materials, Shop Sketch- ing and Tracing QDraftingJ, Sheet- metal and Sheetmetal Pattern Draft- ing, Acetylene Welding, Electric Welding, Automobile Mechanics, Blueprint Reading, Applied Mathema- tics, Industrial Electricity, Industrial Electronics, Foremanship Training, Power Sewing Machine Operation, Office Practice. This program is expanding very rapidly and many new subjects will be added in the near future to meet specific needs in some of the local de- fense industries. Classes are also held in Central High, East Junior and West Junior. The Defense Training Program for the training of industrial workers got under way in Binghamton on July 8, 1940. Since the beginning of these classes, approximately 3,300 men and a few women have been enrolled in one subject or another in the pro- gram. An increasing number of wo- men are being trained and in the next few months approximately six hun- dred women will be enrolled in all of the defense training classes. Some new classes for women which have recently been opened include a Wo- men-only machine shop class, a blueprint reading class, a course in operating power sewing machines, and a soldering class. There is also a class for women only in radio as- sembly. These women are being trained to read schematic blueprints and assemble radios with an eye toward future work of this type in the Link Corporation. Another new class was one organ- ized for boys and girls between ages of seventeen and eighteen and one- half. These boys and girls must be enrolled High School Students who graduate this June. The object of this program is to fit high school graduates for positions in defense in- dustries so that they may be able to obtain a job immediately upon grad- uation. As these classes meet after regular day school and on Saturdays, students must take them in addition to their regular school work. These classes are of as great a benefit to high school students as the other de- fense classes have been to many hundreds of men and women in Bing- hamton and surrounding territory. Another division of North's Night School is the Cornell Classes. These classes are on a collegiate level. They are tuition free and subjects such as Engineering, Physics, Elementary and Advanced Mathematics and De- sign, Tool Engineering, Safety En- gineering, Fundamentals of Radio and many others. North High is working on a twenty hour shift to do its part in defeating the Axis.