Magnificat High School - Magnifier Yearbook (Rocky River, OH)

Page 81 text:

Judges scrutinize the performances of Sue Liggett ’86, Mary Beth Heller ’86, Lynn Mikel ’86, and Donna Zelesnik ’86 in the DFLA Contest. Magnificat won the competition. Photo by A. Sheridan. Concentration fixed on his picture rather than Marriage class, five-year-old Chris Moran draws a tunnel. Some parents brought children un¬ der six into Marriage classes to discuss Erikson’s stages of growth. Photo by A. Sheridan. ACADEMICS DIVISION 77 program, which offered CPR as an elective to juniors. The junior class, meanwhile, boasted four sections of Honors Brit Lit. Many | thought it to be a little too much, since up to three years ago, two sections of an honors course was considered a lot. But the high enrollment for that course was indicative of the upward swing in honors classes. Four new honors courses were introduced this year. Two of them were AP classes, which had never been offered at MHS be¬ fore. Those classes prepared Mags girls for the AP test, just as Genesis pre¬ pared them for work, Marriage pre¬ pared them for a family, and the curriculum as a whole prepared them for the world. lil

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A 0 4 f U 4 With the Carnegie Report, A Nation at Risk, and countless other evalua¬ tions of secondary education in this country, the adequacy of American high schools has come into serious question. Students nationwide were struck with fear when threats came of longer school days and a longer school year. But Mags girls had nothing to fear. Magnificat was more than ade¬ quate. Every student in the school had the opportunity for independent learning with the facilities of four labs above and beyond the proverbial biology, chemistry, and physics labs. An ever increasing supply of computers met an ever increasing demand, as the com¬ puter lab was constantly improved. And in the language and writing labs, teachers and tutors helped students ei¬ ther catch up or get ahead. At one point the tutors helped a teacher get ahead. When Sr. Mary Jo was gone for a week, four seniors who excelled in their own studies took on the job of teacher. Working in pairs, they taught two freshman algebra classes how to FOIL. It was an ar¬ rangement both the seniors and the freshmen enjoyed, and it was also the first time a substitute with a degree sat in the back while two upperclass¬ men ran the class. Some sophomores, though, were less enthusiastic about the new health re¬ quirement. Because of new state legis¬ lation, all sophomores had to take one semester of health. That meant re¬ vamping the existing health PE 76 ACADEMICS DIVISION

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Creativity flows through the hand of three-year-old Megan Moran during a Tuesday 5-6 class. Mrs. Patty Moran spoke to second semester students about working mothers and options with children and nursery school. Photo by A. Sheridan. Parents help to Pill AVoid There were some things that Sr. Judy and Sr. Cheryl just did not know. They were able to teach their Marriage classes Erik Erikson’s eight stages of growth, but weren’t able to relate any first hand ex¬ periences to mothering. So they brought mothers in to do that. Children under five were invited to visit classes. After last year’s tri- al-and-error experiences with bringing kids into school, a few changes were needed. When students just brought babies in, they had a dif¬ ficult time shedding any light on the experiences of parenting the children. So this year the parents were asked to accompany their children. A wide range of topics was ad¬ dressed by the parents, but the subject that surfaced both semes¬ ters was working mothers. “It’s important for a mother to stay at home with her babies—not just her infants, but also her young children,” Mrs. Liz Toth told seniors. Second se¬ mester classes dealt more with the options available for mothers when working was inevitable. Most of the seniors’ ques¬ tions revolved around the children’s ac¬ tivities with their peers. In second semes¬ ter classes, this brought to light the social as well as the academic value of nursery school for kids. The speakers provided an op¬ portunity for seniors to learn the answers to many of their specific questions about parenting. And, as Sr. Cheryl said, “It was a beautiful testimony to motherhood. ”|W| —Anne Sheridan “All babies are gifts from God, given to us for a short time with a commission to nurture them to become the hap¬ py people that He created them to be.” — Mrs. Barb Chirdon 78 MARRIAGE