New Bern High School - Bruin Yearbook (New Bern, NC)

Page 18 text:

MSA? WOPJ 5461! Ina 0 cmsnuw glgllf 4 7' ' , ' . ::,z:i!5'-as AJ., 7 f-- , - ' . Q., . Stop giggling, girls! A business letter is a serious matter! Sonia Godwin and Judy Coburn dictate to Alice Dunn-all are members of the class in business English. Who me? just drawing a picture of a sentence! Lindy Dail is the artistg her critic-Lindsey Stokes. you fLinA anal fAe fAougAf The English language is a beautiful instru- ment of communication, and as such should be used with pleasure and cherished with pride. Such is the philosophy of the New Bern High School English Department. The teaching program, designed and executed with the hope of inducing students to subscribe to this philosophy, divides itself naturally into four fields-grammar, composition, vocabulary, and literature-each year's work being built upon a foundation from the preceding year. Thus, in the beginning, just as a doctor to understand the human body must in the course of his study dissect one, so do we English students take apart certain sentences and pile the words neatly aside to be studied in detail. It is in this process of dissecting a sentence that we learn parts of speech and syntax, becoming familiar with terms ranging from subject and predicate in the ninth grade to objective complement and retained objectsv in the twelfth grade-not to mention the unmentionable complement-of-a- linking-infinitive-having-a-subject. In the work of assembling sentences-com- position-we not only learn to think straight and to express ourselves logically and effectively, but we also learn the traffic signals of writing. Traf- fic signals? Certainly, a period says stop. An apostrophe signals a short cutg parentheses indi- cate a detour, and on through the punctuation symbols. Ill THF. 5- 6 an The colonial period of American literature lends itself to interesting bulletin boards for this group of juniors.

Page 17 text:

f eelafg info fde page of foclay in-iv: fre? The ever-absorbing mystery of the work- ing of their own minds kept the psychology class at work while the unquestionable impor- tance of learning how the other half of the world lives was foremost in the consideration of the world history classes where they re- viewed the strange, combat-flavored history of foreign countries. After all, the students told themselves, the right of citizenship can assume no real significance to those ignorant of history, nor can we recognize our place and responsibility among the nations of the world. In the field of social studies a New Bern boy or girl may choose from the following courses: world history, U. S. history frequired, of coursel, civics, problems of democracy, sociology, economics and psychology, each course carrying a credit of one unit. - 'en x 1 Top: Using working models, diagrams. and pictures, Billy jarrel and john Heath discussed the history of man's weapons. Center: Jean Earl XVorthington, Janeth Hill, jimmy Ross and Charles Carraway plotted the course of western develop- ment. Bottom: Tracing the boundaries im- posed by the Monroe Doctrine: Gwen Hargett, Eloise Nelson, Harry Bowen, and Gary Brooks. 15

Page 19 text:

77 5411! ma e you hee. Since words are the currency of thought, it is the con- viction of the English department that the more words we master the richer become our thought processes. Only those concepts belong to us for which we possess adequate vo- cabulary. Effort, then is constantly being made to help our boys and girls grow in word knowledge. Sometimes the method used is formal, sometimes it is a word game, but the result is always another deposit in the vocabulary fund. Perhaps one of the most valuable classes of the Eng- lish department is that of journalism. Here it is that the student gets the concentrated experience in writing that the crowded program of a regular class prohibits. This class, under the direction of Miss Lucie Hodges, publishes The Bear Cub, a monthly story of high school activities. Also under the auspices of the English department is The Bruin, New Bern High School's yearbook, a photographic record of school life, planned and published with the help and advice of Mrs. D. A. Roebuck. Approximately half of the English year is spent in the study of literature for the depart- ment staff feels that literature offers, in addition to a school of model composition, such greater values as: personality development, lasting plea- sure, intellectual challenge, a revelation of man's deepest humanity, and spiritual enrichment. ik Marshall Braddy makes a gallant start on his research paper by checking out a few research books. nf' 45. 'U' Writers' tools are words. Janice Messer and Nancy O'Neal are learning to respect them. Freshman English class use small dictionaries to look up big words. I I i 1 V I I 1 . 1 ai