Newport News High School - Anchor Yearbook (Newport News, VA)

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7a Slw iltand And tyfxinCf, Colly, I hope I can get my certificate today. This is what you ' d hear among shorthand and typing students. Speed cer- tificates are required for a passing grade on both these subjects. Upon completion of two years of short- hand, the student must be able to take dic- tation at the rate of at least one hundred words per minute. The Typing 3 students are required to make their intermediate certifi- cate of forty-five words per minute for fif- teen minutes before they go into Typing 4. Lucky bookkeeping students did not have to bother with certificates, but they had to learn to balance a set of books! All of the shorthand students since 1942 that have wanted jobs have been placed by the department. Many of these students earned their basic experience by serving as secretaries to members of the faculty. The motto for these girls is practice and more practice. WE FOUND OUT, Uncle Sam, that you have to be practically a math wizard in order to master the course in bookkeeping offered at our high school. FROM CLASSROOM TO OFFICE is the story for many of our advanced typists, whose services are always in demand in local business concerns. 27

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Wasting no time this past year, the his- tory department devoted twenty per cent of class time to current affairs, with reports on local, national, and international events. Heated discussions and debates followed these issues, which usually concerned racial problems and other vital topics. Government classes held honest-to-good- ness trials, visited the local courthouse, and got first-hand information on what makes the fire department tick by climbing over the fire engines and sliding down the poles at the fire station. That must have been fun, don ' t you think, Uncle Sam? The history department also sponsored two school-wide projects: An assembly speech by Dr. W. T. Squires, a noted his- torian from Norfolk, who told the student body about Stonewall Jackson ' s private life; and a film depicting life in colonial Williamsburg. Digging into the past and observing the present ke.ot all the history students busy! cM-iitosuf, NoieA, r l JeSie Zaby ROUND-TABLE DISCUSSION of current topics, both foreign and home-front, make the several history courses more fascinating, as the students compare the happen- ings of the past with those of the present. GOVERNMENT STUDENTS find that the fire sta- tion is really the best way to get a first hand account of one of the city ' s public utilities. 26

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% e Z ' lt ' ix ' ie ' i ' LeA 6u i 1 Uaucflit ' i 9n ' Wa ' idd, We are really proud of our drama and speech department, Uncle Sam, for besides producing plays, the drama and speech students served as models for other schools. Schools without a drama department were referred to ours, and we are proud to say the drama department has the reputation of being one of the best in the nation! Dur- ing the year, groups of teachers from eight different schools came to watch our stu- dents in action! A drama clinic was held at the school in January for the Norfolk and Newport News district. Before the seven schools rep- resented here, the drama students illus- trated make-up techniques, and turned actors and actresses for directing demon- strations. For the first time in the history of the school, Uncle Sam, both of the senior class night plays were written by two of the sen- iors. These plays were class projects in Drama 4, where the advanced students studied play-writing. Before students reach the play-writing stage, however, they must have speech classes where they study such things as cor- rect posture in speech making, and how to put both their audiences and themselves more at ease during a speech. Our ad- vanced speech class became so good that it presented a series of radio programs for the Family Counseling Service. HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED, Uncle Sam, that correct posture seems to make a speech easier to deliver and easier to listen to? Really, it does! MINIATURE STAGE SETS saved time, energy, nerves and patience when our dramatists were ar- ranging scene plots for a play. 28