Newton North High School - Newtonian Yearbook (Newton, MA)

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TRANSITIO The senior year is one of transition for the student. lt is in this year that he moves from the relatively sheltered life of an ado- lescent, a member of a family and a high-school student, to the world of adulthood, independence, and work or higher educa- tion. Each of these roles will make much greater demands upon his ability to make productive decisions and upon his assump- tion of personal responsibility. Transition, Newton North's alternative senior program, was designed to help students learn experientially, to help them develop a sense of responsibility and to enable them to deal with problems through direct experience, at the same time that they continue to learn academically. During the first semester, Transition students spent every A and B block in the Transition room, 4692, with the two Transi- tion founders teachers, Mike Morris and Ron Boucher. Most of the time was spent in group meetings, in which students shared experiences, discussed various aspects of sociology, psychol- ogy and history, and generally prepared themselves forthe trials and challenges of the second semester. Transition is almost exclusively funded by the students in the program. ln order to raise these funds, Transition students orga- nized several profitable fund-raising programs, including a flea-market and the now traditional Transition store on Main Street. This year the students organized a Political Action com- mittee, to make Transition a cohesive force in the crucial School Committee elections. The second semester, in which the students were involved full-time in Transition, was divided into four modules, each a month long: the Social Service module, the Urban module, the Occupation module, and the Wilderness module. During the Social Service module, students spent their time working for such organizations as the Medford State Hospital for the mentally ill, OXFAM-World Hunger. the Cambridge Head Start Program and Mass. Advocacy. Although they had to work within the general framework of Social Service, students were free to choose the type of service and the organization that most interested them. The Urban module consisted of supervised field experience in the city of Boston. lt helped the students to understand cities, 20 the relationship between them and their suburbs, the workings of their governments, the interrelationships of their parts , and their value as cultural and esthetic entities. Since many students will probably spend the majority of their lives in urban areas, such training is truly invaluable. The Occupation module helped bring into focus what most students realize only vaguely, that one of the most important functions of education is to prepare the student for his future occupation. During the Occupation module, students chose occupations that interested them and gained first-hand knowl- edge of these fields through actual work experience. Students chose occupational areas as disparate as farming, journalism, carpentry and college-level teaching. The culmination of the Transition year was the Wilderness module, a twelve day trip through the Allegash Wilderness in Northern Maine. The students underwent extensive training to prepare for an expedition that included canoe-skills, training at Walden Pond, and camping skills training at the Blue Hills. Transition students also prepared for the voyage by going on numerous smaller trips throughout the year, such as a survival weekend on a Cape Cod island and a winter hike on Plum Island. The Wilderness trip was designed, among other things, to help students appreciate the glory and the majesty of the wilderness. It helped the individual students to increase his self-confidence and sense of personal worth by confronting cir- cumstances in which he had to deal with his own strengths and weaknesses in order to accomplish crucial tasks and overcome obstacles. In the four years since its inception, Transition has become a well established part ofthe Newton North program. It has given students an opportunity to escape from the stagnation of Senior life into the warmth and excitement of group meshing and personal challenge. This year's Transition students declare that the program has provided them with one of the most rewarding, beneficial and educational experiences of their lives.TranSiIiOn reflects well the flexibility and the brand of realistic idealism that marks Newton North, the enthusiasm and vigor of its stu- dents, and the creativity, organizational powers and the vision of its teachers.

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