Oxford High School - Wildcat Yearbook (Oxford, KS)

Page 33 text:

Mr. DeMent contemplates his next example during a lecture.. Some of the students really pose difficult questions for him. John Cooney, Keri Thomas. Paul Jones, and Yvette Abston are hard at work in Chemistry class notice they are having loads of fun, too. Malley’s Comet Matching Chickens by Todd DeMint Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. This year's science classes were just that. They my not have used chants like that one, but all of the science classes did lab work. Mr. DeMent was one of our new teachers. He taught Physical Science and Chemistry. The Physical Science classes did experiments with weight and volumes of matter, motion, and light, while the Chemistry class spent their time in the lab doing chemical reactions. Mr. Kehres was at it again teaching Biology and Ecology. The Bi- ology class did several disections, from worms to a shark, and the Ecol- ogy class took plant and dirt samples. Both classes had a student teacher, Mr. Nicholas, and both classes made trips to the zoo and Chaplin Nature Center. Junior Paul Newhouse even created life in his science class. Under the di- rection of Mr. Kehres, he was able to incubate chicken eggs — colored ones in fact — and he sold them for a small profit. The coming of Halley’s Comet was a big interest for the freshmen science students. Early in the year, they did research on this phenomena. The news media had sufficiently covered the Comet in their reports . . . now the students were the reporters.

Page 32 text:

Speaking 4 Talking by Kassa Collingsworth The speeeh drama class was taught by Mrs. Wiicoxen. It was an English credit and was offered to all O.H.S. students. The class started the year out giving demonstrations. The demonstrations were anything from making cookies to changing the oil on a three-wheeler. Next the class gave all forms of speeches including, informative, persuasive, impromptu, all the way to orations. All speeches and demonations were to be a maximum time, and included certain things in them. Nearing the end of the year the class went to a league or regional speech festival. Here certain people did plays, duet acting, prose readings, poetry, IDA'S and so on. Those participating were rated just Debbie Torres. Leigh Dobosenski. Susan May- brier. Sabrina Marsch. and Mr. Nicolas are dis- ect ing a shark actually Mr. Nicolas does the touching. ■ Ill IillllIffififimfgi like a choral concert. If you rate as one of the top 3, you get a medal and qualify for state. The class also helped with the fall and spring plays. They sold tickets, made posters, applied makeup, and did hair. Speech was a really fun class to be in and alot of neat things go on ..... just ask Mrs. Wiicoxen???!!!” says the writer of this article Kassa Collingsworth. Extemporaneous speaking is a big part of any speech class and Sandy Bain practices her here for us.

Page 34 text:

{journalism Changes by Denise Woods Wildcat Times” ”Wildcat Courier” Kitty Times No, no, these won't do.” Hey, what about Kitty Courier again?” Yell, that sounds good to me.” Hey sleeping beauty, what do you think?” Sounds okay to me, bud.” Hear ye, hear ye, this year’s paper shall be called Kitty Courier .” Facelifting the paper this year was next in line. In previous years, the newspaper had been a sort of newsletter. Now we were going to have a type of publication that was worthy or at least approaching being worthy of being called a newspaper. We had many, many feature stories written by our own staff members. Denise Woods’ training at the journalism camp that she had attended during the summer of ’85 came in helpful to say the least. She returned to O.H.S. with hundreds of ideas for feature writing. Sandy Farha, Denise Woods, and Jennifer Long were the writers who submitted more articles for publication. Every staff member did have at least one article published, however. Gretchen Moore served as a type of acting editor. While Gretchen in fact assigned the feature stories and monitored them, the actual fitting of the copy and other jobs done typically by an editor were the job of Denise Woods who worked very closely with the advisor, Ms. Myers. Denise was responsible for the paste-up and final decisions about what, where, when. Adding stories and puzzles from students in other parts of the state increase the variety of reading and interest areas. The paper had no consistant publication date because we tried to work around our yearbook deadlines, and the newspaper and yearbook staff are the same. The staff managed to squeeze out a paper in between yearbook deadlines to get experience from both types of journalism. The staff also contributed on a weekly basis to the Oxford Register articles and pictures of interest about high school activities and sports events. Meeting deadlines for the publication of the Oxford Register had a tendacy to get rather hectic for us at times. But the Journalism Class was able to represent the school by becoming and by staying involved with the Register throughout the year. At the beginning of the year, Sandy Farha and Denise Woods were involved in a broadcast journalism experience. The radio station from Wellington asked the staff for weekly summaries about O.H.S. and these students read the articles on the air. Unfortunately, the radio station lost its funding and we were forced to discontinue the show, but those involved were given an invaluable educational experience. We had many positive responses to the format of the new Kitty Courier. We tried our hand at column lengths — two and three, art work and a variety of different trends that are now popular in newspaper. Mrs. Hiltzman typed up many of the articles at the beginning of the year during her advanced typing class. After Mr. George and the BCE purchased the Journalism Class an Apple computer complete with screen and and wonderful printer, we were able to use the printer almost exclusively. The computer with its word processor were indispensable. The pages were more legible and the computer made it possible for us to set our own headlines and to even earn a bit extra money by selling ad space for Valentine’s Day to students and others. While we used other school’s papers as models, we decided to improvise and come up with our own paper’s design. The actual printing of the paper was done at the high school office with the help of Mrs. Brown. Getting four pages of a newspaper on one page so it can be properly folded and fit with 8 other pages got hectic! Mrs. Brown was patient with us and didn't get too upset while we monopolized the copier for a good two to three hours every six to seven weeks. As the year ended, the final deadlines of the yearbook were foremost on everyone’s minds. Thus, the staff wasn’t able to put out a final copy of the Kitty Courier, a graduation issue. We were definitely proud of the second edition of the Kitty Courier and hope to continue see the paper continue in the manner established this past year. Interviewing is a tedious task as Denise Woods finds out as she talks with some of the Middle School and Grade School teachers. Correctly quoting individuals is the name of the game and Denise takes her task very seriously.