Perry Meridian High School - Passages Yearbook (Indianapolis, IN)

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The department saw several im- provements in the 1983 school year. Mrs. Virginia Dailey stated, We are putting more emphasis on debating and discussion techniques, which students need in order that they may become more effective speakers. Mr. Lyndon Wall, adviser of the school newspaper, FOCUS, and Jotimalism I-II teacher, said, This yeeir ' s newspaper staff has been the strongest one I ' ve worked with. There were several new ideas that knocked on the English departments ' door, also. One was to do away with aU English electives in the junior year and have a reqviired course called English V— VI. Mrs. Frances Huff, department chairman, said, This course would eliminate students who can ' t read or write effeciently. Mrs. Mary Rebber, freshman English teacher, agreed, This course would be more structiu-ed and more consis- tent among the teachers. Another idea was a program for gifted and talented students which would be taught by Mrs. Dailey who has worked with these students for 25 years. Mr. Wall was excited about the prospect of the school buying a computer for editing the school newspaper and yearbook. AU you ■«vould have to do is type in your copy, move words aroimd to where you want them, press a button, and a finished copy would be printed without any mistakes. It would save much time compared with having all of the editors manually edit it. He continued, I would like to see jour- nalism approved to be a college- preparatory course. For college- bound students, non-college preparatory courses are hard to fit in- to their schedules. If it is approved, then it Avill be easier for these students to enroll in journalism. Ms. Connie Sabo, speech and dramatic teacher, said, I think speech should be a required course for all sophomores because it is the only course that centers around learning to speak efficiently. ' Some students wrote creative work for the school newspaper and other associations. Nancy Kamman ' 86 submitted poetry to FOCUS for printing and to the Perry Township Reading Council which gathered essays, poetry, and other EngUsh- related writings from students at the elementary and high school levels. Mrs. Rebber stated, Academical- ly, the class sizes were smaller. This meant that there was more time to spend with the individual. She also commented, Since there was more time, the teachers could increase the workload on the students. This was advantageous when the results showed that thfe grades were better than those of previous years. Some courses that generated en- study, and comprehension skills. Most students thought that dramatics was an interesting course. Ms. Sabo said, I really enjo yed my dramatics class. I gave students the opportunity to express themselves creatively while gaining an apprecia- tion of a vital art form. This class Tina Sykes ' 87 studies in English. iS - Mark Leonard ' 86 questions Mrs. Peggy Minor about a grammatical error. Mrs. Chert Austin assists Jeremy Ciampa ' 87 with an adverbial dependant clause. thuslam were Etymology, which studied English words with Greek and Latin derivitives. Mrs. Rebber in- dicated, I do not know why Etymology drew so many students, possibly to do better on the PSAT and SAT college tests. Developmen- tal Reading was a popular class. It studied reading rate, vocabulary enabled students to escape reality by providing entertainment, whUe still learning about himian behavior. With all of the improvements, new projects, Etnd advancements pro- jected in the English department, English was less foreign to PMHS students. ENGLISH 14a

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Eiiglish Isn t Foreign Auymore The English department at Ferry Meridian tried to make English more familiar to those students who thought it was as hard to imderstand as if it were foreign. Some students thought that EngUsh was just a language, but at Perry, Enghsh was a way of life, a way of expressing oneself. The English department was in- volved with many projects. The dramatics classes had a professional actress, KatlmTi Walsh, come in and discuss her point of view on the Shakespearean play As You Like It , in which she acted. There were more activities associated with writing, such as participating in national and local writing contests. The social comment classes saw a Martin Luther King film and wrote essays for the Black history contest. The jour- ■ nalism classes wrote creative work on various topics, such as radio broadcasting. Students wrote a dialogue, recorded themselves, and played it back, and it seems like a real broadcast. New equipment was used to fur- ther develop the department. In- troductory speech classes videotaped 20 minute broadcasts with a videotape machine. The school pur- chased a 16nmi camera with which Mrs. Gloria Sam ' s and Mrs. Wanda Strange ' s film study students made a class film. Students in these two classes experienced what it was like to be on the set. Mr. Craig Potter goes over punctuation skills with Greg HoUen ' 86 on an English 3 composition concerning aspects of life in the United States. 142 ENGLISH

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After sitting behind the teacher ' s desk another period. Amy Emsting ' 84 heads back to Perry. Exploraton.- teacher Amy Emsting ' 84 shows Amanda Robbins various ' B ' objects at RISE. Students Can Teach, Too Exploratory teaching was a course where senior students spent home- room and fifth period teaching at cer- tain area elementary and middle schools for one semester of the school year. The student teachers were assigned to work with a cooper- ating teacher in a given grade level for nine weeks. The second nine weeks of the semester they moved to another grade and teacher in the same building. Participating in the exploratory teaching program were Abraham Linclon, MacArthur, and Burkhart elementary schools. The exploratory teachers had their own transporta- tion and had a neat and professional appearance . The purpose of this course was to give the students teaching experience and to give them references they could use for the rest of their lives, Mrs. Hazel Whitesell, exploratory teaching director, said, The purpose was to give students interest in teaching to see if they really want this type of career. Ann Miller ' 83 said, Exploratory teaching taught you to be more patient with not only kids, but adults, too. To succeed in this course, the students underwent much prepara- tion. The first week of the semester was spent preparing students for teaching. After this, they were no longer kept at Perry. Mrs. Whitesell saw them each day at the end of fifth period when they told of any prob- lems they had. She had the opportuni- ty to give instructions and to talk with them. The students prepared for class by thinking about how to deal with many questions and answers, thinking about new and different pro- jects, and going into the classroom with a positive mind. Several people were involved with exploratory teaching. Mrs. Whitesell directed the course. The sudents par- ticipating in the exploratory teaching program were Catherine Hamm, Chris Spence, Julia Hilcz, Ed Brehob, Maureen WUliams, Wihna Newman, Ann Miller, Michele Perry, Melissa Bolton, Tonya Hazelwood, Kathy EUet, Susan Arthur, Misty McKay, and Karan Deardorff. Mrs. Whitesell indicated, The grade for the first nine weeks was the grade that was given by the cooper- ating teachers! The final grade was determined by the cooperating teachers ' evaluations along with Mrs. Whitesell ' s which was decided from the written work they had been assigned and from observations of their appearance, attitude and effort. The students were required to switch to another area, grade level, or sub- ject at the end of the grading period. This was to give them as much varie- ty in teaching as possible. They were required to spend one full day in their classroom during the semester. Getting in front of a group was dif- ficult for some, even if that group would consist of five year old children. This course helped the stu- dent teachers determine whether they wanted to spend four years in college working toward a degree in education. Susan Arthur ' 83 stated, I took this class because I ' ve always wanted to be a teacher. She learned that a teacher had to be a nurse, 144 EXPLORATORY lEACHERS