Richard Montgomery High School - Rocket Yearbook (Rockville, MD)

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WHAT WE DO IN MUSIC Richard Montgomery High School has arranged the curriculum so that each child may have an opportunity to be given diverse and satisfying emotional experiences through the medium of the beautiful. Therefore, such courses as art, music, industrial arts, and home arts, are included in the curriculum with sufficient emphasis so that they actually contribute to a richer life by giving the pupil additional opportunities for expression. These are in addition but do not take the place of their writing and speaking. In the Junior high school the pupils spend a great deal of their music time on singing, since it is the simplest, most natural form of musical expression. Information about music, musicians, and instrumental music, is given from time to time as it comes up in conjunction with a radio or victrola concert. The primary aim in these grades is to enjoy, while making, or listening, to music. In the Senior high school aims differ slightly. Here the music is elective, which pre-supposes that everyone in the class is interested in some or all of the phases of music. Here the musical background of the majority of pupils in the class, plus the stated desires of the pupils themselves, decides what the course of action shall be. If the pupils have a good background of part singing as is the case of one Senior high class in Richard Montgomery, they will probably be interested in continuing to sing in parts, going on to increasingly ambitious songs. One class of tenth grade girls had a rather limited background but they all wanted to “learn how to sing,” so they started with the fundamentals of the way to breathe and make proper tones. Now, with a few exceptions, the have reached a good degree of independence and self assurance. In addition to vocal music Senior high students should take away with them some type of “yardstick” for judging the worth of the immense amount of music that pours into their homes through the medium of the radio. To accomplish this, they hear increasingly large doses of really good phonograph music, augmented by a bi-weekly radio concert. These programs are explained beforehand, so that they may be meaningful. To a child who has never really listened before to good music this is apt at first to be painful, but it also follows that when he becomes used to it, and overcomes his preconceived idea that it is “no good,” he finds himself actually intelligently enjoying it. Ideally speaking, music in the high school should be a grand culmination of the work in music classes from the first grade to the twelfth, bach child should have ample opportunity to know by the time he reaches the ninth grade just what music has to offer, and whether or not he wants to take advantage of the offer. Not everyone is suited by nature to enjoy music, and there are places in other sub- ject fields for this type of student. Rut by the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades, those who want to elect music can do so with the assurance that here they may find an outlet for emotion, an opportunity to sing by themselves or in a group, a chance to acquaint themselves with a storehouse of justly famous compositions, and above all. to enjoy themselves in a type of expression that is just a little different from anything else in the curriculum. [231

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SAFETY Richard Montgomery High School is the only school in Montgomery County where a course in traffic and automobile driving is given. This course is given under the direction of Mrs. Paul Butz who has been especially trained for this work at the University of Maryland. The school has been given the use of a new dual control Pontiac automobile for the work by the American Automobile Association. By means of the dual control car pupils get actual instruction in driving similar to that given in aviation where a cadet und instructor both control the plane. In addition to the traffic course, safety instruction is given by means of school boy patrol, posters, use of visual aid, safety assemblies, and protection for children to and from school by safety guards. Many communications are received by the school asking for a copy of its safety program. LIBRARY SCIENCE A library should be the center of the educational life of the school. To help make the Richard Montgomery such, a center of instruction is given by Mrs. Mills, librarian, so that the pupils may find material readily and effectively. Topics which are given special attention are: library regulations, classification and arrangement of books, the use of the card catalog, dictionaries, reference books, periodicals, and periodical indexes. Throughout tin course an attempt is made to cultivate a taste for good books ami magazines and to develop a love of reading. One of the two decorative wall panels in the library painted directly on the plaster in water-color paint is nearing completion. The designs, planned and executed by two twelfth grade girl . Althea Karn and Dorothy Bohannon, represent the work of a year in the advanced art class. Depicting an arrangement of beloved characters in fiction, old and new, they rise above the heads of two senior high students bent over a book. All of the sketches for the figures in the panel were drawn from life, many anonymous students voluntarily posing for them. Aside front its practical value and the interest it aroused, the work has developed a keen appreciation in two girls’ minds of the difficulties of mural painting. SEVENTH GRADE—7A AND 7C These two sections of the 7th grade meet in Room 29. For the first term they met as one class for several hours each day. Social Studies, Literature, Grammar, and Art were taught as one subject instead of as separate ones. These pupils have been brought together from many schools outside of Rockville. They have attempted to work on several things besides actual subjects. Friendliness, courtesy, and neatness have been some of their aims. They feel that some accomplishment has been made in these things. [22]

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