Well, this year's A.P. English 12 class is about to become history. Here's a look back at all the fun, trials and triumphs.
(Editor's note: You may wonder why the heck I called it the Real American Weekly. First, consider the acronym for Advanced Placement English: A.P.E. Since apes are not as advanced as humans, I decided not to call it "The A.P.E. 12 Headline Review." I was a fan of Hulk Hogan at that time--his entrance theme was "I am a Real American"--and I had planned to publish the A.P. English newsletter on a weekly basis, so I called it the "Real American Weekly," or "R.A.W." for short. Oddly enough, a few years later, World Wrestling Entertainment changed the name of its popular Monday night show from "Prime Time Wrestling" to "Monday Night RAW.")
The year began as if summer vacation was still in full effect. Why? Mrs. Sparrow's summer reading assignments (given to last year's A.P. English 11 class a few months back) had been originally due at the beginning of the new school year, but she gave an extra week to finish them.
In the meantime, those 19--plus four new students--got to learn why Mrs. Sparrow was called the "Ditto Queen." The first dittos she handed out were tests pertaining to styles of learning (including the left vs. right brain test, where the majority of the class turned out to be right-brained, and the Auditory-Visual-Digital-Kinesthetic test, in which the class showed that its responses were mainly digital). Another test was based on a model by educational theorist David Kolb; according Kolb, people could be divided into four groups--Divergers, Assimilators, Convergers and Accomodators; Kolb further stated that the first group gets an idea, the second researches it, and the third prepares it so the fourth can sell it. Most of the students were Divergers.
She also began a series of Vocabulary Games, where she tried to stump the class with advanced vocabulary words. If anyone in the class knew the word, or could muster a close enough guess, the class got a point; otherwise, Mrs. Sparrow got a point. (More details on these games, an annual A.P. English 12 tradition, are available later in this article. In addition, you can learn about the words Mrs. Sparrow challenged her students with in the Vocabulary Game Dictionary, which is part of the G&G Reunion Issue.)
Mrs. Sparrow tried to recruit A.P. English 12 students for her Mythology class, as did Mrs. Brook for her Speech and Drama classes. Mrs. Sparrow was the more successful of the two; several A.P. 12 students would take Mythology. Those students lobbied for her to switch her lunch hour from A-lunch to B; they agreed on a compromise (the earlier A-Lunch Monday and Wednesday; the later B-Lunch on the other three days).
Also, Jim Cannon irritated many students with his chalkboard scratching, especially Rebecca Stern and Jodi Ping.
Paul Levine made people cringe, too, but he did so by butchering oral readings of plays. In the Maxwell Anderson play "Barefoot in Athens," based on the trial and final days of Greek philosophy legend Socrates, Levine deliberately butchered two roles--first Socrates, then Socrates' friend, Crito.
Students from the class got to go on two trips: One was to the Fisher Theatre in downtown Detroit to see the Broadway production of Les Misérables. A week later, they went off to see Lysistrata, the Greek comedy by Aristophanes, at the Civic Theatre in Ann Arbor. Harrison High did not sanction either trip as a "school event," so anyone who wanted to go had to carpool.
Todd Rope got to teach Mr. Dennis King's 4th and 5th hour Physics classes for one day. He would have taught the 6th hour class as well, but Mrs. Sparrow insisted that he attend her class that hour.
Matt Paletz rushed back to Room 307 after a Nuance Society (vocal/dance group) practice and got the rest of the class to help him pull a prank on his fellow Nuance Society members. The trick: Fool them into thinking that Mrs. Sparrow had just assigned an impromptu essay. The prank worked well enough that it put more red on the faces of Jenny Church and Jodi Ping than Tammy Faye Bakker could put on hers in a week.
Let's just say that the students were so into Chaucer's Canterbury Tales that they really didn't have much more time to mess around. Mrs. Sparrow also dug up some written Middle English, and surprised the class by actually reading passages of Middle English out loud.
Several students went off to a Quiz Bowl tournament at the Baldwin Library in Birmingham. The trip was really the first such trip of the year, since a number of students were unable to make a similar tourney in November (due to the fact that some team members were in the band and had pre-existing commitments to it). Captained by Todd Rope, and supported by a few other A.P. English students (including Matt Paletz, Dana Apfelblat, Paul Levine and Mark Rabinowitz), Harrison's team lost to Troy, beat Holly, and lost to Troy again. Quiz Bowl team coach Mr. Ray Voss was displeased by a poor "lightning round" during the final game, when the HHS team alternated between guesses of Judy Garland and Bette Davis (the category was Oscar-winning actresses).
As all the officers in Harrison's chapter of the National Honor Society were in A.P. English 12 (President Matt Paletz, Vice-President Jim Cannon, Secretary Dana Apfelblat and Treasurer Tim Story), perhaps it was no surprise that they got Mrs. Sparrow to be the guest speaker at the NHS induction ceremony January 29. She based her speech on two Greek words: Paideia (meaning education) and arete (excellence). She alluded to the Vocabulary Games that she played with her A.P. English 12 class, adding that earlier that same day, she was unable to stump Mark Rabinowitz, one of the new inductees, with "schism." (Rabinowitz was able to recall the Great Schism between the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches, from the Medieval European History class he had with Mr. Goldstein three years earlier.) A.P. English 12 had one other new inductee, Shannon McCormick.
Here was the one and only time that students in the class got to judge their own essays. They wrote essays about a poem, Storm Warnings by Adrienne Rich, and then evaluated each other's essays. Mrs. Sparrow considered the class to be good judges, as she didn't find any real faults in any of the 11 essays she selected.
Also, Winter Break was extended two days due to Mother Nature's one-two punch of heavy snowfall and freezing rain.
Mrs. Sparrow got set to publish a new book. The publishers wanted a picture of her on the back cover, so she showed some photos to her class so they could help her decide. One odd thing was, some of the photos had been taken in April 1989, when her hair was styled differently (slicked back on the sides). Also, this new book wasn't one of the paperback romance novels she wrote for Harlequin (which never have authors' pictures).
Later that month, Mrs. Sparrow had to postpone a test on two Shakespeare plays (The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet) twice: First, the oral readings of these plays took more time than expected; second; there was a mix-up with choral director Mrs. Brachel regarding dates for choir practices, and several students were in a practice on the day the test had been rescheduled.
April started off on a roll as most of the class prepared for a trip to the Attic Theatre in Detroit on April 8. There, they saw a modernized production of Hamlet. The overall consensus was that the show was too long, but still enjoyable. Certainly, those that wanted to go, but couldn't, still wished they could have. This Hamlet included such modern touches as rock music, Levi's jeans, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern dressed as the Blues Brothers, and Hamlet balancing himself on a chair--with the chair itself balanced on one leg--during his legendary "to be or not to be" soliloquy.
The next day, the class would go over Metaphysical and Cavalier poetry. This time, Mrs. Sparrow wanted her students to read them silently. Problem was, Matt Paletz, Todd Rope and Paul Levine wanted to read them out loud. Mrs. Sparrow sent the three outside to "read to the paint," but they wouldn't exactly back down. When a substitute teacher presided over the class on April 10, those three and a few others read some John Donne poems, such as Elegy XX: To His Mistress Going to Bed, out loud. The highlight of the hour came when they sang "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" to the tune of "Oh My Darling Clementine."
The Quiz Bowl team had its final game of the year April 26 at Livonia Stevenson High School. Losing in the first round to Northville was bad enough, but the players also had to endure five hours' worth of Stevenson rules (no food or drinks beyond a certain area, for example).
A.P. English 12 began a battery of preparatory tests and impromptu assignments for the May 18 AP Exam, which included a review of the 1987 AP Exam. The torture would go on for roughly three weeks. In the end, 12 students took that exam: Dana Apfelblat, Jenny Church, Amy Gallagher, Carl Johnson, Paul Levine, Sonja Magdevski, John Oros, Matt Paletz, Debbie Stein, Tim Story, Erica Watnick and Kathy White.
May 10 was Senior Skip Day, so it was no surprise that only six students showed up. At 1:39 P.M. that day, the power went out and class was dismissed early (thanks to a newly implemented school policy on power failures; see The Top 5 Events Witnessed by the Class of 1990 for more details on the power failure that led to that new policy).
Both A.P. English classes (A.P. 12 and Mrs. Nyberg's A.P. 11) once again took a trip to the Stratford Festival on May 21. This time, over 40 students came to see Macbeth, the Shakespeare tragedy. Thanks to a newly-opened stretch of I-696, the bus rides didn't take as long. Before and after Macbeth, the students ate and indulged in what sightseeing they could. (Editor's note: Shopping wasn't possible, though: May 21 is Victoria Day in Canada, so a lot of shops were closed.)
THE VOCABULARY GAME
After 22 games, the score is knotted up at 42. In the meantime, here are the first-ever Vocabulary Game records (nobody kept 'em until R.A.W. did so this year):
Most words in a game:
Mark Rabinowitz, 3 (September 8, 1989)
Most words in a month:
Paul Levine, 3 1/2 (November 1989)
Most words in a year:
Paul Levine, 6 5/6 (1989-90)
Other alltime top scorers:
Dana Apfelblat, 5 5/6
Matt Paletz, 5 1/2
Mark Rabinowitz, 5
Todd Rope, 4 5/6
Jim Cannon, 4
We hope there will be a Game 23 to break the tie. Go A.P. English 12!
(Editor's note: I had expected that there would be a tie-breaker game, but there was none, so the score remained a tie. In addition, the Vocabulary Game Dictionary--an article featuring each and every word used during the 1989-90 edition of the Vocabulary Game--did not become part of the first Green & Gold Digest due to the concern that Mrs. Sparrow might put at least one more word up on the board, rendering the "Dictionary" out-of-date and incomplete. Instead, it became part of the Green & Gold Reunion Issue, published for the class' 10-year reunion.)
NOTABLE QUOTES FROM A.P. ENGLISH 12
"Cliff Note party!"
-Paul Levine, when Mrs. Sparrow suggested that the class "get acquainted" with one of the books that had been assigned to the class for summer reading
"Did you think I'd keep my eyes off that clock?"
-Mrs. Sparrow, when Jenny Church commented that she was giving them homework with two minutes left in the hour.
"He's in back with the waitress."
-David Hartman, when someone looking for The Cook's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales asked, "Where's the cook?"
"A good day at school is an oxymoron."
-Matt Paletz
"I am amazed at your arrogance!"
-Mrs. Mary Brown to Matt Paletz
"So are freshmen."
-Mrs. Sparrow, on members of the rodent family; earlier that day, a student wondered whether Mark Rabinowitz was correct when, in an issue of R.A.W., he referred to the hamster Jenny Seiler brought to class as a rodent, and Mrs. Sparrow said that he was correct
"It's like being a teen mother."
-Jodi Ping, on taking care of hamsters
"Did your car break down?"
"No, my eyelids did."
-Matt Paletz, asking David Hartman why he was late to class, and Hartman's response
"Look at all those vultures, trying to get an 'A' by complimenting Mrs. Sparrow."
-Todd Rope, as the class looked at pictures of Mrs. Sparrow, one of which was to be selected for the back cover of a book she had written
The Real American Weekly © 1990. Edited by Mark Rabinowitz for Green & Gold Digest. R.A.W. gives its best wishes for the Class of 1990.
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