In my junior year of high school, my english and history classes were basically combined. It was actually a pretty neat set-up. We met in a double-sized classroom that held about 50 of us. Mr. Flanagan and Mr. Isaacs would pretty much team teach the giant class.
Early in the school year, we were divided up into groups. This division was to prepare us for the ultimate social sciences project: The Decades Project.
Our big assignment for the first semester was to pick one year from our assigned decade and write a newspaper, giving the chosen year a sort of year in review edition. I can't remember the specific year that our group chose, but I know our decade was the 60s. I want to say our newspaper was based on 1969. A lot happened that year, and at the end of the decade, it made sense to mention some of the major events of the decade on the whole.
The big project happened toward the end of the year. Each group was tasked, basically, with writing a play and performing that play for the rest of the class. Oh, and some of the freshman and sophomore classes got to come in and watch too. No pressure or anything.
As with most of my high school memories, I've repressed a lot of this, so I don't remember much of it. I do remember that I played a kid who had just found out he was being drafted and would be going to Vietnam. So a few hippies decided to take me on a cross-country trip as a sort of last hurrah. And we broke down near a farm somewhere in the midwest. We felt this gave us a nice cross-section of Americana and could use each of those characters to explore the events of the 60s.
I remember getting together with my group and working on things at the Waffle House and at Kinko's. These places were much better than working in the library. I know we all worked really hard on the thing. But I can't remember how our grades turned out. I really want to believe we all got As. Whatever the case, I know we passed. 'Cause all but one of us showed up for senior year. The one who didn't graduated after junior year.
High school is almost over...
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