Washington Senior High School
The oldest standing high school is the city's old middle school, which is home to the city's auditorium. The second-oldest standing high school was the city's old Sunnyside Kindergarten, which is now The Well, a free-clothing store for low-income houses. In the early 1960s, a new high school was constructed on Willard Street. However, that high school has been recently demolished, as it was built upon a marsh-like ground, and began to sink. In 2009, the newest high school was built, which currently sits on Elm Street along with the new middle school. Both schools are connected by a building called Liberty Hall, which has a very small auditorium that can fit roughly 150 people.
Some residents protest that the high school does not participate in the National Honor Society, and that the district's substitute, the "Academy of Scholars," does not hold as much weight with colleges as the NHS.
Washington Senior High has approximately 50 staff members, and approximately 700 students in grades 9-12. Only the school board is aware of numbers as to teacher/student capacity in the new schools.
Drama and Choral Music
In the past several years, Washington has performed annual Broadway musicals, such as South Pacific, Big, Footloose, Children of Eden, West Side Story, Beauty and the Beast, Seussical, The Sound of Music, Godspell, Peter Pan, and most recently, The Phantom of the Opera. The school also has the concert choir, the symphonic choir, and the show choir.
Instrumental music
The director of the high school's bands is master teacher Matt Stanley. He directs the school's jazz band, concert band, symphonic band, marching band, and pep band.
On Friday Nights during the Autumn Football Season, the marching band can be heard throughout town. The marching style of the band is modeled after The Ohio University Marching 110, which is not a true "marching" band but more a "performance" band. The WCH Marching Band currently has 140 members. The band plays a variety of songs from Classic Rock Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne, to newer hits like Bad Romance by Lady Gaga. The trademark song of the marching band is Long Train Runnin' by The Doobie Brothers.
The pep band supports the school's boys' basketball team.
Research History
This class in Washington Court House's high school curriculum places seniors within reach of leading national scholarship through the analyzation of primary source documents. Master teacher Paul LaRue instructs students for this class.
Some projects either completed or in progress are as follows:
- Compiling a single record of all who are buried in the Soldier's Home Cemetery, Washington, DC (the companion national cemetery to Arlington) from two separate and conflicting records. Washington C.H. High School seniors are the sole laborers in the U.S. to complete this project of national significance.
- Constructing and maintaining two websites on the Civil War U.S. Colored Troops, or USCT. One website is dedicated to USCT from Ohio and is highly ranked in Google searches.
- Obtaining and installing headstones for many unmarked black veterans in the Washington Cemetery, many from the USCT.
- Obtaining and installing headstones for unmarked veterans in the Bloomingburg Cemetery, Bloomingburg, OH. (For which the students earned an award from The History Channel, below)
- Compiling a publishable historical account of the Bloomingburg Cemetery
- Obtaining Historical Site Markers from the Ohio Historical Society for many historically significant areas in and around Washington Court House
- Developing pamphlets for distribution about various historical sites around Washington Court House
In 2005, the research history team sent two representatives to Washington, DC to compete in a national history research competition sponsored by "The History Channel." The program, called "Save Our History," included project submissions from hundreds of schools and extracurricular teams from across the country. Washington Court House's Research History class placed in the final four high school teams, and thus, was offered an all-expenses-paid trip for two student representatives to the nation's capital. For the same project work done, the class received plaques from the Veteran's Administration's headquarters in Washington, DC.
Read more about this topic: Education In Washington Court House, Washington Court House City Schools
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