| Virgil I. Grissom High School | |
|---|---|
| Location | |
| Huntsville, Alabama, United States | |
| Information | |
| Type | Public |
| Motto | Id Facere Possumus |
| Established | 1969 |
| Principal | B. T. Drake |
| Grades | 9-12 |
| Enrollment | 1,992 |
| Color(s) | Orange, Brown & White |
| Nickname | Tigers |
| Accreditation(s) | Southern Association of Secondary Schools |
| Newspaper | 'The Imprint' |
| Website | GHS official website |
Virgil I. Grissom High School, more commonly referred to as Grissom High School, is a public high school in Huntsville, Alabama, United States with approximately 2000 students in grades 9-12 from Southeast Huntsville. The school was named a 2007 Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education.[1] In the Newsweek ranking of schools throughout the nation for 2008, Grissom High School was ranked fifth best in the state and 708th nationally.[2] Grissom was the only high school in Huntsville to make the 2008 list.
Contents |
The school is located in Southeast Huntsville and serves an area of largely middle to upper-middle class neighborhoods. The suburban middle schools within the area include: Mountain Gap Middle School, Challenger Middle School, and Whitesburg Middle School.
Grissom High School was founded in 1969 and is named for astronaut Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, killed in the Apollo 1 fire at Cape Kennedy, Florida on January 27, 1967. Huntsville is home to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and has ties to the space program. At the same time, the Huntsville City Schools named Roger B. Chaffee Elementary and Ed White Middle School for Grissom's fallen Apollo 1 crewmates.[3]
In 2007, Newsweek magazine ranked Grissom among the top 5% of all high schools in the United States. The school was ranked 531 among the top 1200 high schools in the nation based on the number of Advanced Placement, Cambridge tests, and/or International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students at a school and then dividing by the number of graduating seniors.[4]
Grissom produced 28 National Merit Semifinalists for 2007, the highest number in the state.[5] Grissom's math teams and academic team have also earned national recognition. Grissom's 2007 Science Olympiad state team placed 2nd at the state competition at Samford University. They participated in the National Science Olympiad competition in Kansas in May 2007, and in 2008 participated in the National competition in Augusta, Georgia. In 2008, Grissom's Debate and Speech Team qualified for, and competed in the NFL National Tournament in Las Vegas, NV.
Kay Cornelius, who taught in the English department at Grissom for the majority of her 30-year teaching career, is a published author with more than a dozen books to her credit.[6] She also wrote test units for the PSAT and College Board specialized-subject achievement tests, as well as reviewing the Board's English literature examination. Her first novel, Love's Gentle Journey was published in 1985. Cornelius retired from teaching to write full-time in 1990.[7]
Edward S. Dravecky Jr., the last teacher at Grissom to have taught there every year since it opened in 1969, retired in May, 2007, after 45 years of service in the Huntsville City Schools.[8][9] He founded the school's Advanced Placement U.S. History course in 1984.
The high school's building was designed to act as an emergency fallout shelter. Therefore classrooms contained no windows, save for a small one in room FF4, prior to the addition of a new science wing in 1997. This addition added several windows in H and HH pods. Grissom's roughly octagonal building is divided into "pods", lettered A-H on the first floor and AA-HH on the second. The main hallways are adjoined by a single story circular commons, which provides access to the gyms, lunchrooms, and a fine arts area including a band room, choral room, and an auditorium. Grissom has one main gym and one auxiliary gym. It also has one main lunchroom and one senior lunchroom.
Grissom High School offers the most Advanced Placement Program courses in the area[10], including, but not limited to:
Students from Grissom can participate in a dual enrollment program and take classes at the University of Alabama in Huntsville or at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa through correspondence.[11]
As of 2007, Grissom has football, boys/girls basketball, volleyball, baseball, cross country, track, golf, swim/dive, boys/girls soccer, boys/girls tennis, wrestling, and cheerleading teams, a dance program directed by Stephanie Braly-Beutjer, a choral program directed by Elizabeth Stephenson, a theatre program directed by Lydia Marsh,[12] as well as marching, symphonic, and jazz bands directed by Bill Connell and Theo Vernon. Other notable extracurricular activities include an academic team and an extremely competitive math team, that in addition to competing in contests, runs numerous mathematics programs, camps, and competitions. Rocket City Math League is an international mathematics competition run by Grissom math team students. A wide variety of extracurricular clubs are also present at Grissom.
Grissom's quiz bowl has won 8 Alabama UAB/Alabama Scholastic Competition Association (ASCA) state championships (1982 (4A), 1987 (5A-6A), 1991, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003, & 2004) - the most of any Alabama high school - with a runner-up finish in 2005[13]. Grissom finished 5th in the 1992 Texaco Star National Academic Championship in Houston, Texas.
Grissom's bimonthly newspaper is The Imprint, which is recognized by the Alabama Scholastic Press Association. The annual literary magazine is called Seed, and the annual school yearbook is named Invictus.
Grissom High School has an Army JROTC program.[14] The Army instructors are First Sergeant Lynn Vanzandt, and Sergeant First Class Randall Grady, both of whom are retired from the Armed Forces. During the 2007-2008 school year SFC Randall Grady was the Rifle Team Commander, 1SG Lynn Vanzandt was the Raider Team Commander, and COL Rodney Johnson was the Drill and Ceremonies Commander before he retired. The Rifle Team routinely attends the National Air Rifle Competition. The Cannon Battery maintains and fires the school's Civil War-era replica Mountain Howitzer at home football games.[15] The male and female Raider Teams are ranked second and first, respectively, in the nation.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||