Talk:Riverside Christian School

Demons

If any serious editor who knows something about this school is looking at this article, I think the second paragraph under Demons appears unencyclopedic. I'm suggesting either removing it or rewriting it somehow.Tfosorcim (talk) 19:08, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

West Side Christian School

There's a weird paucity of information here about Riverside's origins as West Side Christian School, which doesn't have its own Wikipedia entry.

I attended for three school years, 78-81, for 8th-10th grades. I don't have enough information to add to the article, but here's what little I can contribute in case anyone else can:

The reason for the change from West Side Christian School to Riverside was because enrollment was limited by parents from other denominations concerned that their children would be indoctrinated as Conservative Baptists. West Side Baptist Church is a member of the Conservative Baptist conference. The move to Riverside was primarily about making the school independent of West Side Baptist Church (and any other church) so that parents from other denominations would be more willing to enroll their children. In addition to making the school legally independent from any one church, they also built a new school building. West Side Christian School had been housed mainly in West Side Baptist Church.

Long before all that, sometime around '82 or '83 or so, West Side Baptist Church built a new church building at 6901 Summitview Avenue and vacated its old one at 3414 Tieton Drive. The new building was centered around the school, with a lot of classrooms and no main sanctuary. Instead the plan was to temporarily use the school gym as the main sanctuary and build a main sanctuary later. Nearly 40 years later today, they are still using that same room as the main sanctuary, though it has been remodeled and is no longer a gym.

Riverside retains the school colors (navy blue & gold) and mascot (crusader) of West Side Christian School. (ok I added this part to the article.)

From its 1973 beginning to the move to the Summitview building in the early '80s, WSCS was housed in the old WSBC building at 3414 Tieton Drive. That building now houses a small congregation called "One Life Family Worship", formerly called "Church on the Move". The building appears to have lost its steeple.

For the 78-79 school year, the junior high and senior high students were housed at Grace Brethren Church at 904 South 26th Avenue. That building now has a sign that seems to indicate it's now a Spanish language Seventh-Day Adventist church.

I have yearbooks for 76-77 (I rescued that one from the garbage; markings suggest it had been used by the yearbook production team), 78-79, and 79-80. They indicate:

Richard Lyon was principal for all of those years.

For 76-77, I count 99 students including 5 graduating seniors. One of the graduates was a teacher's aide 78-80.

For 78-79, I count 127 students including 7 graduating seniors.

For 79-80, I count 149 students including 5 graduating seniors.

The 76-77 book has a 1/4+ page ad for the legendary Fanny Fitter Pant Store, which "has Levi's only a girl can love". The ad features a young woman whose Levi's-clad legs are just over 2/3 of her total height. Another ad on the page features Skateland Roller Rink in Union Gap, which is still in business.

The 78-79 book has an elaborate hand-drawn design on the front which is uncredited. Points to the person who can identify the artist. The table of contents page features that year's solar eclipse.

The 79-80 book has a 1/2 page ad for Cynthia Stephney's "Image of Loveliness" (class?? tutoring??), which promises to help young women "Be confident, lovely, and feminine!" by instructing them on "Your best posture and carriage, your best figure, personality and wardrobe! In a word, your most attractive inner and outer self. Begin today to build a happier future for you and your loved ones."

Finally, who could forget teacher Mrs. Delk's first-generation, banana-yellow AMC Pacer? Pure mid-70s futuristic awesomeness. Not featured in any of the yearbooks, but it should have been! And let's not forget teacher aid Mrs. Perry's Peugot 504 -- dark green, if memory serves? -- which her late husband had converted to diesel and swapped in a larger gas tank he made himself, making it surely the longest-ranged car in town! Oh, you wanted to hear about cool sporty cars driven by students or faculty? Sorry, I don't recall a single one!

Oh--here's another anecdote:

In the 79-80 yearbook, on one of the last pages, at the lower left, is a photo of the girls' choir, on a pair of facing pages devoted to our teenage efforts at humor. Sandy Yearout has a funny expression in that shot, and we wanted to caption it, "I feel so self-concious"! Okay, not especially funny, but we were trying. Anyway, I wasn't sure of the spelling (and I was wrong; it's "self-conscious" with an "s" in there amidships), and for some reason there was no dictionary nearby in the high school classroom. So we asked a teacher who shall remain unnamed. He confidently spelled it c-o-n-c-i-e-n-c-e.

"But...conscience is a different word...?" we asked.

"Yes, but self-conscious is spelled like that too", he replied, again with confidence. "Like 'science'".

And that's why Sandy Yearout is saying, captioned under that picture, "I feel so self-conscience". Ta-dum. Sorry, Sandy! We shoulda hunted down a dictionary. Surely there was one somewhere in that school! Greg Lovern (talk) 06:08, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

UPDATE JUNE 2022:

I was hoping someone some other alum would take this information, combine it with more information they had, and add something to the article. But a year later, I'm hearing crickets. So I added what I could from this to the article. I hope others will add more about the history of West Side Christian School. If I got any dates wrong, please correct them. Greg Lovern (talk) 04:38, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Hi Greg Lovern. The school has a capacity of only around 400 students on roll. The article creator Link343 made very few edits to Wikipedia and hasn't been seen again for 10 years. The interest level of any of the other casual contributors to Wikipedia to find out more about this school than you can as an alumnus is probably extremely low. Please do not be disappointed therefore if no one on Wikipedia has come forward to expand the article, but please feel free to add anything you can. Do ensure however, that the article is free of trivia and that any information is adequately sourced. You can find a wealth of help on the page at Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Article advice. The parent project at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools only has around 300 watchers for tens of thousands of school articles, and this school article and its talk page will have significantly less because it only has 53 contributors including bots and other general format and maintenance edits. @Marchjuly:. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:50, 3 June 2022 (UTC)