CLASS MANAGEMENT RECORDS SUZANNE NORMAN, PUBLIC SCHOOL 157, BROOKLYN, N. Y. I have decided to confine my talk to the mechanical part of enumerating and arranging statistical information concerning Ungraded Class children. Following the suggestions as advanced in special circular No. 8, I have a large envelope for each child. This envelope contains: 1. The duplicate form A card. 2. The duplicate medical examination card. 3. The duplicate medical reëxamination card or cards. 4. The duplicate pedagogical records. 5. Correspondence between the home and the school, such as: (a) Permissions to go on trips; (b) Permissions to go to clinics, hospitals, dispensaries; (c) Letters received from the children; (d) Excuses for absence; (e) Notes asking for special privileges or telling of particular needs. 6. The correspondence between clinics, hospitals, child-welfare societies and the school: (a) The dispensary card, the prescription for glasses or for tonics, which most of the parents prefer to have me keep. 7. Specimens of the child's work including the first work done on entering the class, and one specimen in each subject for each month thereafter. It is my practice to keep the personal record on cards arranged in alphabetical order. A special annotation is kept of home visits, indicating the date of the visit, the reason for it, if there is any special one, and the result obtained. An expedient way of keeping the photographic record is also by the use of a card system. The photographs are attached to cards on which is written: 1. Date. 2. Name. 3. Weight. 4. Height. 5. Color of eyes. 6. Color of hair. Besides these records, which are all that we are expected to keep unless one includes the roll-book, the program and the plan books, I have some leaves fastened together which I call a General Note Book. This is an essential to me because it contains: Conference notes; lesson plans; hints, suggestions and specific information on topics of which we must have knowledge. Some of the tabs read: Physical Training Manual Work Baskets Attention Memory Judgment Conference Notes It is the work of a few seconds to note in this memorandum book that John stayed on third base, instead of trying to make a homer, thus showing keen judgment; that forgetful, dreaming Bernard remembers the number of runs without consulting the score; that Dietrick needs grasp work in physical training, he fumbles the ball so often. I admit that I might forget some of these observations, and thus lose rich material for personal and pedagogic records, if I did not at once, however crudely, make jottings of them. Until I had had a court experience I did not thoroughly appreciate records. In this regard I cite the case of Walter. He had been out of school for two years when he was struck by a trolley car. The fault was absolutely his. His parents had always admitted his great mental handicap, and yet, they and his lawyer tried to prove in a court that he had been a mentally normal boy before the accident. The school records were requisitioned and the issue of $20,000 became contingent upon them. Another case of Joseph, a boy who had always been a menace to his neighborhood. His detention in an institution was determined, four years after he had left P. S. 157, by the production of his history while under my observation. When our records decide cases of such importance, is it not worth while keeping them in a legible, intelligible, and unbiased way? DOMINICK JULIA EVERS PUBLIC SCHOOL 78, MANHATTAN On the third of January 1917, Dominick F., 13 years old, was admitted to the Ungraded Class with the following school record of attendance: Absent in 1A-9 days; in 1B-10 days; in 2A-6211/1⁄2 days; in 2B-723/2 days. For the following two years committed to the Catholic Protectory. Readmitted to public school and placed in 4A in which he was present 37 days and absent 183/2 days. Placed in an Ungraded Class in which up to the writing of this history he has been absent no days and present 38 days. Since this is probably the greatest number of consecutive days of attendance which Dominick has ever been able to attend school, the question naturally arises as to the methods in use in an Ungraded Class which in this instance have been so effective in inducing this truant to attend regularly. Perhaps for the first time in his life, Dominick is associating with his equals. His mentality is not the highest in the class nor the lowest. group" can always be found whose work is suitable to his mental calibre so that he no longer experiences the failures and consequent lack of confidence in himself which was his portion in the regular grades and which made school so detestable. The tic which makes him give vent to grunts would distract a teacher and pupils striving for marks and it would bring to the victim many a scolding. In an Ungraded Class such a condition passes unchallenged because it is understood to be an evidence of disturbed nerves. Likewise the stuttering arouses no comment of derision from the other members of the class, many of whom have at some time or other suffered from a similar defect. Dominick told me that in the regular grades he was not given a chance to read because the teachers hadn't time to wait for him to begin. He sometimes stutters over initial words fully one minute. In the Ungraded Class there is no hurry and everyone gets his chance. Once started, Dominick reads easily and revels in the sound of his own voice. A decided lameness made him hesitate to compete with boys of regular classes in games and athletic contests but now his superior judgment enables him to gain points for his side so that his interest in the game period is lively and enthusiastic. Another factor instrumental in recovering this lad is the great opportunity an Ungraded teacher has for giving individual attention, for inquiring into home conditions and making allowances for consequent short-comings. A private admonition to use soap and water is always effectual. His effort in this direction is so extraordinary that one day he wore his blouse wrong side out to hide the dirty right side. At first I could not understand why he was late every noon time until he told me in one of our talks that he had to prepare his own lunch and then "have a smoke." This habit, of course, I urged him to break but his answer was, "I can't get away from it." It will take a long time to correct the evil effects of so many days spent on the street among vicious companions but if he continues to come to school during the warm days of spring a good start will have been made. A FARM EXPERIMENT During the spring and summer a most interesting experiment was tried at a farm fifteen miles out of Boston, where under the direction of Miss Helen J. Roberts (one of the Special Class teachers) thirty-eight boys had an unusual opportunity to do farm work. On May 1, 1916, the Boston School Committee authorized a group of boys between fourteen and sixteen years of age (pupils in Special Classes) to receive farm instruction four days a week. Through the assistance of friends of the work, funds were raised to finance the expense until the opening of school in the autumn. The following card was sent to the parents: TO THE PARENTS, GEORGE T. ANGELL SCHOOL, If you want your boy to have a chance to be taught gardening on a farm under the care of our teacher, Miss Helen J. Roberts, please sign this card hereby showing your approval. There will be no expense for the boys. They will need only a lunch box well filled with hearty food. GEORGE T. ANGELL SCHOOL. April 26, 1916. Sign here... One parent signed the card for his son and returned it with $10 to help finance the undertaking. Many lessons of promptness, good behavior and self-reliance were learned from the responsibility of going back and forth by railroad to the farm, and from the actual work done while there; Miss Roberts reports: Since May 3, 1916, thirty-eight boys from the George T. Angell School have been to the Roberts Farm in Weston. At least twenty-five of them have done very satisfactory work. The others have been failures in most cases because of low vitality and in a few cases indolence. As this undertaking is experimental, I have tried to give the boys as varied lines of work as possible, so that I may find out the lines of work profitable for me to continue. Our one major operation was the planting of a half acre of potatoes and caring for them. This the boys have done under direction, but could not believe that from one small piece of potato they could get several good-sized potatoes. In September it was found that the crop was a great success. From the half acre they gathered fifty bushels of potatoes. They took home ten bushels, sold twenty seconds and five firsts for a total of $30 and have on hand twelve bushels for seed. Our next undertaking in order of importance has been the care of chickens-seventy-five were hatched. We built coops and yards for them. When the boys are at the farm they take entire charge of the chicks. Ten of the boys have had opportunities to work around the cows and horses and in the milk room. They have also worked in the fields weeding and haying. All have made the colt's acquaintance. About eighty boys have had experience working in a flower garden and mowing the lawn. They take a keen interest in making things look shipshape, or as one of the boys expressed it "like a piece of the Public Garden.” The value of this work seems to me to lie in the brightening of the boys; they are more alert and keen to know why and how. They feel that they are doing something that had to be done and not adding a column of figures because the teacher said so. The incentive on the farm is more real to the boys than that of a school room. They can see that pulling weeds gives a crop more chance to grow. The tangible results of the experiment are the potatoes and the chickens. The intangible results are hard to judge-but the self-respect of the boy who took every weed from his row of potatoes, the definite knowledge he gained of his own power to work, and the broadened vision and vocabulary of the boy who sees the country for the first time-seem very worth while results. The ideal for the future seems to me to have provision made for from four to ten boys to stay at the farm permanently. Then any experienced teacher could bring to the farm from fifteen to twenty boys four or five days a week for at least six months in the year. The permanently established boys would care for the live-stock the days the other boys did not come. From my experience this year I think a farm school for Special Class boys could pay transportation expenses when once well established. This spring I want to double the work of the boys by beginning earlier and by doing more through the summer. I would like to plant an acre of potatoes, a good kitchen garden, raise two hundred chickens and give the boys more work with the horses and cows. If possible I will have several resident boys who will feel added responsibility and prove what I feel to be true that there is a future for mentally defective boys on a farm if they are under careful supervision. To bring this experiment to its fullest development it is estimated that $500 will be needed: $360 for transportation, $50 for fertilizer, $30 for seed and $30 for incidentals. |