USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Somerville > Report of the city of Somerville 1911 > Part 12
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The High School, Somerville, Mass., December 21, 1911.
Mr. Charles S. Clark,
Superintendent of Schools, Somerville, Mass.
Dear Sir: At your request, I am pleased to present the following report of the reorganization of the high school with plans for future development. On my election in June, 1911, to the head of the combined high schools, the problem devolved of uniting two highly developed schools of widely differing purposes into one organization, with the avowed intent, how- ever, that neither should suffer, but rather that both should profit by the arrangement. The problem has been naturally a difficult one, and has required the consideration of many mat- ters of detail, among them the following :-
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One School. The determination on the part of the Board that the old lines of distinction between Latin and English Schools should be entirely obliterated, and that the new organi- zation should be one school, in fact as well as in name, was a decided preliminary advantage. In the construction of the programme, therefore, the work of the teachers was rearranged to give the greatest efficiency for all; classes doing parallel work were combined ; the pupils in the two buildings were re- distributed to bring together the combined classes; and the names East and West building were adopted to supersede the names Latin and English building. These mechanical means have proved a large factor towards securing a successful union of the schools.
Administrative Organization. To facilitate the government of so large a school and to assist the head master in the many minor administrative and disciplinary details, a board of admin- istration was created, consisting of the three masters of the two schools, Mr. Tuttle, Mr. Hawes, and Mr. Murray. The exe- cution of the details of organization, the treatment of serious cases of discipline, the organization of a plan for the super- vision of the various parts of the buildings and the adjacent grounds have been placed in the hands of this board. The un- tiring energy, the hearty unanimity, and the extreme helpful- ness of the men constituting this board have proved, even in so short a time, the wisdom of their selection and the value of their organization.
Educational Supervision. The educational development of the school was, of course, taken under serious consideration. The Latin School has for years been famed as a fitting school for college. The English School, though equally successful in its preparatory courses for technical and normal schools, has stood primarily for training of a more utilitarian character, sending many of its graduates immediately into business and the trades. That none of these purposes should in the slight- est degree be sacrificed, a board of supervision was formed to have charge of the various courses of the school. A prelimi- nary division into preparatory, general or academic, manual arts, and commercial courses was authorized, and three men from the school, Mr. Sprague, Mr. Hatch, and Mr. Jones, were selected to take charge of the first three. A head for the com- mercial course has not yet been chosen. This board has al- ready organized, and has decided upon initial policy of action. The needs and aims of each course are being carefully consid- ered, and recommendations of changes and additions to secure well-developed and effective courses will be made from time to time. The possibilities of such a board are large, and its in-
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fluence will be broad. Its purpose is not only to preserve the entity of different courses, to develop them along lines of the greatest value to the community, and to secure correlation be- tween the varied subjects taught in them, but also to preserve a sane balance among the various educational lines of activity in the school. I take great pleasure in stating that this board is approaching its problem with a broad view and an earnest pur- pose, and I feel sure that under its ministration the scholastic side of the school will be ably supervised.
Departments. The different departments, such as English, History, French, etc., have been placed under the charge of leaders in their respective subjects, and plans for reorganization and systematic and uniform methods of treatment have already been put into operation.
Arrangement of Time Schedule. The restricted school ac- commodations made it necessary to continue, with modifica- tions, the alternate session plan used last year in the English School. The arrangement this year comprises a session from 8 to 1 for the three upper classes, from 1.15 to 4.30 for the first- year class, with added recitations for the first-year class during the last two periods of the morning session, as the exigencies of the programme demand. That the plan is not ideal is undis- puted ; that it is the only one essentially available for the accom- modation of a school of 1,800 in buildings planned to seat 1,200 is certain. Untiring effort and the sacrifice of personal comfort on the part of teachers and pupils alike have been the main factors which have made this plan workable.
Advisory System. That the needs of the individual pupil may not be lost sight of, the advisory system formerly in use in the English School has been adopted. To each pupil a teacher-adviser is assigned, whose duty will be to keep in- formed of the work done by the pupil, to consult his individual needs, to recommend the selection of courses and studies to meet best his requirements, and in general to give tactful and helpful advice wherever needed.
General Activities. Believing that the average boy and girl of high school age requires the added interest of activities along lines other than those of study alone, I have encouraged the formation of societies with definite purposes. There are already successfully organized two debating societies, a girls' dramatic club, two orchestras, and a boys' glee club. Due attention has also been given to the school paper and to the control and development of athletics.
The Needs of the School. The belief that a high school should limit itself to the encouragement of scholastic attain-
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ments alone is fast disappearing. Schools are everywhere awaking to the thought that moral, social, physical, and voca- tional development are alike important and in fact mandatory. To make our school normally equipped to meet the exacting requirements of its present needs, and to secure future develop- ment along the lines in which it is now lacking, I would earn- estly recommend the following for consideration :-
(a) Additional building to relieve the present extremely crowded condition.
(b) A hall in which large groups of pupils could be gath- ered. Such a hall would give opportunity for talks on ethics, citizenship, business, and general topics of interest. The social activities of the school could also be carried on here under proper supervision. The value of such an auditorium in se- curing uniformity of conduct, the development of school spirit, and the encouragement of co-operation between the home and the school cannot be over-emphasized.
(c) The proper treatment of physical development' and hygienic living is lamentably lacking. A gymnasium, physical instructors, and lectures on hygiene and health are extremely necessary, and should receive immediate consideration.
(d) A thorough revision of the curriculum of the school, with a view to the development of well-defined and differen- tiated courses, together with the installation of the equipment necessary in the treatment of a broad selection of subjects, should be brought about in the near future.
(e) A vocational bureau should be organized to investi- gate the peculiar needs and tendencies of the individual pupil and to assist him in finding suitable employment.
The Outlook. The school as reorganized is undisputably strong in the following respects: (1) Competent and progres- sive leadership in matters relating to administration and super- vision; (2) able instruction from a corps of skilled and united teachers; (3) a curriculum which offers a wide range of selec- tion, together with a convenient and economical means of changing from group to group if the needs or individual fitness of the pupil requires it.
With proper building facilities, therefore, the school, I firmly believe, is in a position to enter upon a period of expan- sion and progress which will speak well for its future value to the community.
Assuring you of my personal gratitude to the Superin- tendent and the School Board for their invaluable assistance, and to the teachers and pupils for their hearty co-operation and loyal support, I remain,
Sincerely yours, John A. Avery, Head Master.
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I am in hearty accord with the views expressed by Mr. Avery, and I think that he has stated fairly the disadvantages under which the school is conducted, and has only modestly characterized the good work which it is doing despite them.
High School Accommodations. It has long been known that the accommodations in the high school buildings were in- sufficient to provide room either for the large attendance of pupils or for the proper expansion of several of the depart- ments of the school. In 1895, the year in which the English School building was completed and occupied, the report of the School Committee contained a recommendation that a building be provided for manual training, and that recommendation stands to-day as an unfilled need. From time to time request for more room has been made by the School Committee, until in 1910 the plan of dividing the schools into sections for alter- nate attendance was again adopted as a relief against over- crowding, and it is now in force. As this plan must remain in operation until more room is provided, it may be advisable to discuss the situation for the purpose of making clear why the present plan is in force and what must be done to remove it, either in part or in whole.
The two buildings have in round numbers a seating ca- pacity of 1,200 pupils, 500 in the West building and 700 in the East building. More than 1,800 pupils have been enrolled at one time since September. The freshman class, numbering more than 600 pupils, has been required to attend an afternoon session, but as the day is not long enough to give two daily sessions of sufficient length in succession, the afternoon class has had to arrive at school before the morning session closed, thereby producing an overlapping of sessions. This overlap- ping, though necessary, has entailed consequences of an unde- sirable character entirely additional to and separate from the objections which might otherwise be found to an afternoon session. They have made the most trouble both for the man- agement of the school and for the parents of the pupils who at- tend in the afternoon.
The remedy for these conditions is more room. To deter- mine how much more room is needed, it is necessary to ana- lyze the conditions upon which an answer must depend.
Every high school has need of two kinds of rooms; first, rooms in which there are desks and sittings for pupils who are engaged in study, and second, rooms for reciting or laboratory rooms. The ideal condition being to have a sitting for study purposes for every pupil and to have sufficient accommodations for recitations, and laboratory work besides, it follows that, to provide that condition for more than 1,800 pupils, without any use of the afternoon session plan, there would be required over 600 sittings more, and rooms for laboratory work and for reci-
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tation purposes. Under the head of laboratory work is here included manual training, domestic science, and domestic art, as well as chemistry, physics, biology, business practice, etc. In addition to these accommodations, an assembly hall, physi- cal exercise rooms, a room suitable for serving luncheons to pupils, and alterations in the present buildings, including a three-story passageway between the two, would be needed. To provide all of these at one time would call for a large outlay of money, and would probably necessitate the building of two additions to the present plant, the grouping of the present structures and the shape and slope of the land surrounding them being such as to make it practically impossible to erect one addition large enough to include all.
Confronted by all these conditions, with requests for addi- tions to the high school building unheeded for many years, the School Committee has again stated the need and asked for re- lief. It has asked for a building large enough to provide an assembly hall of sufficient size for the needs of the school, rooms for physical exercise, for serving luncheons to pupils, for domestic science and study rooms. Such a building, with alterations in the other buildings, should provide seats for ap- proximately 500 pupils. Such an increase in the number of sit- tings would provide accommodations for the present enrollment, if coupled with a modified plan of afternoon sessions. More- over, the addition of the proposed building would not interfere with the addition at any time of another building at the rear of the westerly end of the West building, to contain additional study rooms and an equipment devoted to manual arts subjects.
If the community is opposed to the continuance in any form of the plan of afternoon sessions as a measure of economy, then both buildings will be needed before this plan of alternate attendance can be abandoned.
In connection with the consideration of the subject of high school accommodations, a careful examination has been made to find out how the high school pupils are distributed by residence over the city. For this purpose the enrollment cards of all the pupils were inspected, and the number of pupils living on each street of the city was ascertained. The facts were then grouped to show the number of pupils living in the large areas indicated in the following statement :-
Number of pupils living east of School street, including School street, bounded by Temple, Dane, Calvin streets and Smith avenue .. 749
Number of pupils living west of School street, to and in- cluding Cedar street and Mossland street ... 495
Number of pupils living west of Cedar street, to and in- cluding Willow avenue 217
Number of pupils living west of Willow avenue, not in- cluding Willow avenue. 346
4
1,807
1
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ANNUAL REPORTS.
State=Aided Vocational Schools. In pursuance of. plans which had been under consideration for more than a year, a trade school for girls was opened on October 16 in the frame building at 41 Atherton street, which had been remodeled and prepared for that purpose by the city government. A princi- pal and corps of five teachers were provided, and there was an immediate enrollment of over fifty girls. The school has been running only two months, but it is already well organized and is doing well, when all the difficulties incident to beginning an enterprise of such a character are considered. The principal, Miss Mary Henleigh Brown, is very enthusiastic and energetic in her efforts to provide for the needs of the girls and young women for whom this school is intended, and with the assist- ance of the corps of strong teachers who have been selected to aid her, she will develop a school of marked usefulness. Her report upon the work already accomplished and upon the plans which are to be followed in the future will be found in the Appendix, to which I invite your attention. The first steps towards securing the approval of this school by the State Board of Education have been taken, and others will be taken in due time and order, with the expectation of securing ap- proval.
The Industrial School for Boys has had a successful year, . and is improving in efficiency all the time. It has seemed wise to devote the energies of the principal and his assistants to de- veloping a sound course of work and a sound practice of work during the early experience of the school, rather than to ex- pend them upon exploiting the school for the sake of increas- ing attendance. This course has resulted in giving a thorough training to the boys in the school, and in enabling the teachers to get possession of a method and of a body of work and study which will give certainty and confidence to their future efforts. I commend this school to the confidence of the Board and of the citizens of the city. Elsewhere will be found an interesting report upon the work of the school written by the principal, E. Minor Morse.
In view of the fact that the School Board is conducting two vocational schools in co-operation with the State Board of Education, it is pertinent and appropriate to quote from Bul- letin of the Board of Education, 1911, Whole Number 3, just issued, certain statements concerning the establishment and aims of state-aided vocational schools :-
"Various types of vocational schools are contemplated by chapter 471 of the Acts of 1911, all-of which may become eligible to receive financial assistance from the commonwealth under the conditions described above. What will here be called the all-day vocational school is one designed to give practical training in suitable fields of agriculture, industry, or
-
CLASS IN DRESSMAKING Somerville Industrial School for Girls
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household arts to pupils over fourteen years of age, who can give practically their entire time to school attendance. Part- time schools or part-time classes are designed to give to per- sons from fourteen to twenty-five years of age, who are already engaged in useful occupations, and who can therefore give but a portion of their time to the school, such training as will, when taken in conjunction with the practical experience acquired in the occupation, result in increased vocational efficiency. Even- ing vocational classes, like part-time classes, are designed to provide persons already employed with suitable training sup- plementing and reinforcing the experience acquired in the vo-
cation followed. Persons under seventeen cannot, under the law, attend evening classes of the kind here described. Any or all of the foregoing types of education may theoretically be found in one or more of the large divisions, namely, agricul- tural, industrial, and household arts-of vocational education contemplated in the above-mentioned statute. A large school, planned to meet the diversified needs of a densely-settled sec- tion of the state, will probably provide classes for all-day, for part-time, and for evening pupils.
THE ALL-DAY VOCATIONAL SCHOOL.
"The all-day vocational school, contemplated by the terms of chapter 471 of the Acts of 1911, differs from the ordinary public or private school in that its controlling purpose is to fit its students in greater or less degree for certain forms of profit- able employment in agriculture, the industries (manufacturing and mechanical pursuits), and the household. Vocational edu- cation for the professions, for commercial pursuits, and for maritime callings is not comprehended within the provisions of the above statute.
"The type of vocational schools here described differs in several important respects from the higher technical institu- tions training towards leadership in agriculture, the industries, and the household arts; the work is distinctly below college grade. The pupils may enter at fourteen years of age, and without having had a general secondary or even the last grades of an elementary education, and the controlling purpose is to prepare for efficient service in the wage-earning callings and for development through this to positions of leadership, while at the same time ministering to civic training. Schools giving education of this character may well be called secondary voca- tional schools.
"The elementary school bears, in general, the same rela- tion to the day vocational school that it does to other sec- ondary schools, except that under the law graduation from the elementary is not essential to admission to the vocational school. But the vocational school is no more intended for
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naturally backward or defective children than is any other school. If youths of good working habits and native aptitude for mechanical or other concrete work have not finished the elementary school, it is nevertheless assumed that they will succeed in the vocational school, and such children should be encouraged to enter the vocational school at the close of their fourteenth year, rather than to discontinue all schooling, which, as is well known, is the prevailing tendency. But, as stated before, probably the largest attendance on the all-day voca- tional school will and should come from those who, having fin- ished the work of the elementary school, are impelled by desire or circumstances to turn their attention to preparation for some mechanical vocation. To these, naturally, the general high school or even the technical high school does not and should not appeal.
"The development of all-day vocational schools will be found to result not in a diminished attendance on the high schools, but rather in a net increase of young persons over fourteen years of age in all schools taken together, since the vocational school will draw largely from the very large num- ber-often far more than a majority-of children who have in the past ceased all school attendance as soon as the laws gov- erning compulsory attendance have permitted. As vocational schools develop, an intimate and harmonious relationship be- tween them and elementary and high schools will be found, re- sulting in their efficient co-operation in serving all the educa- tional needs of the community."
Summer Playgrounds. For the second time summer play- grounds were conducted by the School Committee, an appro- priation of $1,600 made by the Board of Aldermen having been placed at its disposal. For the second time, also, this work was carried on in close partnership with the Somerville Play- grounds Association, which had raised for this purpose a sum of $1,500. These resources were expended in pursuance of a single plan which had been adopted to secure the largest return from the money at the command of the two organizations. In this way waste was avoided, and much more was done than could have been accomplished had the city appropriation been spent without reference to the co-operation of the Playgrounds Association. It was early decided to use a part of the public appropriation for permanent equipment of playgrounds, a part for perishable play materials, and the rest for supervision, and to use a large part of the association's fund for supervision. Accordingly . a certain proportion of the joint funds was de- voted to providing supervision and play instruction, and a cer- tain proportion to play equipment and materials.
A general director was provided to have charge of plan- ning the equipment and management of all the grounds, and
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Leslie O. Cummings was chosen for this position. As an as- sistant to him, Miss Elizabeth M. Collins, principal of the Hanscom School, was engaged to develop and supervise the activities of all the playgrounds for girls and small boys, and Miss Claire S. Wyman was made assistant director of girls' grounds. Two women instructors were provided for each playground for girls, and one man for each playground for boys, with one man extra for general use. Before the middle of the season another man was employed and assigned to Lin- coln Park, and the extra man was assigned to City Field. This force was well disciplined, and worked in accordance with care- fully-formulated plans. It proved to be very enthusiastic and highly efficient. Nine playgrounds were maintained, six for girls and three for boys.
It was decided to place permanent equipment in school yards, first, for the reason that these were protected by fences, and also that the equipment might later on be available for the school children at recess and other times. The things which it was thought best to get at first were swings, teeters, basket ball standards, baseballs and bats, and a variety of play mate- rial. A very favorable opportunity was found for buying standard iron piping, and enough was bought to set up four frames, which were designed by Mr. Cummings, each frame to support nine swings and six teeters. Early in July one of these frames was erected under Mr. Cummings' direction in the Hodgkins School yard, and another in the Perry School yard. The cost of these frames and of erecting them was met out of the school appropriation, and was far below the commercial price for the same class of equipment and work. In the same way the other permanent play material was made and put in position at the lowest cost. The standards for basket ball, the boards for teeters and swings, and the sand boxes were all made at the Boys' Industrial School. It had been planned to erect the remaining two combination frames in school yards, but as the season advanced it became apparent that they could give`service to the greatest number on Lincoln Park and on City Field, and they were put up in those places, the city engi- neer taking charge of the installing and paying for it.
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