USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Weymouth > Town annual report of Weymouth 1888 > Part 12
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(Signed), GEO. L. GILL, Town Clerk of Quincy. JOHN A. RAYMOND, Town Clerk of Weymouth.
The following is the vote of the town of Quincy for Representa- tive to General Court, as certified by its town officers, viz. : -
John F. Merrill, of Quincy, had 1,392 votes
Warren W. Adams, of Quincy, had 1,239
Louis A. Cook, of Weymouth, had 1,186 · 66
John A. Holbrook, of Weymouth, had 1,166 66
J. Clarence Howe, of Weymouth, had
1.114 66
John J. Byron, of Quincy, had . 1,021 66
Louis A. Cook, of Quincy, had .
1 vote
Louis A. Cook had
6 votes
J. F. Merrill had
1 vote
J. Clarence Howe had 2 votes
John A. Holbrook had 2 66
J. C. Howe had 1 vote
J. Clarence Howe, of Quincy, had 2 votes
Josiah Quincy, of Quincy, had . 1 vote
William N. Eaton had 1
66 A true copy.
Attest : JOHN A. RAYMOND, Town Clerk of Weymouth.
REPORT OF THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE.
The School Committee respectfully submit their annual report.
The sum appropriated for the support of schools at the annual town meeting was as follows : -
From April 1, 1888, to April 1, 1889 . $33,300 00
For superintendent of schools . 1,800 00
To which was added the income from the Pratt fund, 300 00
One half of the dog-license fund
561 04
Alewife fund .
252 00
State school fund
125 95
Tuition of non-resident pupils .
136 00
Total
$36,474 99
Balance in the treasury Jan. 1, 1888, for the support
of schools to April 1, 1888 8,435 56
Total .
$44,910 55
Expenditures from Jan. 1, 1888, to Jan. 1, 1889 :
Salary of superintendent
$1,800 00
Salaries of teachers
23,251 85
Text-books and supplies .
3,635 30
Fuel, janitors, and cleaning
4,314 06 ·
Repairs .
2,267 83
Incidentals
333 04
Miscellaneous
1,300 58
Truant officers
30 00
Total
$36,932 66
Leaving a balance for the support of schools from
Jan. 1, 1889, to April 1, 1889 7,177 89
The committee feel that they can congratulate the parents and guardians of the pupils upon the satisfactory results of the past year. While we fall far short of the perfection that we aim at for
.
.
232
our schools, we believe that a degree of improvement is apparent and the advancement is as rapid as is consistent with a thorough foundation for a practical education, or for a higher and more com- plete training than can be obtained in common schools.
Your committee again call your attention to the necessity for still greater school accommodations in Ward 2. The Middle Street building has been in a dilapidated condition for several years and is not worth repairing. Containing two rooms barely large enough to seat thirty pupils each, they are made to accommodate over one hundred. The best educators tell us that efficient results cannot be accomplished with over forty scholars under one teacher. The primary school in the Franklin building has an average of over sixty. This overcrowded condition can be relieved only by building a four-room building near the one now in use on Middle Street.
Sufficient progress has been made in the study of music to war- rant it a high place in the school course. Our pupils learn tones as they learn to speak words, and the mind is trained to act quickly, to calculate readily, and exercise all its powers more per- fectly under the influence of this great thought stimulant.
The committee feel it to be a source of satisfaction that they have had the good fortune to retain the efficient and able services of the superintendent, Mr. Gilman O. Fisher, who has conducted our schools for the past seven years. His well-known ability in his calling, his peculiar tact in directing and managing both teachers and pupils, render him one of the most valued of our public servants. While we thus express our appreciation and point with pride to the high standard our schools have attained under his guidance, we earnestly hope that you will continue your hearty support and assistance in his work among us. For a more extended account of his superintendency and the training school for teachers which he is conducting, we refer you to his report.
CHANGES OF TEACHERS.
In the North High School, Mr. Frank H. Beede resigned at the close of the summer term, to accept a more lucrative position as principal of the High School at Willimantic, Ct., and Mr. L. Her- . 1
1
233
bert Owen, of the Milford (N. H.) High School was elected to succeed him. Mr. Beede had been in successful charge of the North High School for four years, and had earned an enviable repu- tation as an enthusiastic and progressive teacher. Miss Carrie B. Morse, assistant in the same school, resigned at the same time, to accept a similar but more remunerative position in Dover, N. H., and Miss Blanche G. Wetherbee, who had been for some years a teacher in Newton, Mass., was employed to succeed her.
In Ward 1, Mr. Milton B. Warner, after a successful two-years' principalship of the Athens School, resigned to enter the Harvard Law School, and was succeeded by Mr. F. L. Kelley, a teacher of some experience and a graduate of the Bridgewater Normal four- years' course. Owing to the unusual size of Mr. Kelley's school, Miss Cora L. Beard was employed as assistant. Miss Sadie J. Holbrook, of the Franklin Primary, was promoted to the Athens Intermediate, to succeed Mrs. Ella M. Spinney, resigned, and Miss Jessie F. Custance was elected to succeed Miss Clara F. Prentiss, whose ill health compelled her to give up teaching.
In Ward 2, Miss Alice G. Eagan was elected to succeed Miss Sadie J. Holbrook, promoted as above, and Miss Susie B. Litch- field to succeed Miss Clara A. Reamy (High Street 3d Primary), who had accepted a position in Quincy.
In Ward 3 there have been no changes below the High School.
In Ward 5, Miss A. Amelia Jordan, a graduate of the Bridge- water Normal, succeeded Mrs. Sarah W. Reed, resigned from the Pratt School.
In Ward 5, Mr. Caleb K. Sullivan succeeded Mr. Atherton N. Hunt, resigned from the Bates School. Owing to the unusual size of Mr. Sullivan's school, it was found necessary to employ an assistant. Miss Arria G. Stewart was elected to this position.
REPAIRS OF SCHOOLHOUSES.
In Ward 1, no extensive repairs or changes have been made.
In Ward 2, water has been carried to the first and second floors of the Franklin School building, and a contract made for painting the building two coats, including the roof, for two hundred and forty dollars.
234
In Ward 3, the chimneys and ceilings of the North High School building have been repaired, and the walls of the rooms, except the laboratory, have been tinted. Further improvements were made in grading the yard, and the stone wall on the Tremont Street side was completed.
Around the Tufts School building the fences have been repaired and the grounds graded.
In Ward 4, the ceilings were whitewashed and the blackboards re-dressed in all the schoolhouses ; the walls were painted in the Holbrook, and repapered in the Pratt schoolhouse. A new out- building, also, was erected for the Pratt School.
In Ward 5, the desks and woodwork of the Howe School, the Thomas School, and both of the upper rooms of the Bates School were varnished, and the walls of one of these upper rooms were painted. It was found necessary to shingle the South High School building, the shingles being split up and the roof leaking badly.
Steam-heating apparatus has been introduced with gratifying results into the Bates School building.
In the course of the year there have been upon the twenty dif- ferent school buildings in the town many outlays not enumerated above, but which, in the aggregate, amount to a considerable sum.
Many needed repairs are necessarily postponed for lack of funds, some of them having been put off again and again for a series of years. Among these is the erection of a retaining wall in the rear of the River schoolhouse in Ward 1, where the falling earth from the bank fills in above the top of the underpinning every spring, making it necessary to remove many loads of dirt to save. the woodwork of the building.
New furniture is much needed for the Bicknell School, the Shaw School, and one of the rooms of the North High School.
The Pratt, Holbrook, and other schoolhouses are sadly in need of shingling.
New outbuildings are an imperative necessity at the Bates School.
The steam-heating apparatus at the High Street and Bates Schools having proved so effective and satisfactory, the committee think it advisable, and the part of true economy, to introduce
235
steam heat into one building each year, until all the larger houses are equipped with steam heaters.
The blackboards in most of our schools are at best unsatisfac- tory ; and with the constant use to which they are subjected, are continually in need of repairs.
In the slate boards, now in use in the High Street School, we have a perfect board, practically indestructible, and always in good condition. We would recommend placing these in at least one school each year.
APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE ENSUING YEAR.
The committee would respectfully ask for appropriations for the ensuing year, as follows : -
Salaries of teachers
. $23,300 00
Janitors, fuel, and cleaning
4,300 00
Text-books and supplies .
3,500 00
Transportation of scholars
1,500 00
Repairs .
4,500 00
Miscellaneous .
.
300 00
Incidentals .
500 00
$37,900 00
This may be reduced by
The Pratt Fund
$300 00
The State School Fund
57 86
The Alewife Fund .
252 00
One half dog tax .
555 64
1,165 50
leaving a balance to be raised by assessment of $36,734 50
Respectfully submitted, WILLIAM A. DRAKE,
JOSEPH A. CUSHING, AUGUSTUS J. RICHARDS, JOHN C. FRASER,
GEORGE L. WENTWORTH,
BRADFORD HAWES.
REPORT
OF THE
SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS.
To the School Committee, Weymouth, Mass. :
In presenting my seventh annual report, the Training School at once comes to mind as a feature of our system the importance and character of which deserve to be set forth.
THE TRAINING SCHOOL
was established in August last. The records of the meeting, so far as they refer to the establishment of the school, read as follows : -
Voted, That a Training School for teachers be established.
Voted, That the following form part of the rules and regulations gov erning the public schools of Weymouth : -
The Training School shall be under the general direction of the super intendent of schools, and, commencing the third Monday in September, continue for thirty weeks thereafter during the regular school year. The members of the Training School shall be assigned by the superintendent to such schools of the town as he shall determine, to be in attendance upon those schools during one session each day for thirty weeks, to assist the teachers thereof and observe the methods employed by them. They shall attend the meetings appointed by the superintendent for their instruction, and remain essentially pupils under his direction until the completion of the course of thirty weeks. At the end of this time a certificate of quali fications shall be awarded to those whose standing is satisfactory.
Voted, That only those applicants for schools who have had experience in teaching or who have attended a normal or training school, a college of university, shall, after Jan. 1, 1889, be employed as teachers in the pub lic schools of the town.
The Training School is regarded as supplementary to the Higi School, and no one is admitted to it who is not a High Schod graduate or who has not completed an approved academic course At least this is the unwritten law, although no formal vote to that effect was passed.
237
The following young ladies, all High School graduates, joined the Training School at the time of its organization : -
MEMBERS OF THE TRAINING SCHOOL, 1888-9.
NAME.
RESIDENCE.
Graduated from what School.
WHEN.
Fannie E. Hadaway
Plymouth.
Plymouth High. North High. South 66
1888
Clara A. Holbrook.
66
. .
66
1888
Ella M. Reynolds
66
66
1888
Hannah C. Whelan
Weymouth.
North
66
1888
Annie L. Coffey.
66
.:
1887
Estelle Robinson
66
66
1887
Katie M. Fitzgerald.
66
.0
1887
Lizzie M. Stack
66
66
1888
Jennie W. Rice .
East Weymouth.
66
1888
66
66
1888
Cora L. Beard .
North
66
66
66
1888
Agnes M. Bates
East
60
6.
1888
Nellie M. Holbrook
Lovell's Corner.
South
66
1882
S. Laura Batcheldor
South Hingham.
Hingham High.
1877
Mary L. Tucker.
East Weymouth.
1885
Clara E. McGreevy
66
1887
Maggie E. Heffernan.
66
66
66
1887
1884
Grace W. Mitchell.
East Weymouth. South 66
1888
Arria G. Stewart.
Carrie W. Dyer.
North High. 66
These young ladies were at first assigned to the lowest grade schools, but before the completion of the course of thirty weeks, will probably pass through all the nine grades below the High School, devoting three or four weeks to each grade. Once a fo11- night they meet me for instruction in the theory and art of teach- ing, and once a fortnight we assemble in some school-room, the regular teacher in which gives up for the time being, while the pupil teachers or " trainers " conduct the school under the criti- cism of the class, of the regular teacher, and myself. These theory and practice meetings alternate, so that the " trainers," as we call them, - the term lacks dignity unless we use it in the future active sense as referring to the " trainers " that are to be, "mind- trainers," " character teachers," - are brought together as a body once a week, while all the rest of the time they are distributed in small groups for work and observation in different parts of the town.
238
Such is the general plan of the school, the establishment of which I regard as one of the most important steps the town has taken educationally for many years. Your own action in deciding that hereafter applicants for positions will not be considered eligi- ble unless they have had some actual experience in teaching or gone beyond the High school to a training school, a normal school, a college, or a university, has operated as a great lifting power upon the schools, the influence of which has been felt along the whole line, because it is an expression of your appreciation of the importance of education and the importance of prohibiting all crude and unskilful attempts to mould the character and shape the intellect of those who are to be the future citizens of the Great Republic. This binding clause of the vote puts the Training School upon a good working basis and insures its success if properly managed. The indorsement of the fact that trained teachers are needed in the school-room will be appreciated by the people also. Hitherto our schools have suffered for a year or two because beginners have not had at the outset a clear idea of what they were to do. This condition of things can no longer prevail. The trainers serve an apprenticeship before they are placed in actual charge of a school. They submit to tests which enable you to select for positions those best qualified to teach, and enable them, if selected, to take right hold at once understandingly and in a way not to conflict with the general plan under which we are working. What that plan is the trainers really have better opportunities for learning than many of the regular teachers who are confined, it may be for years, to one particular grade.
I am gratified to state also that I do not find my duties as prin- cipal of the Training School in the least degree irksome, although I had at first feared that they might be. On the contrary, I greatly enjoy them. The teachers, too, feel a measure of responsi- bility in the Training School, and take a deep interest in it. Those to whom trainers are assigned seek, for the sake of the trainers, to improve their methods - a tendency perfectly natural under the circumstances.
239
TEACHERS' MEETINGS.
The trainers have begun to take part in our teachers' meetings. At one meeting, Misses Hadaway, Batcheldor, McGreevy, Bates, Dyer, Rice, Heffernan, Mitchell, and Tucker illustrated very fully the method employed by us for teaching beginners to read, and known as the " Sentence Method " With a class of pupils from the lowest primary, they showed what to do with a five-year- old the first day he comes to school, and how to proceed subse- quently during the successive stages of his instruction, for the first few weeks of his attendance at school. The illustrations were very full and clear, and made a profound impression. An equally comprehensive presentation of the subject of number work in the lowest primary, showing how the drill of the old education is com- bined with the development processes of the new, was made at a subsequent meeting by Misses Stewart, Reynolds, and Clara A. Holbrook. These young ladies illustrated the part that observa- tion, memory, and reason respectively play in a true course of study in arithmetic arranged and adapted to insure the normal development and rapid progress of the child. At a subsequent meeting, the other trainers will take up the subject of geography for beginners, here again failing not to show the important offices of observation and inference, and leaving memory to a compar- atively subordinate position, so far as the development work in eliciting a love of the study is concerned.
Our teachers' meetings are so intimately connected with the work we are doing daily in the schools, that it is hard to tell about them without drifting into a description of ourai ms, prospects, and plans generally, and setting forth pretty much all we seek to be and do in the school line.
Drawing has occupied a large share of our attention during the school year. Professor Bailey, agent of the State Board of Educa- tion, has addressed us twice, or, rather, organizing us into a class, and modelling or sketching as he talked, has given us two practical object lessons in this important branch ; while Miss Lillian H. Burrill, of the Adams School, has from time to time illustrated im-
240
portant articles upon the same subject appearing in the educational papers. As for my own efforts in covering the blackboard with sketches that might be termed aboriginally artistic, they have not been without their value as a means of self-culture, even if they have not contributed in any marked degree to the general advance- ment of the schools. But I shall have something to say about drawing further on, and will drop the subject now in order to go on more connectedly with my account of our teachers' meetings.
Miss Emma C. Fisher, of the North High School, has begun a series of lessons in voice-building which may be termed the Bridgewater-Weymouth course. The teachers first receive them, being organized into a class for the purpose - breathing exercises and a general drill in the technique of expression. In various institutions of Boston, known as schools of oratory, schools of expression, schools of elocution, and the like, and crowded with students paying, many of them, two or three dollars an hour for private lessons, these same exercises are given. Why can't our boys and girls have the benefit of them, and so go forth from our schools with erect forms and well-modulated voices in place of the throaty or nasal ones so prevalent now ? In other words, why can't we, in the course of a few years, - devoting a few minutes of each day to these health-giving and strength- bringing exercises that lie at the foundation of all elocutionary training, - make every pupil stand straight, breathe properly, and place his tones where they will be the most effective? I think we can, and I have urged Miss Fisher to go on with her noble work and I will help her all I can. In these efforts, Mr. Bradford, appreciat- ing as he does the fundamental conditions of successful teaching in the kindred departments of singing and oratory, will be our hearty co-laborer. He has used the teachers' meetings as a medium through which to communicate his wishes regarding the course to be pursued in music, and has formally addressed the teachers once. Following him at a time when our interest in the subject was greatly aroused came a most inspiring and helpful address from Prof. W. H. Leib, of Kansas City, who, in turn, was succeeded by Mrs. Agnes H. Ford, a successful and well-known teacher.
We have had the pleasure also of listening to Mr. Geo A. Wal-
241
ton, agent of the State Board of Education, who spoke upon the relations of teacher to parent and child ; and are under obligations alike to Mrs. H. B Lord, of Braintree, and Superintendent Bates, of Canton ; the former describing the schools of Quebec, as seen by her in a recent Canadian tour, and the latter reading a paper upon the formation of Friday afternoon school clubs, the recommenda- tions contained in which have been in not a few instances carried out.
Among papers read by our own teachers and subsequently dis- cussed more or less generally by those present, have been the fol- lowing : "Health Conditions of Good Teaching," by L. Herbert Owen, of the North High School ; " Woman in Education," by Miss Jessie F. Smith, of the South High School; "The Duties of the Teacher as a Citizen," by Mr. Geo. C. Torrey, of the Pratt School ; and " History," by Mr. W. F. Sayward, of the Franklin School.
Among class exercises, the character and value of which are but poorly indicated by their titles, are the following : "Marching," by Miss Nettie E. Bradford, of the High Street School ; "Expres- sion, Pictorial and Oral," by Miss Mary A. Dee, of the Middle Street School ; " The Multiplication Table," by Miss Alice G. Eagan, of the Franklin School ; "Natural History," by Miss Addie M. Canterbury, of the Athens School ; and two class exercises in arith- metic, designed to show how to dispense with rules and formulas in the solution of miscellaneous problems in fractions and percentage - the former by Miss Sadie J. Holbrook, of the Athens School, and the latter by Miss Sara E. Wilbar, of the Hunt School.
The teachers' meetings serve to make good points in teaching common property and bring all parts of the system into friendly and harmonious relations. I hold them only when I feel I have something important to present.
DRAWING.
We need a special teacher in drawing, and really ought to have one to bring out the latent talents of the pupils. We know, how- ever, we cannot have one for the present, and so we have gone to work in determined fashion to do what we can in our own untu- tored and individual way. Perhaps we show an excusable vanity
242
in wishing to let the people know that we are not half-hearted under the circumstances ; but, realizing the importance of drawing, both from the industrial and the purely æsthetic or educational point of view, are bound, if we can, to do justice to the boys and girls on the art side of life in the school-room. We hear a great deal about the three R's. I think there are several S's that ought to be attended to ; for instance, singing and sketching ; and why? We are not as a country or a community what we once were. Since the Centennial the influence of art enters into both our religi- ous and secular life as never before. Go into one of our great city churches of an Easter Sunday and see the flowers that load the altar and hear the music of a high-salaried choir answering back the eloquence of a high-salaried pastor, and furnishing, the one a first-class operatic and the other a first-class literary and dramatic entertainment, judged by the ordinary canons of criticism. Study the memorial windows that shut out the natural coloring of the sky, the mural tablets, the frescoes, and the ladies' bonnets, and then submit the question, Have we not acquired a taste for embellishments which would have shocked the moral sense of our forefathers ? Or go up and down our Broadways of a week day and see the displays in the show windows. The powers of the loom have been taxed to produce costly fabrics, and the earth has been ransacked for articles of antique mould, bronzes, vases, and bric-à- brac. Before the child of to-day is a world that differs from the world of yesterday just as the steam engine differs from the stage- coach. It is a world into which the Corliss engine, the Remington type-writer, the Hoe printing press, the Edison dynamo, and the Bell telephone have entered to vary the character and extend the range of human industries. Look at the houses people live in now- adays - poems in terra cotta, brick, wood, and stone. The art instinct prompts even the humblest to want to occupy & pretty little mansion painted in stripes and gay colors. But I will not argue the case. With the increase of wealth in this country, new lines of industry have been opened up, and new wants have been created. To meet these wants, our children must be differently e ducated. To adapt them to the condition of this new environ- ment, our course of study must be broadened. It is as plain as day.
243
I am happy to report that the teachers of Weymouth are settling down to the requirements of the hour, and striving to make up for the deficiencies of the past, which, so far as education was concerned, was lamentably lacking in that it did not often stir the sense of beauty, or reach out to the soul and feelings of the little ones. If our forefathers had known what the future was going to be, they might have made such provisions for it as would have enabled the schoolmaster now to repose upon a bed of ease ; but as it is, he is compelled to study day in and day out not to keep up but catch up with the times.
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