USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Reading > Town of Reading Massachusetts annual report 1929 > Part 8
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1. Administration: The report says: "In organization of the School Committee, the movement to reduce the number of standing sub-committees or to abolish them altogether continues; no sub-com- mittee should have executive duties." The Michigan school laws codified in 1927 are especially commended. The main features for the smaller cities are :
1. The board of education is composed of seven members elected at large for a term of four years.
2. The board of education has large powers, including the right to determine the amount of taxes necessary ; to borrow money, to pur- chase sites for buildings, etc., and to erect buildings; and to issue bonds not to exceed 2 per cent of the assessed valuation of the district.
3. The superintendent of schools is made the legal executive of the board of education, his powers and duties being :
(1) To put into practice the educational policies of the State and of the board of education in accordance with the method provided by the board of education ;
(2) To recommend in writing all teachers necessary for the schools and to suspend any teacher for cause until the board of edu- cation may consider such suspension ;
(3) To classify and control the promotion of pupils ;
(4) To recommend to the board the best methods of arranging the course of study and the proper textbooks to be used;
(5) To make reports in writing to the board of education and to the state superintendent of public instruction annually or oftener
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if required: in regard to all matters pertaining to the educational in. terests of the district ;
(6) To supervise and direct the work of the teachers and other employees of the board of education ;
(7) To assist the board in all matters pertaining to the general welfare of the school, and to perform such other duties as the board may determine.
The practice of the Reading School Committee is, with variations in non-essentials, in accord with the provisions of the Michigan law and the recommendations of the Bureau of Education, except in matters of fiscal control.
2. Teachers: The tendency to raise the standards of preparation of teachers of elementary schools from two years to three or four years beyond high school, of Junior High Schools to college graduation, and of Senior High Schools to more professional preparation is noted. Reading is keeping pace with this movement. The bulletin says, "The single salary schedule for all grades, primary to high school, has been adopted in many cities as a means of obtaining better prepared teachers for elementary-school grades and in recognition of the fact that the work of the elementary-school teachers is just as important and just as exacting as the work of the high school teacher." Reading has not adopted that principle yet although some neighboring cities and towns - notably Stoneham - have done so. The maximum salary in Reading for women in grades 1-6 is $1,500, in Junior High School, $1,700, and in the Senior High School, $1,900. The School Committee reserves the right, however, to go above these limits in any individual case that seems to require it.
3. Length of School: The survey states: "The number of days that the schools are in session in a year has been gradually increased but comparatively few city schools are in session more than 185 or 190 days. A longer school term has been advocated by superintendents and other persons interested in education. A very few cities now have all-year schools, usually divided into four terms of 12 weeks each." Reading has between 180 and 185 days without any summer schools or evening schools such as are maintained in some neighboring towns.
The School Day - The bulletin says : "The tendency is towards a longer school day. The modern progressive school, even though it is in session six hours a day, so balances its program of study and various special activities that the school should be a perfectly natural place for children to live." Reading has had the longer school day in the Junior and Senior High Schools since September 1915 and in the Inter- mediate School (grades 5 and 6) since its organization in September 1927. The school system consists of Primary, grades 1 to 4, having two sessions: 9 to 11.45 a. m. and 1.30 to 3.30 p. m .; Intermediate, grades 5 and 6, one session : 8.30 to 2.30; Junior High, grades 7, 8, and 9,
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one session : S.15 to 2.30; Senior High, grades 10, 11, 12, one session : 8.15 to 2.30.
4. Curriculum and Articulation: The Bulletin says : "Revision of the Elementary, Junior High, and Senior High school curricula has been going on apace. Most of the larger cities and many of the smaller ones report that their curricula are under constant revision. So rapidly have conditions changed and so much is being discovered about what should be included in a curriculum that the school system that is not revising its courses continuously cannot hope to keep pace with the demands of a rapidly changing civilization."
Dr. Wm. John Cooper, United States Commissioner of Education, in a recent address said: "The nineteenth century closed upon an American High School which was primarily a class institution, giving itself chiefly to the needs of 8 to 10 per cent of the population from which it is expected our leadership would come. Since the close of the great war high-school enrolment has gone upward so rapidly it has been impossible to house adequately those who clamor for entrance. American public opinion has spoken in no uncertain tones. It desires an institution of secondary school grade to minister to all American children, not to a small group of leaders alone." "These are some of the changes which must come to pass if America's great social experi- ment is to succeed: The failure of a pupil must be considered first of all a failure on the part of the school. Consequently much study of pupil capacities and interests is involved. New devices for pupil ad- justment need to be perfected. New curriculum materials will be re- quired, considered from such points of view as effective citizenship, wise parenthood, rich use of leisure, conservation of physical and mental vigor. Mental Hygiene will take fully as large a place in the school as bodily hygiene. In the secondary school of tomorrow will be trained psychologists and psychiatrists ready to help young folks to live normally. There will be various types of secondary school units depending upon the size of the community, diversity of population, and the supporting wealth. The educational system will adapt itself to the needs and conditions of the pupil rather than compel the pupil to conform to a rigid system designed for the average. The full-time pupil will be no more important to such a school than the part-time student employed in the factory. The pupils whose financial status or whose peculiar capacities make full-time wage-earning employment necessary or desirable will have the service of the school in directing their health activities, both physical and mental, in suggesting courses for reading, in guidance and in placement."
Inseparably connected with Curriculum Adjustment to individual needs is 5. "Experimental Research" of which the bulletin says in part : "The great progress made in the city schools of the country within the past ten years has without doubt been due to the fact that educational
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problems have been atacked more scientifically. Now that it is possible to test the results of experiments, educational research should be directed more and more to experimental work. Among many experi- ments that are reported by city school superintendents in the smaller cities are those relating to individual instruction plans, ability grouping, health of school children, size of class, supervised study, length of recitation periods, character education, school government and dis- cipline, special classes and platoon plan."
The Reading Department of Research and Guidance was organ- ized with a trained psychologist in 1920 although some scientific testing and research was done prior to that time by Mrs. Beatrice Cahill, author of "Pupil Guidance", and by other students from Boston University or from Harvard University. Of the ten topics mentioned in the preceding paragraph all have received attention, some of them continuously. One of these topics, "Individual Instruction," receives special treatment in the bulletin which says in part: "The movement to adapt the work of the school to the ability and the needs of the individual pupil con- tinues. That children differ in ability has long been known, but since means have been devised for measuring the comparative abilities of school children, the need of fitting the school to the individual child has become more apparent. Among the plans for making better provisions for the individual are ability grouping, the Winnetka and Dalton plans, and the Miller and Morrison contract plans. In addition to the fore- going plans for providing for individual differences, the following may be mentioned: coaching laggards, special classes, supervised study, differentiated curricula, differentiated assignments, and intensive study of problem cases." All of these methods of adjustment to individual difference are well organized and carried on scientifically in the Reading schools. The bulletin well says: "However sound a theory may be, it is of no value until it is put into successful operation. There are many apparently good educational theories but how to put them into operation is the difficult problem." Reading schools have attempted by scientific research to set up and put into operation the mechanisms and procedures to enable each pupil to attain the seven main objectives of education : 1. Health, 2. Command of fundamental processes, 3. Worthy home- membership, 4. Vocation, 5. Citizenship, 6. Worthy use of leisure, 7. Ethical character.
It may be said with assurance that in Reading "revision of the school curricula has been going on apace." In the effort to develop a. curriculum and the concomitant educational procedures that will enable the school "to minister to all American children," our department of curriculum research and guidance has developed a plan whereby pupils. are not compelled to repeat a grade if retarded or skip a grade if ac- celerated. Four, five, six, seven, or eight years may be taken to com- plete the grades 1-6. In grade one the pupil's introduction to learning-
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to-read gives scope to individualized purposeful activity, independent of any other pupil's action or progress. For several years in the Junior High School and more recently in the Intermediate School, grades 5 and 6, a plan of individual assignments in place of class as- signments has been in operation. The Reading plan is a combination and an adaptation of the Winnetka, Dalton, and Miller plans. The Miller plan provides a curriculum on three levels: the lowest level represents the minimum essentials of tool knowledge which everyone must master who is to be advanced as a satisfactory student; the next higher curriculum level is an enrichment by a more extended and thorough treatment of the topic under consideration and is corres- pondingly more difficult and requires more ability on the part of the pupil; the highest curriculum level is concerned with a creative use of the knowledge gained and applied to problems, projects, or research carried on by the pupil more or less on his own initiative. The pupil is required to do only the lowest level in order to pass but the oppor- tunity to do the higher levels is open to all and they are encouraged to meet the challenge. This plan has many advantages over fixed assign- ments for each ability level as at Trinidad, Colorado. The three-level individual assignment is a mechanism to adjust the curriculum to the individual's abilities to learn, both with respect to rate of progress and with respect to degrees of difficulty and scope of the tasks that may be successfully mastered. It aims, on the one hand, to afford the op- portunity and the stimulus for the supernormal pupil to extend himself to the optimum of his abilities and feel the "joy" of his "activities in full expansion," and on the other hand to provide for the less gifted and for the sub-normal pupil a continuity of personal development through the successful accomplishment of tasks suited to particular needs, in- terest and capacities. By such individual adjustments, the pupil's school activities may be uniformly productive of the stimulus of success, be- come an integral and formative part of the experience of reality and be definitely lined up and integrated with the contacts with life outside of school : in the home, the neighborhood, and the community in which he plays his part. Such a wholeness of experience is very important for the pupil's development and success in life. Joseph K. Hart in a recent book, "A Social Interpretation of Education" says : "The prob- lem of education is the problem of community-making in the most fundamental sense of the term. The problem of the school is merely a chapter in that more inclusive problem. An unrelated school - a school that unacquainted with or indifferent to the world within which it is attempting to operate, the world from which the pupils come each morning and to which they must go back evenings - such a school is an impertinence."
There are many features of the Reading schools that have been devised to help the pupil to understand his relations to the community
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life and to understand and enter into those experiences that constitute a successful and satisfactory social integration. Team-work, playing the game according to the rules, and maintaining the attitude and the behavior of a gentleman and good sport whether one wins or loses are all turned to account in building up a standard of life.
6. Safety Education: The bulletin says: "Many cities have prepared courses of study in safety education. Most of these courses are not confined to teaching children how to avoid street accidents but treat safety in its broader sense of protection to life and health not only as an individual but as a community matter." Systematic work in safety education is carried on in all of the Reading schools under the supervision of the Director of Health. Besides instruction by teachers and other school officials, assistance has been given by bulletins, posters, and outlines of courses of instruction furnished by the National Safety Council and the Massachusetts Safety Council. The latter has provided lectures to teachers on methods of instructing pupils and to the pupils themselves. Some of these lectures have been illustrated by moving pictures or lantern slides.
7. Visual Instruction: The bulletin says : "Visual instruction is today one of the most discussed methods of teaching. Visual instruction involves such visual aids as maps, charts, graphs, models, exhibits, flat pictures, stereographs, and stereopotican slides. All of these are receiv- ing attention as never before, but the chief experiments and chief interest in visual instruction are at present centered around the moving picture." "Judging from general interest in visual instruction and from the results reported, it is safe to predict that within a few years teaching films as well as other visual aids will be considered as necessary as are text books, maps, and dictionaries."
Reading schools have one moving-picture machine and six lan- terns for projection of pictures. There is a modest equipment of the other visual aids mentioned. Much more equipment of this nature could be used to advantage.
8. The Platoon School: The bulletin says: "The movement to organize platoon or work-study-play schools has within recent years been rapidly going forward. School buildings that have gymnasiums, auditoriums, workrooms, and playgrounds will, when organized on the platoon plan, accomodate about one-third more children than when organized on the non-platoon plan." The Highland School was organ- ized on the platoon plan following Gary, Indiana, with minor modi- fications in 1915 and has continued on that plan since. The Junior High School building was built for the platoon plan as carried on in Detroit and elsewhere.
9. The Visiting Teacher: The bulletin states the numbers of visiting teachers are increasing. The purpose of the visiting teacher is to confer with parents and secure their cooperation in the education
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of the child. When the Reading department of Research and Guidance was established in 1920 it was arranged that the director should function as a visiting teacher in matter's pertaining to her department, chiefly the pupil's progress in the school studies. Later the school nurse, now the Director of Health, took up the duties of visiting teaching in matters of health. The male truant officer was replaced by a woman, a college graduate and student of social welfare methods. She became in effect a visiting teacher with the title of attendance officer but covered the whole field of children's behavior in collaboration with the principals of the schools on one side and the parents of the delinquent children on the other. The bulletin reports that Peoria, Illinois, has a visiting teacher as attendance officer and says, "A school that handles its attendance work in this manner is keeping step with the best in educational progress."
Supervisory Staff
The personnel of the supervisory staff of the schools has con- tinued without change through the year 1929, except that the Supervisor of Drawing, Miss M. Adeline Lahaise, who accepted a position in New York at an increased salary, was succeeded by Miss Mercie V. Nichols and Mrs. Dorothy C. Walker was employed as an additional school nurse. Miss Mabel M. Brown was made Director of Health and Mr. Philip W. Althoff, Director of Physical Education. These two appoint- ments merely enlarged the scope of work of persons already on the staff. The six clinics carried on in connection with the schools, - Diphtheria prevention, Tuberculosis prevention, Pre-School, Dental, Habít (psy- chiatric), and Posture clinic - have all functioned efficiently. The organization of the orthopedic work of the Posture Clinic and the remedial measures employed have been gradually systematized. A nurse and physical training teacher are in attendance at each clinic and the doctor's diagnosis and direction for corrective procedures are passed on to the physical training teachers of the several schools. The The Silhouettograph is used to show faulty posture. The outstanding deficiencies in our Physical Education program are lack of sufficient supervised playgrounds for the younger children, an adequate athletic field for the athletic teams of older pupils and of adults, and the absence of any pool of water available for learning to swim.
Senior High School
The Senior High School has an excellent record for the past year in the success of the pupils in all departments. Notwithstanding the increasing severity of college entrance requirements pupils that have done their work satisfactorily in high school have been able to gain admittance to Harvard, Dartmouth, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Radcliffe, Smith, Wellesley, and any other college to which
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they have applied. They have generally been successful in doing their first year's work after being admitted. The principal has sug- gested that in view of the more exacting requirements, the college- preparatory course should be made regularly four years. At present some pupils get this by returning for a post graduate year. Probably many pupils would profit by devoting a longer time to drawing, design and art crafts, and to manual training, cooking and sewing. This would require additional teachers as the present corps is fully occupied. Only two periods a week are allowed each pupil for physical education and no special time is assigned to health teaching. If three periods a week were provided in the Senior High School as is done in the Junior High School two periods could be devoted to activities and one period to class-room instruction in health knowledge. The principal has also called attention to the desirability of a librarian and the better organ- ization for giving pupils access to the reference books belonging to the school. Many schools of this size have librarians and a substantial collection of books. Some schools combine the work of librarian with coaching backward pupils. There is need of providing better facilities for the "Opportunity Group" who cannot come up to all the standards of regular high school courses but nevertheless can gain much practical knowledge on the high school level.
Junior High School
This is the beginning of the third year of the Junior High School in the new building with a year added to its curriculum. It has taken time to effect so fundamental a re-organization and perfect the details of the best procedures to attain its ends. This year has been devoted largely to efforts to perfect the organization and procedure without undertaking any innovations. In general the improvement is evident in all departments. Outdoor playgrounds are the outstanding need for development. A portion of the lawn was taken for outdoor work for the girls and the parking area has been used for the boys. The turf on the lawn is not yet firm enough to withstand continued use.
The Highland School
The playground of this school has needed attention for some time and in general the whole of the grounds about this building should be fixed up. The principal has called attention to the need of another teacher in the Intermediate School, grades 5 and 6, and also to the large numbers in the primary rooms. In general the primary rooms have too many pupils everywhere in Reading except at the Chestnut Hill School.
This fact together with the condition at the new Junior High School which has every class-room occupied and even the library diverted to the use of the classes in business practice indicates clearly
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that more school rooms must be provided in the near future. It is none too soon to undertake a careful survey of present and probable future needs in school buildings.
Changes in Personnel
We have had comparatively few changes in the teaching staff. One high school teacher has been absent all the year on sick leave. Four others have resigned to accept positions elsewhere. One in the Intermediate School retired from teaching. Two primary teachers and one teacher of an Opportunity Class resigned to go elsewhere.
Pupil teachers from the Salem Normal School have been in at- tendance for ten-week periods of practice teaching. As pointed out in the report of the Principal of the Highland and Central Primary Schools, the pupil teachers are of considerable advantage to the schools in several respects.
Special Reports
The several reports from the Supervisors and Principals contain much information of importance for an understanding and appreciation of the work that is being carried on in the schools. I commend them to your consideration.
I wish to thank the corps of teachers for their earnest efforts in behalf of the children and their cordial attitude of cooperation with the supervisory staff. I thank the School Committee for their courteous consideration and good will and their helpful direction in my admin- istrative duties.
Respectfully submitted, ADELBERT L. SAFFORD, Superintendent.
TEACHERS IN SERVICE, DEC. 31, 1929, WHERE EDUCATED, YEAR APPOINTED ALSO ENROLLMENT FOR FOUR MONTHS ENDING DEC. 31, 1929
SCHOOL
GRADES OR SUBJECT
NAMES OF TEACHERS
GRADUATE OF
Year
Appointed
Salary
Enroll ment Total
Average
Average
Attendance
Per cent of
Attendance
Senior High ... .
Principal.
Rudolf Sussmann ..
*Conn. Ag. Col. B. S. Ag., B. U. B. S. in Ed. 1917
$3400
436
425.41
400.58 94.16
Phys.Ed.Boys, Mat.
Joseph A. Aldred .
*Bowdoin B. S ..
1925
2500
English .
Josephine M. Barlow .. * Mt. Holyoke A. B.
1928
1900
Com'l English
Elisabeth A. Batchelder *Salem Normal, Boston Univ. B. S. in Ed. Alfred Boehm
1915
1900
Manual Arts
*Trade School, Hamburg, Germany .
1920
2500
English .
Clarissa I. Brown.
*Gorham Normal, B. U. B. S. in Ed ....
1924
1800
Sten. & Type. .
Priscilla Bullukian
*Boston Univ. B. S ..
1929
Sub.
Sten. & Type. .
Elva A. Buckley .
*Bay Path Inst., Boston Univ. B. B. A. *Radcliffe A. B.
1929
1300
German, Geometry
Elizabeth Dunning .
*Mt. Holyoke A. B.
1928
1800
Bkk'g, Pen.
Alberta F. Drury
*Salem Normal & Posse Normal
1917
1900
English .
Helen M. England .
*Radcliffe A. B. M. A.
1929
1300
History . .
Charles M. Gates.
*Yale A. B., Harvard A. M ..
1928
1800
Com. Geog., Occu ..
Charles Guarnaccia.
*Boston Univ. B. B. A ..
1928
1700
Sten. & Type ... .
+E. Frances Greenhalgh.
*Bay Path Inst., Wilimantic Nor.
1914
1900
Mathematics.
Luke Halpin .
*Bowdoin A. B.
1922
2500
Phys. Ed. Girls .
Florence G. Nichols
*Sargent. .
1929
1800
Chemistry, Phys ...
Frederick J. Pope.
*Colby B. S., Harvard Ed. M.
1922
2500
Music.
Douglas A. Porell.
Boston Univ. Music Supervisor's Course
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