The scheme of giving credit at school for work done at home by the pupils can be made successful only through your coöperation, and faithful report of the work done.
Every Friday afternoon a Home Work Record Slip will be given each pupil. Beginning with Sunday all time spent by the pupils in home work should be entered in the proper place.
Each Monday morning a slip filled in during the previous week should be returned to the teacher. This slip must be signed by the parent or guardian.
Extra work may be listed in the blank spaces.
To secure credit at school for his work, the pupil should average eight hours a week, thirty-two hours a month, at real, honest, helpful labor that relieves the fathers and mothers of that amount of work. If this is done, the teacher will add three credits to the average gained by the pupil at the school during the month in his studies. Additional credits will be given for more than thirty-two hours a month at the rate of one credit for every ten hours' work.
Please coöperate with your teacher in this plan for making work more worth while to the boy and girl.
Lucia Jenkins,
County Superintendent of Schools.
In the District 61 School, near Bellingham, Washington, taught by Mrs. Lou Albee Maynard, there is used a system of having the home credit accounts kept by pupils; the children call it the Ruth and Grace System.
Here is a plan that solves the problem, if it is a problem, of putting extra work on the teacher through home credits. Not only is the teacher entirely relieved of the bookkeeping which the system requires, but the pupils are engaged in practical bookkeeping while they keep the records. Checks are made out in regular bank-check form, and receipts are given.
The Ruth and Grace System is thus described in a neat account written by Emma Ames, a pupil in the sixth grade:—
Ruth and Grace were girls who wanted to learn bookkeeping. In order to give them a chance we took up the credit system.
At the end of each week the girls give us a slip of paper ruled and ready to be made out. The mothers sign it. Each thing which we do counts so much. At the end of the week these slips are handed back to the girls, and we receive another. We also get a check telling how many credits we received the week before.
When we make five thousand credits we then receive a composition book. Smaller things are also given for fewer credits.
The girls keep in their ledgers each person's work. So if any mistake is made they will have something to refer to.
We call the system the Ruth and Grace System.
The prize list is as follows:—
The following letter from Mrs. Maynard explains the system further:—
I have been requested to report on our plan for giving credit for home work as we have tried it. One of my pupils has written a report of our system which explains our methods nicely. This has been only a trial, but I am so pleased with results that I intend to use it whenever there are older pupils who can do the bookkeeping, for it represents a great deal of work, and unless the school is a very small one the system would add too much to the already busy teacher's work.
The girls who are represented by our firm carried on the work on a strictly business basis. They bought the work of the pupils as represented by the weekly reports. This work was then sold to me at a gain of 20 per cent. The girls have worked out a simple system of double entry in six weeks. We, as a school, have spent an interesting and profitable time, keeping track of our work, and of their mistakes, and the various ups and downs of a business.
We are planning a better schedule of wages, a bank in which to deposit our checks, and a store where the credits may be exchanged for little articles which represent the rewards; but this is all in the making, and may have to wait for another year, as our school term closes soon.
This is a school whose average attendance is about sixteen. The people are progressive, and see that we have all modern appliances: gymnasium, school garden, bubbling fountain, sanitary toilets, and a good heating system are some of the good things our country school enjoys.
Some original features are included in a plan in operation in Algona, King County, Washington. The Algona plan of grading is this: The actual number of minutes employed in doing the daily chores is registered. Thirty minutes is allowed for church attendance. Twenty-five per cent is given weekly for each of the personal care items, bathing, brushing teeth, sleeping with open windows, and going to bed before nine o'clock. Half an hour's work must be done each day, else the pupil forfeits the work done that day. If at the end of a month the pupil has made an average of 85 per cent on personal care, and has 85 per cent on home work, his grade average for the month is raised 10 per cent. For instance, if a boy should have the required 85 per cent in the home credit department, and should have an average of 80 per cent in his school subjects, his final grade for the month would be 88 per cent.
Algona uses a book system of keeping the pupils' weekly home credit grades. The principal records the final grades for each week, after collecting the cards from his three assistants. He expects to substitute the card system for the book another year, using the same plan of record. Below is given the plan for keeping the records, together with the work of one boy for a month:—