OCR Text |
Show t$y enter school can not speak English, and that they require wn-tinual drilling to gain even a rudimentary howled e of our lan-guage. When a teacher has been found who has ha % unusual suc-cess in teaching Indian children to speak English, the plan has been to bring her methods to the attentlon of other teachers for their guidance. While such efforts to assist individual teachers along this and other lines of work. have required much time and labor, they are beginning to show good results. The schools have been urged to devote more attention to instruct-ing the girls in family cooking, and an outline course has been pre-pared, which, by your direction, was included in the curriculum at the beginning of the current school year. The course provides for teaching the rudiments and theory of cooking in the class room. and it is hoped that better results will be secured than hitherto in this branch of the school work. Pupils of those tribes who are earnin a living to any extent by the practise of their native arts and cra f ts have been encouraged to continue to practise them, and a few schools have found it advanta-geous to employ native instructors. A great deal of time has been devoted to the supervision of in-ti-tutes, which it has been the custom to hold for the purpose of bring-ing teachers together and instructing them in methods that are p?rticularly adapted to Indian educational work. In compliance with your instructions, a special effort was made to bring out the methods employed in the schools at Tuskegee,,Ala., and Hampton, Va. Demonstration lessoils were presented, with classes of Indinn children, showing how the methods used at these well-known schools should be adapted to meet the needs of the Indian. The institutes were well attended, and unusual interest was shown thruout the sessions. Altho a circular was issued in 1904 iving detailed instructions in regard to maintaining hygienic con 5 itions in dormitories and pointing out precautions to be observed to prevent the spread of dis-case among pupils, the importance of this matter has been overloold at a number of schools, and it has been found necessary to reissue the circular. The instri~ctions regarding the establishment of reading cirrles among teachers have been complied with by a few of the schools. . At one of them. where the work had been weak. decided imorove-ment was noticeable after employees' meetings had been held'regu-larly for some time. The superintendent of that school had visited Tuskegee, and realized how his school would be benefited if its work were modeled on similar lines, especially in correlating the literary and industrial instruction and in adapting it to the local needs of pupils. The importance of practising more thrifty economy with refer-ance to pupils' ,wearing apparel, etc., has been apparent at several schools, and a circular has been issued calling the attention of scbool matrons to this matter. By your direction a circular letter was sent to,the schools in regard to making commencement exercises more practical and less theoret-ical, in order to bring out the actual acquirements of pu ils and ex-emplify the methods of instruct~on,e spec~allyi ndustriaf . A num- |