Class meeting

“ By request of the president, no text book is taken to any regular meeting of the circle. The teacher being the only one that has a text book, the attention of the class is secured, and more benefit is derived from the meetings in every way. ”

“ The teachers' meeting is not so much to get facts as to vivify and arrange them. The leader does not teach the lesson unless he teaches how to teach the lesson. This is a place for comparison.
The meeting is perhaps less to make plans for the teachers than to stimulate them to make good plans for themselves. The gathering is not to listen to a lecture. You cannot make teachers, except by the Socratic method. A teachers' meeting is not a Bible class.
The ideal teachers' meeting focuses on the work of each the helpfulness and skill of all. ”

“ Where the Seventies meet in classes that are only fragments of quorums, in instances where the number of meetings does not average more than from three to six or eight, it is thought that better results would be obtained if such a class would convert the occasion into a lesson-study meeting, for three lessons in the month, and instead of trying to deliver the lesson statement in lecture form, remain seated around the table and read the lesson, hunt up the citations given, and discuss the notes—in a word study the lesson together and profit by each other's assistance. ”

“ I am certain that I voice the sense of this class meeting when I say that the thanks of the plebe class are due to the chairman. I have only to add my own personal, urgent appeal that the man chosen for the greatest honor we can bestow be truly a man who represents the best that there is in this class. ”

“ In order to secure effective and correlated outside reading, many teachers have found it helpful to require the students to devote the first five or ten minutes of a class meeting once a week or even daily to a written summary of their readings and of class discussions. ”

“ Call the teachers and officers together. Have a half-hour social feature, to be followed with an earnest address on the need and the plan of teacher-training. Teach a sample lesson from the text-book. Endeavor in that meeting to secure at least a few persons who will agree to enter a class and will promise to do personal work to secure other members. But do not make the mistake of requiring a large class before beginning. A leader and two or more students will constitute a class. ”

“ The meeting may be presided over by a member of the class. Set speeches should be required and order maintained. The discussion should not lapse into undirected, fragmentary conversation. It is not enough for a pupil to say, "Let us go to the museum next Saturday afternoon." ”

“ The Juniors we understand, will follow suit soon. We hardly know what is left for the Seniors, unless it be to go bare-headed."—1845, p. 464.
CLASS COMMITTEE. At Harvard College a committee of two persons, joined with the Class Secretary, who is ex officio its chairman, whose duty it is, after the class has graduated, during their lives to call class meetings, whenever they deem it advisable, and to attend to all other business relating to the class. ”

“ It is desirable that the quorums and class teachers exercise their freedom in these matters, only let them throw life and individuality into the work and they will succeed.
The class meetings of the quorums can continue throughout the year practically without interruption. Interruption will only be necessary in order to attend the Stake Quarterly Conferences, and the ward conferences where the respective quorums are located, and these occasions will not exceed five in number. ”

“ The local circle keeps warm and vigorous through the year the spirit of the summer assemblies. Indeed, to the local circles we believe we are indebted for much of the enthusiasm of the summer meetings. Their students garner rich harvests of thought and feeling in the long months of study, and the assemblies are but the meeting places to compare work, rest weary brains, gather fresh zeal and plan new undertakings. They are becoming necessary elements in the work. Students are feeling we must have an assembly. ”

“ To get things in motion, two lines of action are suggested: First, plan for a conference of older boys and workers with boys for the community which you desire to cover. The program should aim to lay before the conference the plan of the Organized Secondary Division Class; methods of work should be discussed at group conferences; the Crusade Challenge presented at the banquet; and the session should close with a rousing inspirational address. Second, formation of an Inter-Sunday School Council, the purpose of which is to plan and promote work for Secondary Division Classes in the city. ”

“ The teacher who comes to a meeting with her problems, willing to acknowledge that she needs help, and anxious to get it will not find these gatherings dull or uninteresting. If the meeting is organized for study, as is done in connection with reading circle work, the meeting can be transformed from a perfunctory recitation of the ideas of the book into a live professional discussion, by the activity of two or three earnest teachers. ”

“ You have inaugurated the working men's lectures of the Association in a way that cannot be improved. And it was worth the trouble, for I suspect they will become a great and noble feature in the meetings.
Everything seems to have gone well at the meeting, the educational business carried [i.e. a recommendation that natural science be made a part of the curriculum in the public schools] , and the anthropologers making fools of themselves in a most effectual way. ”

“ DEAR MR. PUNCH,—You are so awfully good to chaps at school that I am sure you will insert this letter. SMITH MINOR, who takes in the Times, says, that a "PARENT" has been writing to say, that there should be a meeting of Fathers to swagger over the meeting of Head Masters. Well, this wouldn't be half a bad idea if it were properly conducted; but the "PARENT" seems to be a beast of a governor, who wants to cut down the holidays, and such like rot. And this brings me to what I want to propose myself. If there are to be meetings of Head Masters and Parents, why not a meeting of Boys? ”

“ The meeting which is commonly called the Teachers'-Meeting we prefer to call the Workers' Meeting, because it should be as helpful to the officers as to the teachers. It is impossible to overestimate the value of a properly conducted Workers' Meeting, and yet it is difficult to maintain one. A Sunday-school without a Workers' Meeting is a collection of classes, and not a school at all, strictly speaking. A helpful Workers' Meeting maintained regularly every week guarantees a good Sunday-school. ”

“ After a course of study has been in operation for a few months it is well to ask some of the teachers who have been the most successful in getting satisfactory results to explain what they have done and how they have done it. Small groups can then discuss such a report with much profit to all. I have never experienced any difficulty in getting large attendance at a teachers’ meeting if the program provided concrete help for the group in the work they were doing. This is indeed a rich field for the principal to cultivate. ”

“ This brief presentation of the organization and direction on the part of the meetings should be sufficient to point out: (1) that the general nature of the organization is a hierarchy of units; (2) that the direction of school activities comes from the higher to the lower, and is of a general and suggestive rather than specific and mandatory nature; (3) that the monthly meeting formed the real working unit, and that on its diligence probably depended the [176] welfare of the preparatives’ schools. ”

“ Membership in these associations is almost indispensable to the best work. Not only are the live questions of the classroom discussed, but reports of greater length are presented by special or regular committees; while not the least valuable benefit is that derived from personal association with other workers in the field. The social side of the meeting as found in informal receptions and luncheons is, however, capable of much greater development, especially to the end of reaching the new member. ”

“ Then the members in order and by appointment, in groups of two, called upon each candidate, formed his acquaintance, and invited him to the class. Sometimes thirty or forty men would call, but in time almost every man visited yielded to the friendly social influence, became a member, and soon after a worker for the class. ”

“ We have also a committee on entertainments to procure lecturers and look to the social interest of the work. We do our reading at home, and meet to review, recite, suggest, and encourage each other, and our rules require an essay a week from some one of the class. ”

“ In order to keep the teachers from having any voice, they frequently call the business meetings at hours when the teachers are busy in classroom. One teacher who has spent something like thirty years in the system, tells me that he has never yet been able to attend a business meeting of the association in his school. The representatives 49of the school at these meetings are the principals and their office staff. The teachers pay one-third of the dues, they furnish the bulk of the program work—but they have nothing to say about policy. ”

“ It is thus the meeting in frank and candid conference of knowledge and the desire to know, of higher and popular education as they should be, that must insure the peaceable working of democratic institutions through all the trials and strains that difficult and exciting problems may impose upon them. I am, of course, far from saying that knowledge can be obtained only through a collegiate course of instruction. ”

“ Say, meet in the largest church at three to four and a half o'clock or three and a half to five o'clock P.M. Organize a Youths' Temperance Society. Appoint a discreet youth of fourteen or sixteen years President, with other officers, with a committee to arrange for each meeting. Secure good, fresh, appropriate speakers, and never allow a dull, heavy orator to occupy the children's attention. Instruction, life-like and adapted must constantly prevail. ”

“ A frequent topic for discussion in the teachers' meeting should be how best to inculcate in the school the spirit of devotion, since this great result is to be won only by the co-operation of all the working forces of the school. ”

“ Pursuant to the advice and recommendations of the Yearly Meeting of Friends for many years, and excited by consideration in our own minds for an improvement of the school education of the youth, especially those in low circumstances, we, the subscribers hereto, have agreed to promote the raising of a fund or stock, the increase whereof to be for the benefit of the several schools which are or may be under the care of London Grove Monthly Meeting, and to be distributed amongst them at the direction of a committee of the said meeting, appointed from time to time in the care of schools. ”

“ The primary purpose of the conference is the same as that of the association—‘to advance the study and teaching of history and government through discussion,’ and ‘to promote personal acquaintance among teachers and students of history.’ In these meetings a large number of teachers can be reached whose duties and location prevent them from attending conventions at a distance. Such conferences also afford opportunities for wider discussion than is possible at the meetings of the association. Free statement of opinion indicates lines of work of great worth and interest. ”

“ It will often be seen that "the commonest mind has thoughts worthy of the rarest." In this way the teachers' meetings can be sustained in the hands of ordinary superintendents, and will become the most attractive gatherings in the whole community. An accomplished young lady said to me: "One such meeting as this is worth more than a dozen costly New York parties." The teachers will regularly attend, for they need the assistance which can here be obtained. ”

“ In those days when training classes for Sunday School teachers were almost unknown, this series of conferences, attended by hundreds of workers, proved of infinite value, and set in motion classes in many places. At 9 o'clock, section meetings were held for superintendents and pastors, and teachers of the different grades, from the primary class to the adult Bible class. ”

“ So far no Junior had exercised any particular influence over her fellows; it had been each for herself, even in clamouring appeals for privileges, and the upper girls looked down on the "kids" as a noisy, selfish, troublesome crew, to be kept well under, and not worthy of very much consideration.
The Annual Meeting of the Guilds was to take place on Friday, 15 October, at three o'clock, in the lecture hall. It was held every year on the Friday nearest to the middle of October, and by old-established custom the last hour of the afternoon was allowed to be devoted to it. ”

“ The voting in of new members, with the subsequent producing of the constitution for signatures, is a little ceremony as useful for the old scholars in reminding them of their class autonomy as it is inspiring to the new scholars. A hearty word of welcome from the teacher to the new-comers gives them a formal and public installation. They have indeed taken on themselves a new function.
The social committee will greatly add to the efficiency of any class. Monthly class socials are genuine means of grace. ”