The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1897-1926, 1898-12-09
AN INSPIRING INSTITUTE.

Good Attendance and Successful Meet
ing in Corunna Baptist Church, Friday
and Saturday.
The inspiration institute, held In Corun-
ma Friday and Saturday. was successful
one In every respect. and County Commis.
sioner Bristol and other members of the
local committee have every reason to feel
pleased with the success of their efforts. One
or two of the numbers on the program
were not given, and the order was
changed In some cases, but practically 1t was
as given In last weeks issue. Following we
give some of the important points of part
of the papers.
A very valuable talk Friday afternoon
was the one given by j. G. Shattuck, Sec'y
of the Owosso School Board. and at one
time superintendent of the st. Clair
schools. His subject concerned the duties
of the school board ia respect to the pa
irons, the schools and the teachers them
selves. Owing, however, to the fact that
there were few besides teachers present
Mr. Shattuck soon reached the third part In
his talk and explained some of the secrets of
the boards relations with the teachers,
especially In the matter of what Is taken
into consideration In hiring them. The
mere knowledge that an examination can
display Is far from enough. The teacher
is to help IN character building and should
have character which will impress the
pupils with respect and admiration. A
pleasant face and smile means so much
more than most people are aware, and
teacher should never let care or worry fol.
low her into the school room. Nothing of
that kind should ever appear on her face.
This Is key to some of the things board
attempts to find out before engaging
teacher, and often several points and char
acteristics are weighed and discussed which
the teacher may not suspect are even
thought of.
Mr.. O. p. Reynolds read paper discuss
ing the reason for the country pupils below
the ninth grade betaking themselves to the
city schools, which he admitted they did,
and conceded it to be due to the improved
equipment the latter afforded. Mr.. Bert
Cook in discussing the paper, jokingly at
tempted to discredit this concession by say
ing that he often had noticed that horse
would leave stack or nice clover hay to go
nosing about straw stack. A number of
other remarks in a humorous vein kept his
audience in marked good nature during his
discussion.
The work of Miss Hattie German. critic
teacher in the Saginaw high school, was
one of the most inspiring and pleasing parts
of the program. Miss Germain is not a
fluent speaker but an intensely interested
one who succeeds in holding her hearers in
terested as we'll. Anv one who saw the in
tense, sympathetic interest shining in her
eyes would easily guess the secret of her
success.
The Speer method of teaching numbers
Miss German finds very successful, and
complete set of blocks for illustrating the
same costs only about two dollars.
Her method of explaining the mean
ing of fractions, and her discussion
of the methods Of teaching reading in the
primary classes were alike instructive and
inspiring. Silent reading and then telling
BILE exercise for children, and should not be
neglected.
The talk given by Miss Swartz, teacher
of music in the 0wOsso schools, was inter
esting, and from the clear and simple way
in which she explained the method of teach
ing the children to read the scale, much of
the bugaboo imagined to exist in the teach
ing of music was dispelled. The whole in
stitute was handled by Miss Swariz as a
music class, and a practical illustration was
given of the ease of making such instruc
ton really beneficial
The paper read by Supt. G. L. Collins, of
the COrunna schools, showed some of the
difficulties of the subject, of promotions from
the district school to the high school, espec-
tally in the matter of fairness to both cOun
try pupils aud the eighth grade pupils On
the one hand it seemed that the grade re-
quired for admission to the high school was
too low. as it was ten or fifteen lower on
a scale of 100 than that required in the city
schools. On the other hand it was realized
that it was a difficult task for the country
student to prepare all the examinations for
one day. And, too, the fact that the coun-
try students are older as a usual thing and
stick through the high school course, showed
one should not be too exacting. His owo
policy was to give them trial at any rate.
Saturday afternoon the institute was
treated TO feature which was not down on
the program, when Supt OF Public lnsuuc
ton Jason E. hammond gave shor, ex-
temporaneous talk and then read portion
of paper which he had written on the re-