3. A series of bulletins.-A monthly bulletin, entered as second-class matter at the post-office, is a very satisfactory method of issuing catalogs, circulars of information, departmental handbooks, illustrated booklets, etc. A quarterly bulletin will answer the purpose. In larger schools two or more series will be found necessary.

4. General advertising.-Hodgepodge, hurly-burly, haphazard advertising will be of little avail. Save the money which you have appropriated for publicity unless an experienst man plans for it.

5. A field agent.-A field worker, well informed, tactful, popular, proves her value. I say her. Try her out and you will be pleased.

6. Special visitation to high schools. Since the next step from the high school, in the training of teachers, is the normal school or teachers' college, it is highly important that these higher institutions of learning focus the attention of the high-school student before he has made his choice of profession and of college.

7. An alumni association.-Graduates are themselves the best advertisement for a school. Keep this organization compact and well officered. Keep its mailing-list a live one.

8. Free tuition and low cost of living.-No tuition should be required in a state school, and certainly not in a teacher-training school. Incidentals and all fees should be fixt at a minimum. Dormitories should be establisht in most normal schools.

9. The married woman teacher.-I make a plea for a definite campaign for the married woman teacher, not in her behalf, but in behalf of the schools. We have made a botch of it for years in keeping married women out of the larger schools. "America has been improvident and wasteful in her failure to utilize the energies of the married woman teacher." It is silly to argue today that she might keep some man out of a job. A woman with a very small child should be at home, but aside from this situation no real reason can be offered why the married woman should be deprived of the privilege of teaching. She might render valuable service again in the school. Normal schools can make a "ten-strike" by campaigning for the married woman teacher and by insisting that all laws, ordinances, and regulations of school boards prohibiting married women from teaching in the public schools be suspended or repealed.

WHAT STATE NORMAL SCHOOLS SHOULD DO FOR THEIR GRADUATES

FRANK E. ELLSWORTH, CHAIRMAN OF APPOINTMENT COMMITTEE, WESTERN STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, KALAMAZOO, MICH.

All modern manufacturing concerns catering to more than a local trade establish a sales department. This department is expected to dispose of the product, establish a permanent market, keep in touch with the

needs of that market, and keep the customers satisfied. Defects in the product as discovered by the trade and any changes in the demand of the market are promptly reported back to the production department. Not only that, but the sales department is expected to exercise prophetic vision over the field and wisely anticipate future needs. I appreciate the fact that normal schools are not manufacturing concerns but institutions engaged in developing young men and women with high ideals and purposes, who shall be capable of directing our boys and girls aright. The analogy holds, however, for the purposes of this discussion.

Normal schools would do well to incorporate a sales department, so to speak, and give to it much the same support and consideraton as do the manufacturing concerns. The normal school has all of the reasons of the manufacturing concern for the existence of the sales department plus the advantage that comes to it from satisfied alumni. In many normal schools this truth is but partially recognized, and the work of the Appointment Committee is given over to a clerk in the general office, an overworkt faculty member, or the busy president, who should not be bothered with this problem, with no more success than this makeshift plan warrants. No business concern could afford so to treat its market and its product.

Believing that the normal schools could, with much profit to themselves, their alumni, and the schools of our country, give more consideration to appointment-committee work, I desire to present some of the opportunities and problems of this committee. In discussing appointmentcommittee work I shall draw freely upon our plans, purposes, and experiences at the Kalamazoo State Normal School, not with the idea that our system is perfect, but with the hope of being suggestive and helpful.

The big responsibility of the Appointment Committee is to place the graduates where they can best serve and best grow. This problem involves the necessity of knowing the Seniors, knowing the alumni, knowing the field, and knowing as many as possible of the best ways and means of effecting the desired contract relationships.

Our effort at Kalamazoo to know the graduates has resulted as follows: A committee of six members of the faculty, selected from different departments, is appointed and assigned to this definite problem. Each Senior fills out a blank for the Committee, giving data relative to his age, previous schooling, experience in teaching, church preference, etc. The critic teacher with whom the candidate teaches makes a comprehensive report of his practice teaching. Three faculty members with whom the candidate has done considerable work give their opinions of the candidate. With these data is filed the student's academic record, which is supplemented by the estimate of each member of the Appointment Committee as to the candidate's general fitness for teaching, exprest in the form of percentages ranging from 100 to o. From these data the chairman of the committee

forms the institution's opinion of the party. A conscious effort is made to make this opinion institutional rather than personal. This material is supplemented later by a report from the superintendent with whom the first year of teaching was done, and any other reports worthy of consideration that may come in, and all is filed in the office of the Appointment Committee. In order that normal schools and their alumni may cooperate to any considerable degree, it is necessary to take definite steps to secure and hold the attention and interest of the alumni. Many are so located and so constituted that they lose contact with their normal school. They take it for granted that the normal school is thru with them the moment they receive their certificates and are placed in their first positions. All should be kept on the mailing-list and should, from time to time, receive bulletins designed to keep them in touch with the school, its problems and achievements, and assuring them of the school's interest in them and its desire to be of further service.

The problem of knowing the superintendents, school boards, and schools of the state is a much more difficult but not less important problem. The chairman of the Appointment Committee should have a wide acquaintance with the school men and school systems of the state which are to be served, this acquaintance to be extended as much as possible and supplemented by any information which has a direct bearing upon work of the Appointment Committee that the faculty may gather.

Normal-school presidents would do well to establish visiting days for every faculty member. Make out a regular schedule of towns and dates. with the faculty assignment and see to it that the visits are made. The big advantage, of course, would come to the faculty members themselves by thus coming in contact with the real school situations to which their students go, and seeing for themselves their successes and failures. Incidentally the information gained concerning school conditions and the graduates would be of much value to the Appointment Committee.

As to some ideas relative to the best way of serving the graduates and the schools, I would make the following suggestions: (1) Be strictly honest with the graduates concerning the institution's opinion of them, the position for which they are best fitted, and the character of the position for which they are applying. (2) Be strictly honest with the superintendents and the school boards concerning candidates for positions. (3) Be ready to present the best candidates that are left to every superintendent and school board. (4) Give to every visitor the best service possible. (5) Never attempt to force a candidate upon a superintendent or school board. (6) Encourage superintendents and school boards to come to the normal school for teachers and discourage appointments by correspondence. Improve these opportunities to make them acquainted with the faculty, equipment, and ideals of the normal school and incidentally get their ideas and ideals. (7) Be suggestive, not dictatorial.

Seniors in a normal school, as a class, are rather poor business people. There has been little in their training, up to the time of graduation, to prepare them to bargain with school boards and superintendents. Many do not meet people well, write poor letters of application, do not have definite notions of the kind of position wanted, do not know professional customs, do not know the meaning of a contract, are dominated by parents who are not informed as to the school situation, and do not know what their services are worth.

This situation is met in the Kalamazoo State Normal School by a series of twelve lectures given by the chairman of the Appointment Committee and by private conferences between Seniors and the chairman of the Appointment Committee, at which their desires are noted, and they are informed concerning the institutional estimate of them and the approximate cash value that they should place upon their services.

Alumni are encouraged to communicate with the Appointment Committee when they consider themselves ready for promotion. This effort to assist our graduates has resulted in a surprisingly large number of promotions, and "the tie that binds" has been strengthened in every instance.

In attempting to establish a highly desirable relationship between the normal schools and its graduates the school superintendent is a most vital factor. The superintendent with positive character and ability, properly recognized and supported by an intelligent school board and backt up by rational public opinion, at once becomes an asset to every progressive movement. It should be the policy of the Appointment Committee to advise and cooperate fully and frankly with superintendents of this class, especially concerning the supply of teachers, the probable salary schedule, and the success or failure of our graduates, and to offer any suggestion that will tend to increase our ability to serve.

The superintendent who is not able to establish a satisfactory school situation in his community presents a different and more difficult problem. He must be helpt first to see his problems and then to solve them. It may be necessary to develop his appreciation of first-class teachers. A few days spent in visiting good schools and observing strong teachers teach is helpful. If his knowledge of the salary situation is deficient, show him a list of the best salary schedules of the state and the list of the graduates placed to date, together with their salaries. Also acquaint him with. the supply of teachers and the demand. An interview with a few strong candidates who will decline any offer he may make, because of his salary schedule, will do him no harm. Talk large salary schedules to him until the first shock has worn off and the sound becomes commonplace. Monroe, Mich., with 47 teachers, has a minimum salary schedule of $1000 and only one grade teacher next year will receive less than $1100. Grand Rapids, Mich., applies the same salary schedule to the grades as to the

high school for the same preparation, that is, a grade teacher with an A.B. degree receives the same salary as a high-school teacher with an A.B. degree. It is good for him to peruse the long list of towns and cities with minimum schedules of $900, $850, and $800.

The Appointment Committee may cooperate with superintendents who are not quite able to handle their school boards by helping some of their best teachers to get located in another school system at a very much improved salary. A number of instances of this kind have produced satisfactory results.

The schools of Michigan that are most loyal to the Kalamazoo State Normal School are those that have been consistently hiring our best graduates. By encouraging more schools to pay the price for some of our best graduates the demand for well-trained teachers can easily be kept far in advance of the supply, and competition for their services can be strengthened, with a highly satisfactory effect upon the salary schedules.

As a result of this extension of services to our graduates we have an advertising agency distributed about the state that can and will do effective work since it can speak with knowledge and appreciation. Any campaign for students, for better teachers' salaries, for better school legislation, for better legislative support, will meet with prompt and hearty support from all who have been helpt after a term of service in the field. Superintendents and school boards do not forget courteous and efficient service when it comes to pointing the way to a good normal school or supporting such a school in the legislature.

All this will tend to draw to the normal school more of the high-school graduates with discrimination and initiative. They, in turn, will leave the normal school as high-grade teachers, and the boys and girls will receive more of the kind of teaching that they deserve. In other words, the normal school that best serves will be best served.

SECRETARY'S MINUTES

CHICAGO MEETING

OFFICERS

President-D. B. WALDO, president, State Normal School..
Secretary-ANNA M. TIBBETTS, Fargo College.....

Kalamazoo, Mich.
..Fargo, N.Dak.

FIRST SESSION-TUESDAY FORENOON, FEBRUARY 25

A conference of the Department of Normal Schools of the National Education Association was held on Tuesday forenoon, February 25, 1919, at 9:30 a.m., in Masonic Hall, Auditorium Hotel, Chicago, Ill. The meeting was called to order by D. B. Waldo, president.

The following program was presented:

'Adequate Compensation for Teachers in State Normal Schools"—John A. H. Keith, president, State Normal School, Indiana, Pa.

Discussion-O. L. Manchester, State Normal School, Normal, Ill.; E. O. Finkenbinder, State Normal School, Milwaukee, Wis.