Page 19 - 1916 February - To Dragma

98 TO DRAG MA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

in each of these territorial divisions were to be superintended by-
some efficient alumna chosen from the district in which her own
chapter was situated. We feel that these new District Superinten-
dents have been wisely chosen. Their names are not new to Alpha
< hnicron Pi and to her aims.
District Superintendents

East—Marion Rich, A
South—Katherine Gordon, K
West—Virginia Esterly (Mrs. W. B . ) , 2
Middle West—Merva Hennings (Mrs. A. J.), P

A M E T H O D OF TEACHING ENGLISH COMPOSITION

I N T H E FIRST Y E A R OF H I G H SCHOOL

B L A N C H E D u BOIS, 2 '03

Teacher of English, San Leandro High School, San Leandro, Cal.

When the pupils enter our high school, very few of them know
how to write a simple exercise in composition with any regard for
the rules of punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. I t was my
aim as one of the teachers of the low Freshman English classes, to
try to get a working knowledge of the simplest rules governing
these laws into the heads of my pupils. Such advanced work as
paragraph developing was not aimed at in any work I have ever done
in my low Freshman classes. I t may seem that I have laid out a
task that would soon be accomplished, but I have never found a
term of twenty weeks too long for the completion of my task.
I n fact, I never have felt sure that every one could be always de-
pended on to put a period at the end of a declarative sentence, and
begin the next one with a capital letter.

I n our school, we have no special classes in composition, but have
to contrive to get it in along with our other English work. Our
classes are large, ranging from thirty-five to forty, and each teacher
has five or six classes each day. So it can readily be seen that it
is impossible for a teacher to correct frequent, long compositions.

When I first began to teach, this is how I handled composition
work. Every week I assigned in all my classes some topic and re-
quired a composition, written out of class, to be handed to me by
Friday. After I had corrected the papers and handed them back
to the owners, I required them to rewrite the paper, correcting all
mistakes. I had personal interviews with the boys and girls who
made the more serious mistakes, explaining the whys and where-
fors of English grammar and constructions. I nearly killed myself