Archival article — originally published in The Paper, December 1972. By Author not credited.
Archival date note: only the issue month or season is established. The first-of-month date used for chronological indexing is not a verified publication day.
Teacher Assistant Program (Board Sponsored)
The focus in this program is to make use of professional and semi-professional persons from the community at large. These adult persons (six in number at the Hamilton School) assist teachers in rooms where the pupil teacher ratio exceeds 34 to 1. Their major job function is to assist the teachers in individualizing the instructional program in rooms with large numbers, as much as possible.
The teacher assistants also instruct in areas where they possess some knowledge and skill. The intent is to give pupils an opportunity to come in contact with persons who have valuable services to offer in addition to the regular teacher.
All teacher assistants have sixty or more hours of college credit. Four of Hamilton's assistants have degrees in English, Anthropology, Fine Arts and History.
Plans are to develop this core of teacher assistants into a unified task force to explore avenues to additional resources for the Hamilton School.
Career Opportunity Program
This program is not as new as the two previous ones, but its contributions to the Hamilton School has been considerable.
The program is designed to help persons become contributing members in the field of Education. These persons also function in an assisting role within the classrooms and school in general. They take care of much of detail that prevents some of the teachers from spending more time with youngsters who need teachers' special help. COP persons, as they are called, also become instrumental in helping with tutoring, excursions, pupil oriented activities, and project developments as these projects evolve from classroom in which COP persons are working.
Project Stay Extension Program
This program is centered around the seventh and eighth grade pupils. The purpose is to help upper grades begin making the transition from the elementary level to the secondary level. Steering this program is a half day counselor who counsels pupils about their problems whether these problems be personal, social, or academic.
In addition, programs are being developed for pupils in the areas of hygiene, drugs, social relations, study habits, and prospective employment opportunities. The teachers, administrator, counselor and pupils act jointly in hopes of getting the best results from this new endeavor.
R.I.T. (2) Program
The R.I.T. 2 program is Hamilton School's way of announcing that an additional Reading Improvement Team has been instituted at the school.
As many may know at this time, the Reading Improvement Team consists of a Reading Specialist, a Reading Aide, and the classroom teachers who are involved (usually ten in number). Also a Remedial Reading Teacher works with both teams to serve the most severe cases of reading problems.
Because of the impressive gains made by the Reading Improvement Team last school year, larger schools such as the Hamilton School received a second team in hopes that the improvements in reading will be twice as great.
Hot Lunch Program
Slated for early December or late November, the Hamilton School will be providing a hot item lunch program.
A series of hot items will be offered; pizza burger, meatballs and spaghetti, hamburger, and cheese-dog. With these items milk, a vegetable or salad will be served. An ice-cream bar also may be purchased for six cents more over the cost of the hot lunch which will be thirty-five cents.
This, to say the least, will be a welcome change from the usual vita-lunch program.
Read the original newspaper issue: Archive reader · Direct PDF fallback. Originally published in The Paper, December 1972, pages 6.
