Degree Name

Education Specialist (EdS)

Semester of Degree Completion

1979

Thesis Director

Robert V. Shuff

Abstract

The purpose of the field study project was to develop a functional student handbook for use at Crestwood School in Paris, Illinois. Crestwood School is a kindergarten through 8th grade elementary school and the initial intention was to produce a handbook for use at all nine grade levels. As the project took form, however, differences between the needs for grades K-5 and 6-8 became extensive to the point that it became obvious that separate handbooks would be required to fulfill the desired purposes. This project became, then, the production of the handbook for the middle school (6-8) grades.

Handbooks currently in use were requested from other schools and these were studied both in regard to content and form. A faculty committee was also formed to provide input into the content and form of the handbook.

Ideas and information gathered from these sources were reviewed and the actual text of the handbook was developed and written over about a two week period in June of 1979. The typed first drafts of this handbook were shared with the district superintendent and legal counsel. Minor revisions in the text were made as a result of suggestions from these sources.

Following revision of the first draft the format for the actual handbook had to be decided upon. It was decided that professional printing was far too expensive for our needs and that, therefore, production would be left to school personnel. We chose, then, to reproduce the text of the handbook through the use of mimeograph stencils and simply staple the various pages together as the final product. A cover was considered and then rejected because other handbooks reviewed which had such "school-produced" covers seemed no more attractive or functional than those without them.

The typing and printing of the handbook took about three weeks due to other demands on the secretarial staff as a result of the opening of school in the fall. The final product was readied by mid-September and placed in the hands of the students approximately two weeks into the 1979-80 school year.

Specific recommendations to others attempting to develop a student handbook would include being certain to involve faculty and other staff members in the development, if not the actual writing, of the handbook, allowing plenty of lead time for the development, writing, and printing of the handbook, and planning to make revisions of the handbook in other years as expedient and cost-efficient as possible.

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