High school teacher

“ They are so generous in their impulses, and have such exalted conceptions of life, that they incline to catalogue their colleagues among the very elect. The teacher in the high school and the teacher in the primary grade hold frequent conversations concerning each other’s work, and no teacher ever loses interest in the pupils when they advance to the next grade. To such teachers, education is not parceled out in terms of years but is a continuous process, even as life itself. ”

“ The school-teacher who is alive to the true spirit of his calling becomes a valuable auxiliary in improving the minds and conduct of our children, and his or her influence, when properly excited, might be of incalculable good.
There has been in times past, and still is, a great tendency among our youth to seek easy berths; and sometimes the acme of their ambition seems to be realized upon a high stool in a counting room, or behind a counter; they desire to shun the hardships through which their parents passed. ”

“ High School teachers are mainly [194] those who have worked their way up through the grades (salaries tend to increase with the grade, which brings about that inexperienced teachers are too often put to the lower classes) , while the teachers in Collegiate and Private Schools have usually taken up the work straight from college without any special preparation at all. ”

“ High school teachers should be, and, if the high school is a good one, are, broad gauge, scholarly men and women, educated in our best colleges, normal schools and universities.—For a boy to come in close contact with such manly men and womanly women as should and do form the faculty of good high schools is above all money value to the boy. ”

“ But after the pupil has entered and become regularly enrolled it is the teacher who is the stimulating, guiding and holding power. To analyze the charm of personality which attracts and holds the girl in her teens is impossible, but there are certain things which the teacher must do that we may discuss.
She must remember that the girl in her teens has “grown up,” and that she is very conscious of it. One must be more her friend than teacher. In the earlier years every Sunday-school teacher really interested in her pupils calls freely in the home. ”

“ The teacher whose soul is on fire with her work, the pupil who is willing to learn, these are the essentials of a good school. The teacher, one whose heart is in the work, one who realizes the dignity and the importance of teaching, one who not only knows the subject to be taught and the laws of mental development, but has that innate tact and worth and personal magnetism that draws young people to her, such a teacher is a priceless gem. Such a teacher brings order out of chaos. The pupils feel the magnetism of her presence. ”

“ Why, I should like to be a boy again just to have such a teacher. Instead of bird-songs it is too often school gossip, instead of orchids it is clothes, instead of the open fields it is the round of the schoolroom that most teachers are absorbed in. Most teachers can add and spell much better than they can read, because they do not know the literary values and suggestions of words. ”

“ It is one of the highest callings even for this reason: a teacher utterly unable to see any results of her labor, in black and white, at the end of her pupil's course, as the book-maker may see in the number of printed pages, is willing to trust that, because she has done what she could, good will come to her pupil. A carpenter may see his house completed; but the building of mind, of character, of manhood and womanhood, the teacher never may see finished. It passes on into the hands of the great Teacher of all. ”

“ No profession to-day, perhaps, chronicles so many tragedies as that of the teacher; for school and college give the preference to the young applicant who has yet to prove if he have the making of a teacher in him, while rejected experience dies of a broken heart. ”

“ Even if education is with them shorn of much that gives it charm, the opportunities that come are prized. Students and teachers have intellectual joy in the work they do, and without that the greatest university in the world might as well, or better, be a district school, for then the work done [Pg 64] would be truly useful. It is the teacher who has to put much of her time and energy into making a subject superficially attractive enough for a student to elect it, who is to be pitied. ”

“ She does not have the strain of passing her whole class in every subject, of finishing her course on schedule time, of cramming for examinations. She has some freedom in the division of her time and a voice in the making of the course and curriculum. The less experienced teacher has in her classroom the assistance and advice of the senior teacher, as well as of the head teacher of her subjects in the head school. Teachers are not rivals, but colleagues as in a college faculty. ”

“ It is desirable that the young teacher should meet his scholars first in an unofficial capacity. For this purpose repair to the school-room, on the first day, at an early hour, so as to see and become acquainted with the scholars as they come in, one by one. The intercourse between teacher and pupil should be like that between parents and children, where the utmost freedom is united with the most perfect respect. ”

“ But the Public School teacher will accomplish much if, reverently and sympathetically, he endeavours to preserve the freshness and ingenuousness of childhood and, by the influence of his own example, while leading the pupil up the golden ladder of mental acquisition, he encourages the cultivation of those graces of life which are the best adornments of youth.'—Feb. ”

“ The true teacher has, or gets, the poet's ability to project himself into the lives of others. He keeps invisible, tactful antennæ playing in all directions, feeling this one's coming embarrassment before it arrives, conscious of that one's eager assent before it lights his eyes, exploring homes and occupations and character in order to adapt question to scholar. Without argument or plan, but by instinctive appreciation of differing personality, the true teacher assumes dignity with this pupil, bonhomie with that. ”

“ Such teaching on the way to some form of vocation deemed far more honorable was not of a sort to make teaching a profession in itself. Later, some measure of higher education was given young women in Normal Schools to fit them for teaching little children, and the teacher of the elementary school became, thereby, a professional. To-day few young men teach to help themselves through college and only a few choose teaching as a profession. ”

“ The personality of the teacher and its influence on the school.—Does she know what to do, does she know how to do it, does she have the dignity to get this done promptly and well without it ever entering the mind of a pupil to question its propriety or her ability to get it done? Your personality should be strong enough that it is rare indeed that any pupil dare to dispute your authority and then you should have weight of character enough to prevent open rebellion. The personality of the teacher, like the atmosphere of the school, is intangible. ”

“ If you take an academy or a private school, constituted and organized like other similar institutions, success in your own will give you influence over others. A successful teacher of an academy raises the general standard of academic instruction. A college professor, if he brings extraordinary talents to bear upon the regular duties of that office, throws light, universally, upon the whole science of college discipline and instruction, and thus aids in infusing a continually renewed life and vigor into those venerable seats of learning that might otherwise sink into decrepitude and decay. ”

“ At any rate, in this borderland between cultural and professional studies, where the college is merging with the university or professional school, the necessity for the able teacher is a paramount issue. ”

“ The being dependant on the caprice of a fellow-creature, though certainly very necessary in this state of discipline, is yet a very bitter corrective, which we would fain shrink from.
A teacher at a school is only a kind of upper servant, who has more work than the menial ones. ”

“ In all my experience as a principal I have never found it necessary to ask the removal of a teacher, but I have felt from the opening of school that your temperament unfits you for teaching. You are a new-comer in town and unfamiliar with our school traditions; but I've hoped that with experience you would see the importance of bringing more dignity to your work. That Foley boy is wholly insubordinate and is constantly causing trouble on the grounds. ”

“ Girls who are born teachers should receive every encouragement to devote themselves to teaching until they have homes to look after and children of their own to teach. Many good teachers teach only for a few years and do excellent work. But it is to the "born teachers" that we must look for the happiness of the school and its highest development.
The girl who means to be a teacher should look forward to spending a number of years in school. She will enjoy this, for the teacher must be a student and must love studying. ”

“ The training of the elementary school teacher tends to be dogmatic. True it is that vigilant individuality and passionate love for his exquisitely spiritual calling impel the school teacher to an untiring criticism of his methods, of his actual teaching, and of the life of the school which he directs and promotes. ”

“ As long as natural selection between pupil and teacher is secretly regarded as an irreligious and selfish instinct, with which a teacher must have nothing to do, instead of a divine ordinance, a Heaven-appointed starting-point for doing everything, the average routine teacher in the conventional school and college will continue to be the kind of teacher he is, and will continue to belong to what seems to many, at least, the sentimental and superstitious and pessimistic profession he belongs to now. ”

“ There is much, too, in the very attitude of the teacher. A teacher who can make her pupils feel that she expects nothing but their best efforts in passing about the schoolroom or handling their schoolroom belongings, will get the pupil’s very best efforts. ”

“ You've never been a teacher in a large fashionable college, my boy. When most of your so-called students are taking your course because it is reported to be a snap, so they can spend their evenings at billiards, musical comedies, or the like, any young devil with a ray of intellectual interest becomes the teacher's golden-haired boy. ”

“ The school, large or small, country or town, blest with a teacher of broad mold, liberal-minded, active, studious, still learning, virtuous and pure-minded, such a school is a dynamic force for good in the neighborhood. Such a teacher is not worried by bad boys. Her energy is not sapped by keeping order. She does not nervously pound the desk or the call bell for quiet. Her very attitude begets quiet without having to demand it. She may sit down and hear a recitation. Composure on her part gets composure on the part of the pupils. ”

“ It proclaims its possessor a student but not a teacher. Yet, in our practices, we proceed upon the assumption that teacher and student are synonymous. We hold examinations for teachers in our schools, but not for teachers in our colleges of education. His degree is the magic talisman that causes the doors to swing wide open for him. ”

“ Every boy who now sits in the school must answer these questions for himself sooner or later, nor can he hope to evade them. Happy is that boy, therefore, whose teacher has the foresight and the wisdom to train him into such a sense of responsibility as will enable him to answer them in such a way that the future will bring to him no pang of remorse. ”

“ The teacher should be interested in all his scholars, and aim equally to secure the progress of all. Let there be no neglected ones in the school room. We should always remember that, however unpleasant in countenance and manners that bashful boy, in the corner, may be, or however repulsive in appearance, or unhappy in disposition, that girl, seeming to be interested in nobody, and nobody appearing interested in her, they still have, each of them, a mother, who loves her own child, and takes a deep and constant interest in its history. ”

“ And so the first step to take in getting more efficient work from young teachers, and especially from inexperienced and untrained teachers fresh from the high school or the college, is to make sure that they know what is expected of them. ”

“ In teaching as in other things, if you look up the stars will guide you, if you look down the sewer may beckon.109 The young teacher often does the best work because she is happy and contented with her lot in the first school. When she begins to tire with teaching, when she begins to look forward to the time when she can get more congenial work—in the store, in the office, or possibly in the home—she grows more and more dissatisfied with school, she grumbles more and more about low salaries, an unappreciative public and bad children. ”

“ She may have had training, but she lacks education, for her spiritual qualities show only chaos. The waters of her soul are shallow and so are lashed into tumult by the slightest storm. She lacks serenity.
The test of a real teacher is not whether she will be [105] good to the children but, rather, whether she will be good for the children, and these concepts are wide apart. If our colleges and normal schools could but gain the notion that their function is to prepare teachers who will be good for children they might find occasion to modify their courses radically. ”