Training muscles to unaccustomed work.
[Sidenote: Training Muscles]
Miss Kate Winslow was a first grade teacher who had just graduated from
a normal school in which great attention was paid to the use of water
colors as an aid to nature study and art. Miss Winslow was anxious to
introduce water color work in her own schoolroom.
“Take my advice,” said a fellow-teacher, “and do nothing of the kind! I
tried it once and it nearly gave me nervous prostration. Not a day
passed but somebody spilled the water or overturned his ‘paint,’ and
before the end of the first week the desks were daubed with pigments
from one end of the schoolroom to the other. If you are wise you’ll keep
out of it. First grade children are too young for that kind of work.”
Miss Winslow was not daunted, however. “I believe I can teach the
children how to handle the materials,” she said to herself. “If I use
the same methods which have already proved successful in training them
to put away their books, to care for their wraps, to come in quietly at
recess, and to keep the room tidy, and to take care of the plants and
the waste paper—I’m going to try it, anyway.”
“Yes, I think you can manage it. If only you are not in too great a
hurry to get at the real work of painting,” said her principal when Miss
Winslow proposed her venture to him. “Better take a few days just for
drill, and not try to do any real work of painting until all the
preliminaries can be successfully executed by the children without loss
of time and without confusion.”
Thus encouraged, Miss Winslow analyzed the process of distributing the
materials that would be needed, into its elements, and then took the
whole time of the lesson period for one week for teaching the children
how to distribute and handle the material. She first told the children
that she had planned a great pleasure for them in their school work,
arousing their interest and curiosity and desire to coöperate with her
in the attempt to reproduce in colors some of the beautiful things they
had been studying in the nature study period. “Only careful children can
do such wonderful work as this,” she said, “so the very first thing we
have to learn is how to do every part of the work in a careful way.
These little dishes that I have in my hand are for the water. You may
name one boy and one girl whom you think could pass all these little
dishes to the children without making a noise when they are placed on
the desks.
“Very well—George and Mary. I have found two little trays just large
enough for first grade children to carry. George may take one tray of
water dishes and Mary the other. The children at the seats may watch and
tell, by and by, which was the more quiet, George or Mary.”
In watching, comparing one with the other, and deciding between the two
pupils chosen, the onlookers are also learning how to do the work
properly; but the teacher must not fail to commend both the children who
have passed the dishes, and then may say:
“Mary, you may choose another careful girl and George may choose another
careful boy to gather up the dishes without making any noise that can be
helped. That was well done. Now, this time I am going to choose a boy
and a girl to pass them a second time. They are going to try just as
hard as George and Mary did.”
This time the teacher will choose a clumsy boy and a clumsy girl to do
the work. They will have had the example of the more deft children to
help them, and at the same time are getting a lesson in motor control
that will soon be needed.
The teacher must not blame the children if they do less well. Say,
rather:
“Thank you, children. You did try, didn’t you?” Then, turning to the
school, say: “How many of you would like to see when you go home tonight
if you can place some hard thing like a salt-cellar or jackknife or
little dish down on a hard table and do it so quietly that nobody can
hear you? I’ll ask you tomorrow to tell me how many could do it, and
tomorrow we are going to do something even harder than we have done
today. I’m going to let you choose some one _to fill all these little
dishes with water and not spill one drop_. You be thinking tonight whom
we can ask to do such a very hard thing as that.”
In this way, Miss Winslow drilled the children on every part of the
process of water color painting, including the mixing of the pigments,
so that when the actual use of the pigments began it was done without
noise or confusion or loss of time, and with only very rare accidents.
The children were delighted and asked for no higher honor than to be
able to fill or empty the water glasses—the most difficult thing for
little children to do “without spilling.” So eager were they to be thus
honored that they frequently drilled themselves at noontime in carrying
a glass of water across the room on one of the little trays.