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TWENTY TALKS
--TO--
TEACHERS
--BY--
THOMAS E. SANDERS
AUTHOR OF
“Management and Methods,” “Opening Exercises for Schools,”
“An Outline Guide to Civil Government,”
“Outline of Arithmetic,”
“The Sanders Report Card”
THE TEACHERS CO-OPERATIVE COMPANY
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
COPYRIGHTED, 1908
----BY----
THOMAS E. SANDERS
PREFACE.
Twenty Talks to Teachers is an epitome of some of the discussions used
by the author in teachers’ institutes. It is not a profound book. It
was not intended to be. Its object is to call the attention of young
teachers to some of the every day conditions and problems which they
must solve for themselves. The average term of service of teachers is
little over three years, hence the great mass of teachers are young in
service. A number of these have expressed themselves as being pleased
with the discussions in institutes, especially so because they were
plain homely talks rather than learned discussions. Perhaps these and
others may appreciate them as well in the printed form.
No one is expected to agree with all that is said. If the topics are
suggestive to young teachers, if the book helps them over a few of the
hard places, if it sets them thinking on some topics, if the advice
that is given proves sound, and if it should encourage a few to deeper
study, better preparation and broader reading, it will have done well.
Trusting that it may form the basis of profitable discussions in
teachers’ institutes and meetings it is submitted to the great body of
young teachers whose zeal, enthusiasm and optimism, has done so much in
the past, is doing yet, and will continue to do so much for our schools
and out of whose work must grow in the future a worthy profession of
teaching.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
AM I FIT TO TEACH? 7
CHAPTER II.
SHALL TEACHING BE MY LIFE WORK? 14
CHAPTER III.
SECURING A POSITION 21
CHAPTER IV.
PASSING THE EXAMINATION 31
CHAPTER V.
PROBLEMS OF THE YOUNG TEACHER 36
CHAPTER VI.
GRADING A SCHOOL 44
CHAPTER VII.
OPENING EXERCISES 55
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SPIRIT OF THE TEACHER 63
CHAPTER IX.
THE TEACHER’S LIBRARY 70
CHAPTER X.
THE TEACHER OUTSIDE THE SCHOOLROOM 80
CHAPTER XI.
GOOD TEACHING CONDITIONS 90
CHAPTER XII.
KEEPING GOOD CONDITIONS 96
CHAPTER XIII.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD SCHOOL? 105
CHAPTER XIV.
TEN TIME KILLERS 116
CHAPTER XV.
THE VALUE OF A HIGH SCHOOL COURSE 125
CHAPTER XVI.
A TALK ABOUT SPELLING 132
CHAPTER XVII.
ARITHMETIC IN THE SCHOOL 142
CHAPTER XVIII.
TEACHING LITERATURE 153
CHAPTER XIX.
THE TEACHER’S VACATION 166
CHAPTER XX.
THE TEACHER’S VIEW OF LIFE 172
CHAPTER I.
AM I FIT TO TEACH?
The talks that follow are addressed to young teachers. They treat
everyday problems in a homely way. I have tried to be plain and
pointed. I have omitted long terms. I do not speak of correlation,
apperception, spontaneity, etc., and I omit long psychological terms.
You get enough of these in county institutes and educational journals.
You are a school teacher. You have taught but a short time, and you
want to make a success of the work. You may not be even a professional
teacher. You hold neither a normal school diploma nor a life license.
Both of these are good, and a desire for one or both upon your part
would be commendable, but neither is all that is required to teach a
successful school. Some of the most impractical of visionary dreamers
I have ever known possessed the first, and the most tiresome of
moss-backs the second. Given a young man or a young woman of good
character and fair scholarship, desiring to teach school, with little
or no professional study or training, yet anxious to succeed, what may
I say to help them? What are the problems which they must face? What
advice and what cautions will they need, and how may I say this to be
most effective? This is my task.
Perhaps a little self-catechising on your part will be helpful. In
the daily hour of self-communion--and each teacher should have such
an hour--when you turn your thoughts inward and analyse your own
motives and shortcomings, ask yourself in all seriousness: “Am I fit
to teach?” You may not be a “born teacher.” Very few persons are. Few
indeed have the inborn qualities so strong that teaching and teaching
alone will satisfy. Few are so heavenly inspired that they may teach
and succeed at it in defiance of all rules or regulations or accepted
laws of pedagogy. There are some qualities that will help you and some
qualities that you may cultivate--qualities that are essential to the
person who would aspire to be leaders and models for young people. What
are some of these?
_1. Your character must be above reproach._--Whatever else you may
lack, your character must be above suspicion. Character, unquestioned
and unquestionable, first. Other things may be essential, but this is
the one first essential. If you are to be the model after which the
boys and the girls--the most priceless product of the state--will both
consciously and unconsciously fashion their lives, you must be in all
things a worthy model. Pure thoughts, pure words, sincerity, honesty,
earnest and deep convictions must be habitual with you. The purity of
your own thought, the sincerity of your own motives, flashing through
your eyes, the windows of your soul, must call out and strengthen the
purity and nobility of other minds. Your character and your reputation,
too, must stand the search light of the X-ray without showing flaw or
blemish. This, and this alone, is the character and reputation worthy
the teacher, the builder and architect of immortal minds.
Character is what you are; reputation is what others think you are.
Character is essential to pure manhood and pure womanhood, but
reputation also is essential to the teacher. Reputation cannot exist
long without character, but if from any cause however unjust your
reputation is lost even though character remain, your best usefulness
in that immediate community is gone. Then guard well your life if you
are to teach. Avoid not only evil but the appearance of it. Be not
prudish, but keep your reputation unsullied or seek not to stand as
teacher to the young.
_2. A thorough knowledge of the subject taught is essential to
success._--You cannot be a successful teacher of the things you do not
know. Clear-cut, definite, specific knowledge of a subject cannot be
obtained in the pupils when the teacher does not have it. You cannot
successfully teach up to the limit of your knowledge. There is a margin
between your teaching limit and your knowing limit. As you reach your
knowing limit in class, your questions become hazy, indefinite, crude.
You hesitate, you stammer, you repeat yourself, you thresh over and
over again the same thought. You lack proper perspective, and your
teaching becomes dry and tiresome. A thorough and systematic knowledge
of the subject you teach will give you teaching power.
Then, too, your teacher’s knowledge of the subject must be broader
and deeper and better organized than the pupil’s. You must see each
subject in its proper relation to other subjects. Each chapter must
be seen in its relation to the chapters which precede and follow it
in the development of the subject. The pupil’s knowledge of a subject
may end with the gathering and the understanding of facts, but the
teacher’s knowledge must include this and add to it the knowledge of
its deeper relations to other subjects and to mind growth. To teach a
subject is to learn that subject anew, to see it in a new light, in a
deeper and richer significance. You cannot as teacher reach your own
highest success with but a student’s knowledge and view of the subject
you teach. You must have a connected and logical view of the subject as
a whole, and also an intimate and accurate knowledge of the relations
of the parts. This deeper and broader knowledge, properly focused and
presented to pupils gives you strength as a teacher. The deeper, the
broader, the more accurate the knowledge of the subject, the better the
teaching, provided the teacher has tact to present it properly. You
must focus your efforts and bring your teaching into the range of the
pupil’s mental capacity and in an organized form so that pupils may
grasp it. You must stick to the subject, remembering that the minimum
of your knowledge of the subject without review will probably be the
pupil’s maximum after study.
_3. You must keep your knowledge fresh by study._--Growing minds alone
are fit to teach. Stale mental stock does not create fresh mental
appetites. Your attainments are of less importance than your mental
habits. To teach well you must keep growing. Scholarly habits are more
important than ripe scholarship with sluggish habits. Young teachers
often do the best work. They are thinking, investigating, growing. They
are full of life and enthusiasm, and the spirit is contagious with
their pupils. The teacher who is accurate in details without being
tiresome will train pupils to accuracy, unconsciously perhaps, but
successfully. The young teacher faces the future with faith, and hope
and enthusiasm. He is looking to the sunrise and not to the sunset.
He is winning laurels, not resting upon laurels already won. He is
losing his life in his work and will find it again in the lives of his
pupils. Should I choose an institution for myself or for others, I
should choose an institution in which a majority of the faculty were
yet young men, men making reputations rather than men who had made
reputations. The hope and faith, the fire and enthusiasm, the energy
and earnestness, which they bring to their work accomplishes more than
men resting on their accomplishments can possibly accomplish.
You must carry on some line of study or investigation, or systematic
reading, or else you must fossilize fast. This, when dealing with
immature minds year after year, is your only hope. It may be
mathematics, it may be history, it may be science, sociology, political
economy, music or art, it matters very little what the subject
is, but it must be something, and it must be pursued _regularly_,
_systematically_ and _persistently_. In no other way can you keep
growing and not be lost in the educational ruts. When you cease to grow
you begin to decay.
_4. You must love the work of teaching._--If after a fair trial you do
not love to teach and feel deep down in your own consciousness that
you cannot learn to love it, quit by all means and do it at once. No
one is fit to teach who finds the work thoroughly distasteful and who
does not have a genuine love for children and young people. No sadder
sight was ever seen than a long-faced pessimist in the school-room. It
is cruelty personified to keep children in the school-room under the
chilling, blighting influence of a sour-grained pessimistic teacher,
long since dead, else never alive to the beauty of nature and the
buoyancy of childhood--firmly convinced of the total depravity of all
children. Teachers should be full of health, beauty and good cheer.
They must be able to enlist the good-will, co-operation and sympathy of
young people. Children should not look to teachers as masters to drive
them to tasks and to exact penalties, but as friendly companions and
leaders, with strength of character, and force enough to inspire, to
guide, and to direct to higher and purer and nobler things. Teachers
must be able to see the beauties and harmonies of nature all about
them, and to lead pupils to feel and to appreciate the higher things
of life, ever looking upward, lifting upward and pointing upward.
_5. You must be sincere._--You must love your work and believe in it.
You must have a burning desire to help young people, and faith in your
ability to do so. Gushing and lip service will not suffice. The sincere
teacher is always ready to serve. Your actions will speak louder
than words. You will as a rule be in no hurry to leave the building
after school in the evening, but ready and willing and anxious to
consult, to help, to advise, to be of service. The primary teacher’s
success may be judged by the group of children that circle about her
at recess, or that wait to go home as she goes. The sincere teacher
is found at teachers’ meetings and associations, ready to help and on
time. If you are genuinely sincere in your profession you will own a
few professional books and add to them yearly. You will take and read
educational journals and periodicals, and find pleasure in the reading.
You will be found in the summer schools and colleges gaining help and
inspiration for your work. You will have faith in the profession of
teaching, and faith in yourself, and in your ability and worthiness to
be one of the leaders of the youth of our land.
_6. You must possess a worthy ambition._--You are a poor teacher
if you have reached the height of your ambition, intellectually,
professionally or successfully. If you are content or satisfied with
your work, you will let things drag. You should be ambitious to do the
best work of any teacher in your community. You ought to be ambitious
enough also to desire better facilities for teaching and broader
opportunities. We regret the itineracy and lack of stability in the
teaching profession. It is one of the problems of the day. But all this
is better than a body of teachers thoroughly content with conditions
as they are. The teacher content to adjust himself to the conditions of
a certain community and cloister himself there for life at a minimum
salary is lacking in the ambition to do the best work for himself or
others. The teacher who has ambition enough to improve and who seeks
to do his best because it is right and because he desires to advance
in his profession will kindle higher ambitions in his pupils and build
higher types of men and women. A worthy ambition, a proper rating of
your worth, pluck and stamina to stand for your rights, but to do it
decorously and properly, is essential to your best work as a teacher.
Ask yourself, seriously and earnestly, “Am I fit to teach?”