TEN TIME KILLERS.
School time is precious. Each minute should count. The formation of
correct habits is the greatest end of school work. Surely then the
proper use of time is essential to a successful school. We lose time
in so many ways. It often looks as if teachers tried to waste time
purposely. We cultivate lazy habits in pupils by letting things drag.
They learn to snooze over their lessons, to grope about mentally, to
allow their minds to wander to irrelevant things, to put off until the
last minute what should be done promptly and well.
The teacher should not seem to hurry. The intense nervous tension
sometimes found is detrimental. But the school-room should be a
workshop in which pupils are intelligently and profitably busy. They
should be happy in their work, but they should be working. The work
should be done well, this brings even to little children the feeling
of satisfaction, the feeling that it is worth while in school. The
work should be intelligent, educative work. In the modern school
the strength and worth of the teacher and the principal is shown in
the intelligence and breadth of view with which the school work is
selected. We are going wild on busy work. Interest is an essential to
profitable work, but all work in which the teacher may get up interest
and enthusiasm may not be profitable work. To say that because pupils
are easily interested in raffia weaving, sewing, manual training,
etc., does not necessarily prove that these subjects are essential to
the best development. The child’s interest is usually a _borrowed_
interest, at least is _often_ a borrowed interest. You could get up
just as much interest in building a snow man, in jumping the rope, in
rolling rocks down a hill or splashing water in the brook as in the
raffia work or domestic science. It requires more than the fact that
children may be made to like a subject to justify its use in school.
The pupils should be busy and busy at intelligent, educative work. They
should be happy in that work. Happiness usually comes from the feeling
of doing something, and doing this thing well.
But let us notice some of the time killers. They are numerous. The ten
mentioned below are probably the most common among young teachers,
although it is not assumed that the list is complete.
_1. Lack of definite plans for the day._--For the teacher who has
never made definite plans for her daily work, it is hard for her to
understand the loss of time and energy--time and energy on the part
of the pupils and even more so, time and energy on the part of the
teacher. You should, from the course of study, know what is expected
of the grade in a term. Divide this by the number of months you have
to teach. Look over the work carefully, examine the text-book, note
what supplementary work you think the text will need. Then at the
beginning of each month write out briefly, but specifically, what you
want the class to do each week of the month. With this general outline
before you, work out in advance each day’s program for the first week.
At the end of the week prepare in the same way each day’s program for
the second week, etc. It will take but a few minutes, and it will be
profitable minutes to you and to the class.
If you find that you cannot do the work planned for the month, do not
worry about it, but do well as much of it as you can and pass the
rest over to the next month. If you find you can complete the work
of the month well, and have extra time, do not by any means keep the
class marking time and waiting. Take up the work of the next month.
The important thing is that you set yourself and your class a certain
task--I do not mean to imply that it is an unpleasant task--for each
month, each week and each day of the week. This lesson plan made at
times of leisure or when the mind is free to consider the work as a
unit will be a criterion for judging your own progress with the class
and will be a valuable guide in planning how best to present the
subjects to the class. It will save you much time and energy and worry
at the recitation periods when everything must be centered on the work
before you.
_2. By allowing slovenly work._--I believe that from one to two hours
a week are lost in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth years, in the
subject of arithmetic alone, because the pupils in the first four years
are not properly drilled in the four fundamental processes of addition,
subtraction, multiplication and division. There should be snap and vim
and hustle in the early number work. The tables should be learned and
learned thoroughly. Pupils should be drilled in rapid combinations.
It may be well to know how to develop the multiplication table, but
knowing how to develop it will never take the place of knowing it. Time
is wasted in developing in early number work when it should be used in
knowing, in thorough committing to memory. When asked how many seven
times seven, the child should answer forty-nine as quickly and with
as little hesitation as if asked his own name. The drill should be so
perfect the mental response is instantaneous.
_3. By rusty machinery._--There are many things about the school that
must be looked upon as the machinery of the school. Order and decorum
are great time savers, but red-tape for its own sake is to be avoided.
Keep your thoughts centered on what you want done and how this can be
done with least loss of time. I was at the opening of a famous normal
school a few years ago. The freshman class was to be divided into
three sections. Two teachers, normal teachers too--teachers whose very
methods are supposed to be worthy models--spent over forty minutes in
making the division. It was tiresome to the class and tiresome to me to
observe. In less than ten minutes I should have passed about pointing
to each student numbering as I pointed, “first,” “second,” “third,”
“first,” “second,” “third,” etc. Then I should have asked all those
numbered “first” to take one part of the assembly room. All numbered
“second” to take another. All those numbered “third” to take another.
Then in ten minutes more by passing slips of paper I should have had
the names and addresses of each and the class could have been dismissed.
Time is wasted in the passing of classes, the distribution of wraps,
collecting of papers and necessary school movements. Teachers often
lose from two to five minutes by a clumsy method of collecting or
distributing papers. I saw a good part of a recitation period lost
recently by a teacher in a city school where I was visiting. She wanted
the composition papers collected and redistributed. There seemed to
be no system or forethought either in collecting or redistributing,
several pupils getting their own papers back for correction. Some such
plan as follows would have saved time, energy and discipline:
“Time.” All pupils stop work and sit in easy, graceful positions.
“Papers to the right.” Each places the paper to the right side of the
desk where the monitors can reach it easily.
“Collect.” Pupils in back row of seats acting as monitors quickly and
quietly collect the papers in regular order to the front.
“Exchange.” Monitors exchange papers in some regular order.
“Redistribute.” Monitors pass back to their seat, placing a paper on
each pupil’s desk as they pass.
With these five simple directions the compositions could have been
collected and redistributed for correction. No time is lost. There is
no noise or confusion. The very matter of collecting helps in order and
decorum.
Oil up the machinery of your school-room and see if you cannot gain
from ten to twenty minutes each day and at the same time get better
results.
_4. Lack of scholarship._--If a teacher has ballast and good judgment,
no amount of well-organized knowledge will hurt her. Narrow vision,
poor judgment as to what is essential and what is not, gets clouded
explanations. This leads to lack of interest and loss of time.
Clear-cut, definite knowledge on the part of the teacher will put life
and vim in the teaching.
_5. Grinding over and over again things already known well._--Nothing
is more detrimental to mental growth. Teachers too often fail to
discriminate between thoroughness and mere mechanical repetition. Be
thorough, but be alive. There is much drill work to be done. There is
no substitute for it. We fail often in the newer education because we
neglect drill and review, but there should be life in the work, not
mere marking of time and perfunctory repetition. Nowhere is drill
more necessary than in number work, and yet this drill need never drag
or become uninteresting. One of my fourth grade teachers had done
good work in the mechanical part of number work. Her class had been
accurate and rapid, and I had allowed them upon several occasions to
challenge other rooms. In fact they had done well the foundation work
in numbers so essential to good work in arithmetic in the upper grades.
To test them I asked the class to vote upon which they would prefer,
a fourth of a day picnic out on the lake front or to spend the same
time ciphering against some other room. They voted almost as a unit
to cipher against the other room. They had been doing the grinding
process, it is true, but do you think it had been marking time with
them? Every minute had been a pleasure to them because each had been
pitted against some other. This had made the work a contest and a
pleasure instead of a grind. It is the grind without the pleasure and
over something well known that kills.
_6. Assigning lessons without any thought on the teacher’s part of
their contents._--Many teachers would find it hard to solve the
problems which they assign to the class in the same time the class has
for preparation. The result is that they do not get over the lesson
next day. This leaving off part of the lesson day after day soon gets
a habit in the class to prepare only the first of the lesson, feeling
confident that they will never get down to the last of it. Teachers
should know the contents of the lesson they ask the class to prepare.
They should assign only what the class can do well in the time. Then
each member should feel that he is held strictly accountable for an
honest effort to get the whole lesson.
_7. Not teaching pupils how to prepare lessons._--The greatest service
a teacher can do for a class is to teach them how to study. Pupils
waste hour after hour in honest effort with little accomplished and
much discouragement by not knowing how to apply themselves to the
work before them. One of my boyhood spelling books has marks to show
that I had studied the lesson more than sixty times. I wanted to be
faithful, I thought I was doing the right thing. But I was not. I
should have learned the lesson by heart so that I could have spelled it
from beginning to end in less than sixty times study if I had really
studied. What a saving of time if my teacher had taught me how to study
my spelling, to think each word over slowly and carefully as I spelled
it to myself, to center my best efforts on the words in the list which
I was not sure of knowing, instead of studying all alike. Then if I had
been taught to study I should never have kept careful account as to how
many times I studied the lesson. My thought was to satisfy myself and
my teacher that I had tried, instead of getting the lesson. Frequently
spend a recitation with pupils until you feel sure they know how to
study and apply themselves. One of the greatest compliments a former
pupil ever paid me was when he said that I taught him how to apply
himself and how to study.
_8. Talking too much._--The greatest fault of all, the greatest loss
of time perhaps, when teachers as a body are considered, is the fault
of constant and often useless talking. Teachers repeat over and over
again. They scold and keep it up and keep it up. They explain and
explain and keep it up and keep it up.
“Full many a teacher you may know,
Along life’s slippery pathway walking,
Who left off thinking years ago,
But kept on talking.”
To spend time in further explanation and elucidation of any point
after it has dawned clearly on the pupil’s consciousness is a waste
of time to the pupil and has a tendency to destroy interest in the
subject. To explain a thing to them and then to explain it “in other
words” and “in other words” and then again “in other words,” as many
teachers do, is deadening to mental growth. I am not speaking of
repetition of knowledge in review to deepen and impress it firmly
on the mind. I am speaking of new knowledge. When the teacher has
explained a point briefly, definitely, understandingly, he catches the
gleam of recognition in the pupil’s eye, showing that the explanation
is understood. Further talk and explanation is useless and even
detrimental.
_9. Answering useless questions._--If the teacher is weak, there will
be a growing habit in many pupils to ask useless questions as well as
to ask over and over again for repetitions. I have known pupils who
would, unless restrained, ask for the repetition of half the words
in a spelling lesson. Speak distinctly, and teach pupils to listen
attentively. It is the part of the pupil’s duty to listen attentively
to every word of the teacher that is addressed to him or his class.
Another habit of many teachers is after a question has been properly
answered by some pupil, to again state the answer herself. Nothing is
more deadening either to the pupil who first gave the answer or to the
interest of the class. If a pupil answers a question accurately, no
further comment is necessary. For the teacher to repeat the answer is
worse than a waste of time.
Then there is the telltale pupil, who is always ready to run to the
teacher with little troubles, always being imposed upon by others.
Every teacher of experience knows such pupils. Discourage tattling,
but make sure the child is not being imposed upon. A little Italian
girl kept coming to me and to her teacher with all sorts of imaginary
grievances, until she came in one day with her tale of woe when I had
weightier matters to attend to. Rather more vigorous than polite, I
told her if she came to me with such hatched-up troubles again I should
punish her. It had the desired effect. Show pupils who have all kinds
of imaginary troubles how it becomes a duty for them to put themselves
in harmony with other pupils and to live agreeably with the school
family. Then with a careful lookout that they are not being imposed
upon deny them the right of coming to you with tales of woe, else you
may use much time every day chasing phantoms.
_10. Failing to keep the room ventilated._--No one can work vigorously
in contaminated air. It will be a great day when every school-room
will have proper heating and ventilation. For some years I have worked
where there were adequate provision for forcing pure, warm, filtered
air into every room in abundance, while the foul, impure, dusty air was
being constantly forced out. The value of pure air and ventilation can
readily be seen when one compares such conditions and contrasts them
with many school-rooms. No school can do proper work without proper
ventilation and heating. Do not neglect this important matter in your
school.