Walter preferred to play ball under the kindly protection of the
Queensborough Bridge to attending school where he had no chance to show
his ability as a leader. He had successfully evaded all the visits of
the truant officer, and when his teacher asked me, a visiting teacher,
to try my luck, I wondered what I should find. I called first upon his
mother at her place of business and found her in thorough sympathy with
the school, but apparently powerless to make her son attend. Walter took
advantage of the fact that she left the house before he did, and as they
alone comprised the family, he could disobey her and go to school or not
as he saw fit. There was no one but himself to report to her in the
evening just how he had spent his day.
I chose supper time for my first visit, and found him, as I hoped, at
home, a little tired from his day’s play and hungry, of course. His
mother was there too. She was surprised when I told her that her son had
not attended school that day, nor indeed for many days previously. We
talked of many things, and just before leaving, I ventured to ask Walter
what he wanted to be when he was a man. He was then twelve years old. He
did not hesitate an instant. He wanted, he said, to be an architect. And
then his mother showed me a little calendar he had painted which adorned
the closet door. We struck a bargain. If he went to school regularly, I
was to arrange with his teacher to give him a palette and brushes so
that he could paint. It was possible to do this as he was in a special
class in which the course of study is more easily adapted to the child’s
needs.
The next morning, when I opened the classroom door, two pairs of smiling
eyes greeted me—the teacher’s and Walter’s. At once the teacher and I
planned our campaign. Walter was to learn that at school he could get a
chance at leadership too, for could he not play games there? At first,
perhaps, they seemed tame compared with those under the bridge, for the
classroom or the school-yard, even when given over to ball or bean-bag,
does not easily associate itself in the child’s mind with scenes of
adventure. However, the chance of some time being captain of the team
had charms even for him. The proof is to be found in the fact that he
attended school regularly, earning, in so doing, his palette and brushes
and at the end of the term promotion to a regular class.
The work of the visiting teacher has passed the experimental stage. The
position was created to bridge a gap in the existing school machinery.
The visiting teacher’s province lies outside that of the regular
teacher, the attendance officer and the school nurse, though like the
attendance officer and the school nurse, she goes into the child’s home.
To her is assigned the group called the “difficult” children, and it is
her aim to discover, if possible, the cause of the difficulty which
manifests itself in poor scholarship, annoying conduct, irregular
attendance, or the need of or desire for advice on some important phase
of life. It is too much to expect the regular teacher, handicapped as
she is by her large class, to cope with such situations. Nor is it to be
expected that those qualified to act as attendance officer or school
nurse, were they not already overburdened, should do the work of the
visiting teacher. In her is united the training that makes a teacher and
a social service worker, and it is because of this combination that she
is able to widen the regular teacher’s reach and help her interpret and
solve the problems as they present themselves.
From the school she learns that the child is apparently making little
effort; that his work is “C” or worse; that he is perpetually making
trouble in the class room and is never attentive: that he seems
lifeless, unable to keep pace with the class; that he attends so
irregularly that it is impossible to teach him anything, or that he has
no time to study and the situation at home is such that he must leave
school and go to work. With these facts as clues she sets to work; it is
impossible to define her methods, for they vary with her tact and
resourcefulness and with the specific character of the problem before
her. Briefly, they are the methods that spring from a friendly interest,
an intimate personal relation.
Between the home and the school the visiting teacher vibrates, carrying
to the former the school’s picture of the child and returning to the
school to reinforce that impression or to shed new light upon the
problem. There is no fixed number of times that she is expected to
travel this path, as there is no fixed hour of the day for her visits.
The urgency and complexity of a situation alone determine her movements.
Nor is there any regular routine of action that she follows. Whatever in
her judgment seems imperative, she endeavors to effect, using to this
end everything the ingenuity of man has devised to make smooth the rough
places of life.
It is a focussing of interests that she demands. The child is the
pivotal point on which she hopes to bring all her knowledge and
experience to bear. Sometimes it is the expert teacher’s training that
she invokes; sometimes the psychologist or the physician, general or
special, that she consults; or again it is the social worker to whom she
appeals. Before these she lays the facts, the reasons why her services
have been sought and from them she asks co-operation. To the adult, she
is the visiting teacher; to the child, she is simply the “lady cop.”
The results achieved do not always show a complete cure. In some cases
there has been a marked improvement in scholarship, conduct or
attendance,—at least a good start in the right direction has been made.
In other cases the child has been transferred to a different class,
regular, special or ungraded, or to a trade school, where his chances at
succeeding in making a place for himself are increased. Again, the
information the visiting teacher shares with the regular teacher has
resulted in a change of attitude toward the child, in an expansion or
contraction of the course of study, or in her giving the child extra
instruction in study periods or out of school hours. Finally, he has
been helped to promotion, even to graduation.
Last year 1,157 cases were handled by the seven visiting teachers
maintained in New York by the Public Education Association. The majority
of these came directly through the school, but in a few instances the
visiting teacher was called in by the child’s mother, a neighbor, or the
child himself, all of whom, looking to her for help, show not only an
appreciation of the fact that something is wrong, but also an
understanding of what the visiting teacher is trying to accomplish.
Their appeal emphasizes the necessity for just such a connection as she
makes. Other cases came through settlements, charity organizations,
churches, or the visiting teacher herself, whose attention had been
attracted to some child on her rounds through the classrooms. In every
instance, however, before the child technically becomes a case, the
principal and teacher are conferred with. His school record must show
him to be below standard in either scholarship, conduct or attendance,
or in need of such advice or information as will, if followed, enhance
his general well being.
Five hundred and five of the children visited were below standard in
scholarship. This deficiency might be due to any one of a number of
causes directly traceable to “home conditions,” such as congested or
unsanitary living quarters, child labor, “overburdened childhood,” and
ignorance of or indifference to the school’s claims. Or it might be that
some school adjustment was necessary; for example, de-moting the child
that is mentally and physically unequal to the grade’s requirements; or
drawing him out in recitations, should he be nervous or timid; or
helping him in the preparation of the studies that trouble him.
Three hundred and thirteen children were below standard in conduct; that
is, they were either out of sympathy with the school environment or they
were guilty of some offence, such as stealing, lying, cheating, or
sexual irregularity.
Four hundred and sixty-five children were irregular in attendance. Since
the same child is sometimes below standard in scholarship and irregular
in attendance, or in need of advice and information, the groups here
mentioned often overlap and the numbers total more than 1,157.
Six hundred and seventy-five needed advice or information. In all of
these cases the child needed someone to plead his cause either at home
or at school, that he might be the more thoroughly understood and that
his special need, whether it be recreational, physical, or vocational,
might be satisfied.
The task of the visiting teacher is plain. She must get at the facts.
This she does by studying closely the child’s environment, realizing
that he is the product of varied associations and influences. There are
circles within circles—the home, the school, the immediate neighborhood,
and what at times seems almost “beyond his ken,” the great wide world
itself. No analysis of the forces that in their play and interplay tend
to shape this young life would be complete that did not include the
shifting, kaleidoscopic scenes amid which so often his plastic years are
spent; nor would the picture be lifelike did it not show upon its face
the changes that are wrought through that remoter contact with men and
things.
The action followed depends naturally upon what the investigation
reveals. Should the home be at fault, then an effort is made to remove
the “trouble maker,” and, should this be impossible, then effort is made
at least to effect some compromise, the benefit of which the child will
reap both in the home and in the school.
Margaret had many times struck a discordant note in the classroom. At
home she had always had her own way. Small wonder, then, that she played
the prank she did in the assembly. In the midst of the gathering of some
five hundred children when the morning exercises were being held, she
spoke loud enough to be disturbing, and when reprimanded and told to
leave the hall, she walked its full length on her heels, thus creating a
greater disturbance and openly defying the principal’s authority. She
was sent home and the matter was explained to her parents. The child
felt that she had been insulted because ordered from the room, and the
mother, unfortunately, took her side. At first she could not be made to
see that if her child saw fit to leave the hall as she chose, the other
499 might use their wits to the same end and pandemonium result. Only
after repeated interviews with the visiting teacher and after the child
had lost fully a month of school did the mother allow her to return.
Sometimes it happens that the child has neither time nor place to study.
“The noise, it gets me all mixed up,” is her pathetic comment. The
neighborhood is scoured till a quiet room is found, either in a
settlement, a sisterhood, or a public library, and then the mother’s
co-operation is enlisted and many times secured when she understands
that noise, interruptions and general disorder are not conducive to the
formation of good habits of study.
Should it happen that the child’s work is seriously impaired because his
sleep is interfered with, either because the mother’s work is carried
late into the night and goes on in the child’s so-called bedroom, or
because he is allowed to partake too freely of tea and coffee, the
injurious effects of this way of living are demonstrated and the family
is, in the one case, urged to move to better rooms, and in the other,
plead with until milk and cocoa are substituted for tea and coffee. If
then, the longed-for change sets in, showing itself in the child’s
ability to make normal responses at school, word is carried to the home
and thereby is strengthened the bond that makes these two centers one in
their desire to promote the child’s well being.
But there are times when the cause is not so obvious and does not lend
itself so easily to a simple solution. It happens often that what to the
school appears a lack of co-operation on the part of the home means only
that the parents have tried and failed. Again and again the visiting
teacher is besought “Use your influence,” “Come and advise us,” “Robert”
or “Alice,” “pays attention to you,”—all of which reduced to its lowest
terms means that somewhere there is failure to understand. “It is
because we are treated as we are at home that we run the streets,” is
the way one girl of fourteen sums up the situation.
On the other hand it may happen that the source of the difficulty is to
be found in the school itself, in the conditions that surround the child
there, which, in the light of the information gathered in the home,
expose to view some serious maladjustment. Perhaps it is a case of
simple misunderstanding between teacher and pupil, the former holding
the latter to a sort of rule-of-thumb scale of measurement when,
mentally and physically, the child is incapable of following.
Handicapped by nature, perhaps one of a long line similarly affected, is
it to be expected that his reactions will be what in age and grade they
should be? For such as he the hope lies in a curriculum so elastic that
at some point the spark of interest cannot fail to be struck.
In the class room Lillian, a frail girl of thirteen, had apparently made
only the impression of being a slow, sleepy, listless child. The first
interviews showed her ill at ease. She studied hard every evening, she
insisted; but when she was questioned in the class all the carefully
memorized facts flew to the winds, she was so afraid. History was her
Waterloo. Try as she would, she could not conquer. The outlook was not
promising. The visit to the home revealed that she loved to draw. Tony,
the black and white spaniel, and Nellie, his fox-terrier companion, had
up to that time been her only models. In her leisure moments she
sketched them lying before the kitchen stove, or curled up, asleep,
under the table.
When her teacher was told how she was found occupying her time at home,
her reply was prompt: “Yes, I remember now, she does seem fond of
drawing.” A conference was arranged with the principal and a way was
found of giving Lillian a chance to develop further this gift, her one
excellency. Her fifth grade work was so re-arranged as to allow her to
take drawing with the seventh grade, where she found greater variety and
a teacher eager to let her express herself. At the same time she was
introduced to a volunteer worker, a woman to whom history was an
unending joy and with her she spent evening after evening making friends
with facts, people, and dates that up to that moment had been total
strangers to her. Later she was transferred to a trade school in which
she was given an opportunity to specialize in designing.
In some pupils what appears as indifference or inattention may in truth
be only a temperamental peculiarity which, if individual attention were
possible, would in time be modified. The relation of pupil and teacher
is at bottom one of sympathetic understanding. This is why sometimes,
where one fails, the other succeeds, and herein lies the advantage of
having several teachers to a grade. It makes possible a shifting about
and increases the child’s chances of being understood. The desirability
of this cannot be overestimated.
Another way in which the need of unusual children is met is the
so-called “rapid progress class,” into which are put those children who
are capable of making more than two grades in a year. Strange as it may
on the surface appear, some of the children entrusted to the charge of
the visiting teacher prove in the end to be just this type. For one
reason or another, the routine of the regular class does not hold the
child’s interest, and, as we all know, in such instances energy like
that will not remain pent up. It is in its determination to find an
outlet that it comes into conflict with established order.
Sometimes it is best to give the child a training wholly different from
that offered by the school he is attending. Not all minds respond alike
to the same stimuli. It often seems an utter waste to insist upon
children plodding doggedly at subjects which make no appeal to them.
Here lies the opportunity for vocational training. More than one case of
apathy on the part of a child has been dispelled when a chance was given
him to express himself in some sort of manual or industrial activity.
Occasionally it is found that at neither the door of the home nor at
that of the school can the whole blame for the child’s failure to live
up to his best moments be laid. There are times when he is under the
kindly influence, if such it be, of neither one nor the other. It is at
such times that his energies should be given a chance at wholesome
expression, so that they may not be tempted to seek the baser kinds, in
which the streets of a large city abound. It is interesting to note how
a beneficient “wider view” reacts upon the school and home environment,
making of what was once a listless, joyless, or obstinate, untractable,
child one that gives out in “measure brimful and overflowing” the
happiness that was but his birthright.
The question that naturally suggests itself is What is the result of the
action taken? What outcome can be expected from having secured active
co-operation in 568 homes; from having changed the class of 92 children,
the school of 56, and made other school adjustments for 125; from having
called into play 288 outside agencies in the shape of clubs, classes,
and excursions and 604 agencies such as hospitals, relief societies, day
nurseries, scholarship funds, reformatories, settlements, public
libraries, etc., and from having sent 208 children to the country on
extended visits?
A statistical reply is not always feasible. Certain stages in the
child’s school career are marked: certain data about it definite enough;
but whether in the final summing up these shall be given precedence over
the subtler, more elusive changes that have come about, that is the real
question. Just as in the matter of method employed, so in the matter of
result achieved, it must be remembered that the numerical reckoning does
not tell the whole story.
To the casual observer it might appear that the test to be applied to
the visiting teacher’s work is embraced in the single word “promotion.”
The greater the number of promotions, therefore, the greater her measure
of success. In a measure this is true and the work stands it. But this
is not all. Our object is to find for each child his suitable niche, and
if to achieve this means a de-motion instead of a promotion, it must not
on that account be reckoned as a failure. To the child it may mean a new
birth. In his changed surroundings he may gain self-confidence and no
longer be a laggard and a drag upon his class. To his teacher and his
classmates little by little he will present a different front. The magic
door has been opened. Into what lies beyond he can enter and with the
rest can follow, and because of this there springs up between him and
them a new relation, one that satisfies his human craving for friendship
and sympathy. In which column, the debit or the credit, of our yearly
ledger, are such items to be placed?
With final judgments tempered by such considerations, the following
possibilities may be offered:
Promoted, including graduates, 568.
Left back, 237.
Graduated, 39.