Continuation Training of School Officers
The requirements which have been discussed up to this point have to do with admission to the teaching profession. Beyond that point there is nothing that can be described as sufficiently common to be regarded as typical. There are voluntary and compulsory gatherings of every kind and variety intended to keep teachers intellectually alert and to inform them of progress in educational matters. There are institutes, so called, where teachers hear lectures. There are extension lectures, provided sometimes by boards of education, sometimes by teachers’ associations. There are meetings of teachers called by the superintendent or by the supervisor of a special subject or of a special grade.
The miscellaneous activities which are indicated by such a list as the above all recognize the necessity of continued study on the part of teachers in service, and many boards of education are requiring study in addition to success in teaching as an essential prerequisite to promotion or to increases in salary.
The most significant movement which has ever been witnessed in the training of teachers in service is the summer-school movement. All the leading institutions of learning in the country are filled during the long summer vacation with teachers who are pursuing courses in education or in the various subjects which they teach.