Thus far the superintendent by himself; now a word about his relation to his officers. Just as the failure of a school on the spiritual side is quite often due to lack of a good teachers' meeting, so a failure on the administrative side is probably due to the lack of a "cabinet meeting," where the superintendent consults with all his officers and committees, and where each gets inspiration and counsel from the other. The teachers' meeting should be occupied with entirely different matters. It cannot take the place of a gathering of the executive, and ought to come on a different night.
This cabinet meeting must be set for a regular time, and nothing short of an earthquake must be allowed to break it up. Every officer should make a report to the cabinet, and the report should be in writing. The latter requirement saves time, adds dignity, and provides the meeting with definite statements as a basis for discussion.
A wise superintendent will utilize all his officers to the utmost. He will make the assistant superintendent assist. The theory is that the assistant shall be able, in the superintendent's absence, to do everything the superintendent would do. How can he learn, except by doing everything, now and then, when the superintendent is present? Many a superintendent has worn himself out doing five men's work rather than train four men to help him. Elijah trained Elisha to be prophet in his stead. If he had not done so, I hardly think Elijah would have been carried to heaven in a chariot of fire. Every worker should prepare his successor, should make himself unnecessary.
Let it be the superintendent's ambition, then, to create an automatic Sunday-school, one he can leave to run itself. He must keep himself in the background. He must test the matter by occasional absences, on foray for ideas in other schools. He must do as little as possible himself,—no danger but it will be enough!—and he must get as much as possible done by others. So he will create, not a machine, but an organism.
In the third place,—the superintendent and the teachers. He must individualize them. As Garfield, the young school-teacher, was wont to lie awake nights, tracing out on his sheet in the dark a plan of the schoolroom, locating each scholar's desk and planning for that scholar's growth as he did so, thus the superintendent should consider separately and regularly each teacher's task and abilities, trials and successes.
It is his joyous work to encourage them, to note improvement in their scholars, to repeat to them the kind words of parents, to give them a cheer in their arduous and difficult and, for the time, thankless tasks. When a superintendent has praised discreetly, half his work is done.
Of course, the superintendent will study his lesson as thoroughly as any teacher; and this is not by any means an unnecessary remark, though some may think so. Indeed, there are even many occasions when he may teach a class, though usually he is best left free during the lesson hour to greet the strangers, or, watching from some central post like a general in battle, to fly to the rescue of some teacher whose class may be getting mischievous, restless, or careless.
For the superintendent should feel at perfect liberty to sit quietly down with any class in his school, and should do this so often and easily that his coming ceases to be a disturbance to teacher or scholars. If the superintendent is not welcome, it will be because he does not know how to help unobtrusively, and he would better stay away.
The best relations are not possible unless the superintendent visits the teachers in their homes, and gets them to come to his for frequent private consultations or for an occasional social hour all together. The teachers' meeting for the study of the lesson will not take the place of these heart-to-heart talks, in which sympathy and appreciation, friendly counsel and united prayers, draw the teachers very close to their leader.