Students who attain the required standard of scholarship in every prescribed subject, and exhibit a fair degree of skill in teaching and governing children, and pass the State Examination for Teachers, receive a Diploma of Graduation.
The fitness of any teacher for her profession is thus determined partly by the authorities of the Normal School, and partly by the State.
All necessary text-books are free, but students are encouraged to purchase a few books of reference.
The aim of this school is entirely professional, but it is found so difficult to obtain a supply of sufficiently prepared students that some academic work, especially in science, is found to be necessary, and each student is expected to learn to make certain sets of apparatus, which will be afterwards helpful in the teaching of science in the schools. The Principal informed me that he considered that the school was stronger on the practical than on the theoretical side. Most certainly the practical training of teachers is most thoroughly arranged for. A Model School of 500 children is attached to the school, the classes in which are in the hands of trained and enthusiastic teachers, who are constantly endeavouring to improve existing and devise new methods of teaching. In reading, for instance, the children make their own reading lesson, the subjects being taken from lessons on elementary science, literature, etc., which they have had. With the help of the blackboard, simple sentences, giving an account of the lesson or its story, are collected, and then printed by the school printing press, which proves an invaluable addition to the school apparatus. Drawing is also taught almost entirely in connection with other school subjects, the illustrating of Science, History and Geography lessons being thus utilized.
During the training course, the students give a few lessons in the Model School, and spend a good deal of time in observation. But a comparatively new and important feature in connection with the practical training is the six months which students are encouraged to spend after graduation at a Practice School which has been opened at South Manchester. Here the graduates teach under supervision, and obtain that amount of practice under favourable circumstances which is so necessary to the perfecting of the teacher.
At Willimantic, as at New Britain, especial stress is laid on preparing the teacher for the practical part of the profession. The child, however, is the unit of the school, and on the right understanding of the child depends the teacher’s success in teaching. The child has both a body and a mind to be trained, and the two cannot be separated. It is therefore necessary that a teacher should know something about each, and students are therefore expected to devote a good deal of time to the study of Physiology in the Junior year, and to the study of Psychology in the Senior.
The Model Schools[5] are most carefully staffed, and the students spend as much time as possible in observing work done in these schools.
During the last term of the course, each student serves as an assistant in the various grades of the Model Schools, thus having experience in teaching under the guidance and criticism of an expert in each grade.
The course is for two years, but the Principal is anxious to have the time extended.