Table of Contents

I.Entering the Teaching Profession[1]
II.Getting a Position[7]
III.Before School Opens—After Getting the First Superintendency[13]
IV.Teachers’ Meetings[17]
V.Meeting with the School Board[22]
VI.School Activities[28]
VII.The Janitor—His Relation to the School[39]
VIII.How the Principal Can Help the Teacher[44]
IX.The School and the Community[56]

ENTERING THE TEACHING PROFESSION

Little did I think, during my college days, that I should ever become a teacher. It would have made me unpopular to have said so, even if I had had any designs in that direction. My college mates, who were planning to be lawyers, engineers, or commercial men of prominence, considered teaching creditable only as a “fill in job.” I joined them in their happy aspirations and tried to think I was preparing for something. Just what that “something” was, I was unable to say.

Finally the day of graduation arrived. I was ready to go out into the world with a college diploma, but was unprepared for a definite position. My false aspirations had failed, and I was looking hopelessly about for something to do that would save my pride. I must not accept just a mere job, and to escape that humiliation I became a teacher. It certainly was not a very creditable manner for a young man to enter a profession, to say nothing of the doubtful compliment of such an entry to the teaching profession. Such a confession, however, could be made by many of my associates of fifteen years ago.

The situation that confronted me after deciding to become a teacher temporarily, and two ways of meeting it, can be illustrated by the experiences of two young men who entered the teaching profession under similar conditions.

A few years ago I made a trip to a neighboring state to visit a friend who was engaged in farming. On a sunny July morning I arrived in an enterprising village a few miles from his home. While sitting on the porch of the hotel waiting for my friend, I met a man whom I had known years before. He recognized me. After stating that he was president of the local board of education, he invited me to go out to their school building, which was being remodeled.

One of the first rooms that we visited was the study hall. We found the janitor busily engaged in arranging the seats. He said he didn’t know just which way the desks should face, as no one had told him, but he remembered that the pupils needed plenty of light, so he was facing the desks toward the side of the room which had the most windows.

We then went to a room set apart for manual training work. There was one bench in evidence and Mr. —— told me that the board had not decided on the kind of benches or tools to buy, as the superintendent had not said in what grades the manual training work would be offered. “In fact,” he said, “the superintendent forgot to tell us anything about the building equipment before he left for his vacation.”