In Boston there are now five full-time and seven or eight part time school visitors. Each visitor is engaged by some private organization, such as the Women’s Educational Association, the Home and School Association, a group of settlements, or by some individual. She is attached to a special school or district and does all her work there. This is the arrangement in all three cities. The work has been supervised by a committee of the Women’s Educational Association, and this committee represents settlements and other social agencies. Work of this sort, but on a smaller scale, is being done both in Worcester, Mass., and in Rochester, N. Y., the visiting teachers working under the Public Education Association of New York have been increasingly effective in their efforts to solve for the often overburdened teacher problems connected with individual children.
Efforts have been made from time to time by the supervising force to instruct teachers to visit the homes of the children in their classrooms and ascertain the conditions under which they were living, but with the present large size of classes in most public schools this has been found to be quite impracticable. Besides this, to overcome the difficulties in the way of a child’s education much visiting of an expert sort and many efforts for outside co-operation are often necessary, for which the teachers could not possibly find time. Separate visitors are therefore needed. There are so many illustrations of the sort of work they do, that it is hard to select one that is more telling than the rest.
From the report of a Boston visitor we learn of Angelina Conti, who was constantly tardy, frequently absent, and never alert or quick in her recitations. “She seems to lack ambition,” says the report, “and must be dropped into a lower grade unless something can be done to brace her up.” The visitor is sent to the home. She finds that Angelina is the oldest of nine children and that the family lives in three rooms. The burden of the family seems to rest on Angelina, who must wash the clothes every afternoon when she comes from school, and go for the baby’s milk before school in the morning. Angelina is a perfectly compliant, patient little soul. She has a headache most of the time, but expects to do all that her mother asks of her. She hopes that the teacher won’t “degrade” her.
The visitor urges Mrs. Conti to send a younger child for milk in the morning so that Angelina can come promptly to school. The headaches are reported to the school nurse, who sends Angelina to the hospital for much needed treatment. The whole situation is explained to the teacher, who gladly promises to send Angelina home promptly in the afternoon so that she may have time for her housework. There is a much better understanding between Angelina and her teacher, her health improves, she comes more regularly and keeps her class. Thus is the first step in preventing dependency taken.
An interesting part of the work of these social service workers has been to bring to bear on the lives of these “difficult children” all the agencies which might be of assistance. This same Boston visitor states in her report that “this new work of visiting the homes of the school children is one of continual co-operation with principals, teachers, truant officers, janitors and the children themselves, also with hospitals, dispensaries, employment agencies, the Associated Charities, or whatever the emergency may demand.” Too often this sort of effort is scattered and ineffective because of the lack of connection between agencies. With a visitor working from the school as a starting point and not from any private organization, the connection is quickly made and the influence of each helping agency is strengthened by the added influence of every other. This has proved to be just as true in the case of medical social service, particularly that of public hospitals and institutions, and one might almost prophesy that some day the relief work of philanthropic agencies will come only in response to calls from the social service departments of church, hospital, public institution and school, and that a great clearing house for these agencies, public and private, will be the best way of organizing charity.
Be that as it may, social service is as surely needed in connection with training people’s minds as it is with saving their souls and curing their bodies. It is easier to train our vines to grow straight and sure and to cling to the lattices we choose for them, if at the same time the soil is watered and enriched that the roots may be strong, and all things harmful to the plant’s health are carefully kept from it. “As the twig is bent the tree’s inclined,” but the twig must be strong and healthy as well as straight, if the tree is to do its part in forming the forests our country must have if it would be prosperous. Surely anything that will make more effective the mental training and development of our country’s future citizens is as fully justified.
THE VISITING TEACHER IN ACTION
MARY FLEXNER
VISITING TEACHER, PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, NEW YORK CITY
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.