When her teacher was told how she was found occupying her time at home, her reply was prompt: “Yes, I remember now, she does seem fond of drawing.” A conference was arranged with the principal and a way was found of giving Lillian a chance to develop further this gift, her one excellency. Her fifth grade work was so re-arranged as to allow her to take drawing with the seventh grade, where she found greater variety and a teacher eager to let her express herself. At the same time she was introduced to a volunteer worker, a woman to whom history was an unending joy and with her she spent evening after evening making friends with facts, people, and dates that up to that moment had been total strangers to her. Later she was transferred to a trade school in which she was given an opportunity to specialize in designing.
In some pupils what appears as indifference or inattention may in truth be only a temperamental peculiarity which, if individual attention were possible, would in time be modified. The relation of pupil and teacher is at bottom one of sympathetic understanding. This is why sometimes, where one fails, the other succeeds, and herein lies the advantage of having several teachers to a grade. It makes possible a shifting about and increases the child’s chances of being understood. The desirability of this cannot be overestimated.
Another way in which the need of unusual children is met is the so-called “rapid progress class,” into which are put those children who are capable of making more than two grades in a year. Strange as it may on the surface appear, some of the children entrusted to the charge of the visiting teacher prove in the end to be just this type. For one reason or another, the routine of the regular class does not hold the child’s interest, and, as we all know, in such instances energy like that will not remain pent up. It is in its determination to find an outlet that it comes into conflict with established order.
Sometimes it is best to give the child a training wholly different from that offered by the school he is attending. Not all minds respond alike to the same stimuli. It often seems an utter waste to insist upon children plodding doggedly at subjects which make no appeal to them. Here lies the opportunity for vocational training. More than one case of apathy on the part of a child has been dispelled when a chance was given him to express himself in some sort of manual or industrial activity.
Occasionally it is found that at neither the door of the home nor at that of the school can the whole blame for the child’s failure to live up to his best moments be laid. There are times when he is under the kindly influence, if such it be, of neither one nor the other. It is at such times that his energies should be given a chance at wholesome expression, so that they may not be tempted to seek the baser kinds, in which the streets of a large city abound. It is interesting to note how a beneficient “wider view” reacts upon the school and home environment, making of what was once a listless, joyless, or obstinate, untractable, child one that gives out in “measure brimful and overflowing” the happiness that was but his birthright.
The question that naturally suggests itself is What is the result of the action taken? What outcome can be expected from having secured active co-operation in 568 homes; from having changed the class of 92 children, the school of 56, and made other school adjustments for 125; from having called into play 288 outside agencies in the shape of clubs, classes, and excursions and 604 agencies such as hospitals, relief societies, day nurseries, scholarship funds, reformatories, settlements, public libraries, etc., and from having sent 208 children to the country on extended visits?
A statistical reply is not always feasible. Certain stages in the child’s school career are marked: certain data about it definite enough; but whether in the final summing up these shall be given precedence over the subtler, more elusive changes that have come about, that is the real question. Just as in the matter of method employed, so in the matter of result achieved, it must be remembered that the numerical reckoning does not tell the whole story.
To the casual observer it might appear that the test to be applied to the visiting teacher’s work is embraced in the single word “promotion.” The greater the number of promotions, therefore, the greater her measure of success. In a measure this is true and the work stands it. But this is not all. Our object is to find for each child his suitable niche, and if to achieve this means a de-motion instead of a promotion, it must not on that account be reckoned as a failure. To the child it may mean a new birth. In his changed surroundings he may gain self-confidence and no longer be a laggard and a drag upon his class. To his teacher and his classmates little by little he will present a different front. The magic door has been opened. Into what lies beyond he can enter and with the rest can follow, and because of this there springs up between him and them a new relation, one that satisfies his human craving for friendship and sympathy. In which column, the debit or the credit, of our yearly ledger, are such items to be placed?
With final judgments tempered by such considerations, the following possibilities may be offered:
Promoted, including graduates, 568.