The Way of One Teacher

My Dear Mrs. Kellogg:

(Private letter)

You asked me how I conducted my Christmas exercises, or in other words, how I give my Christmas lessons. We begin with lessons early in December. In connection with a blackboard picture of Raphael's birthplace, I teach a little story of his life. I then present to the children -a picture of his "Madonna of the Chair," and tell them a little story I read in some educational paper, about how Raphael came to paint this Madonna. Later in the year the class wrote an original reproduction of this little story. I will send you one that amused me very much. It was written by a little boy eight years old.

I have the children make-at home-or earn money and buy little presents for each other. The name of the giver is written and put inside of each package; this will prevent putting in things that they would be ashamed of. Then each package is tied up and a cord about a yard long left hanging. These are brought to the teacher from day to day as they are ready, and she records name, and sees to it that they are all brought in, in due time. A little remark from the teacher now and then as these packages come, will keep up the interest and add to the mystery.

At the same time the blackboard drawing of camels is going on. I do not cover this board, as I like them to talk and wonder what it is going to be. When the hills and stars are in, some one will say, "It is a night picture." Then I put in the little town of Bethlehem; no one yet guesses what it is. Then next comes the Star. The picture is all in white except the star, which is in yellow, with its rays covering the whole board. Then you will hear, "Oh! it is the star of Bethlehem." Next come the camels one at a time, as one is all teacher will want to do after school. The children will again gather around board, and if teacher

The little manger-bed where once he lay So far away.

And I can love him just the same as tho' Across the snow

I came toward you on that first Christmas night,
Led by love's light,

And laid my gifts before him. Now, as then,
With those wise men.

-Charles Hanson Towne

listens, she will hear them say, "Here comes one of the wise men." Complete each object before children see it. You can imagine the effect, if children should find on board a camel minus three legs. The ridiculous would soon take the place of the sublime.

When the picture was completed, I told the children I wanted them to think about it, and see who could tell me the most beautiful story about it. They did so, but I saw their knowledge was very limited, so we had a little lesson, and later they were allowed to write an original reproduction. I will send you some of their compostion work. We have no written stories done during December. The lessons are simply taught, and I think enjoyed.

In the affernoon we have our little pieces and Christmas songs. Then our fishing pool, which is a barrel nicely covered, and all the gifts from the children put in with string hanging out. Each child comes up and gets his line, and pulls out his fish. This he puts on desk until all have fished. Then presents are opened and you can imagine what follows for the next few moments.

I have a secret with one of my little boys. I write up a little Santa Claus speech. little Santa Claus speech. He learns it, and stays in and says it for me. In the meantime, I have made antlers out of stiff paper, and manes out of tissue paper. A little express cart is brought with bells and harness, and at the last moment eight small boys are selected and dressed in antlers and manes for reindeer. They are hitched to little express cart, which is trimmed and filled with bags full of nothing. A basket of corn balls furnished by the teacher is put in front of cart. The little Santa Claus dressed in his furry garments made of cotton, with pack on his back, gets into express cart. Teacher closes blinds or pulls down shades, and class sings-" Reindeer is coming, do not fear," and in come the eight prancing reindeer, with bells jingling. They go around the room, Santa Claus gets out, steps up on box and makes his speech, and then passes around the corn

In the long ago there lived some very queer people. They dressed different from us. They did not live in homes like we do. The shepherds pitched their tents where they found plenty of grass for their flocks.

While they sat on the hillside watching their flocks by night, they would study the stars. One night as they were on the soft green grass, they saw a star in the sky that shone brighter than the rest. Then they whispered among themselves. One shepherd said that there was some reason, or that star would not show a brighter light than the others. Then they went and told King Herod. He told them to go and search for the Christ-Child, and when they found him, they must come and tell him, so he could worship him too. He did not want to worship him at all. He was afraid he had come to be king instead of him, and he wanted to kill him.

The star guided the wise men to Bethlehem. When they got there the star shone with a beautiful light over a cattleshed. The wise men went into the door, and saw the wonderful child lying in a manger. They fell on their knees and worshiped him and gave him many treasures.

MARY PRUDEN (10 years)

Raphael's Madonna

Once upon a time there lived in a mountain a hermit, that is a man who does not unite with other inhabitants of the town or village. Well, this particular hermit I am going to speak about, lived in a cave in a mountain near a village. He was known all over the village. He knew considerable about herbs and their medicinal properties. Finally there came a flood. The people in the village could not get out to get provisions. Dora Gray thought of her friend the hermit. She knew that he could not get out of his mountain home.

She worried so much that at last her parents consented to let her take some food to him.

There was a stream down the mountain, which by the heavy rains was swollen to such an extent as to make it overflow. There was an old tree which grew by the side of the stream.

Dora Gray climbed up the tree to an overhanging limb, which reached clear across the stream. She crawled hand over hand over to the opposite bank. Arriving she found the hermit. She found him sick in bed. She built a rousing fire and gave him the food she brought him. He was soon sufficiently strong enough to escort her home.

Years passed on and Dora grew into womanhood. She was very beautiful. In the meantime the old tree had been felled and made into a washstand and given to Dora.

One night she was sitting in the door with her children, waiting for her husband to come home. Raphael happened to be passing through that town. When he saw Dora and her children, he said they would make an excellent Madonna, so he painted them on the washstand cover, as his "Madonna of the Chair."

MAURICE SILVERBERG (8 years)

Learned to Spell Three Times

"Think of a man learning how to spell three times and then not being able to spell correctly," said an observant man who takes an interest in subjects of this sort, "and you will have my case summed up exactly. I am not what you would call a bad speller by any means. But I stumble now

and then, and stumble badly. Why is it? It is the simplest thing in the world. I grew up in the country, attended a country school, and my first spelling was under the rules of the old-time school teacher. I learned how to spell on my feet. It is a curious fact that for a long time I could not spell the simplest words unless I stood up. Standing I could spell anything, and, in fact, was always the winner in the spelling bee. No one could turn me down, as we used to say in the country. Well, after this, I learned how to spell with my pencil. All my spelling talent went into my pencil. My tongue forgot the art, and whether standing or sitting, I could not spell a word unless it belonged to the simplest kind, without using my pencil. Now I began to use the typewriter, and consequently had to learn how to spell again. Ask me how to spell a word now and I will have to go to the typewriter unless the word is a very simple My tongue won't spell it, and my pencil will refuse

one.

In a primary school, one morning, a number of pupils had been told to take out their letter boxes and arrange the a's and b's, etc., into groups on their desks. A few minutes later a little boy raised his hand.

"What is it, Johnny?" said the teache "Dere ain't no v's," he answered.

"Oh, look again. I am sure you wiH find some," said the teacher; "and be sure to have all your work done when I come to see you."

When the recitation was finished, the teacher went to look at the work on the desks. As she passed Johnny's desk, she observed something strange about the little pile of v's. Pausing to look more closely at them, the boy explained: "I didn't have no v's, so I tored de tails off de y's."

Good-Night

(Recitation)

Good-night, little star,

I will go to my bed And leave you to burn While I lay down my head.

On my pillow to sleep Till the morning light, When you will be faded And I will be bright.

"Good English

I

Which is not
Good English

W. E. WATT, Ph. D., Principal Graham School, Chicago

SUPPOSE there are teachers who will say, "That is not the proper beginning for an article. You should say, 'Kindly do not'; it is out of fashion to say 'Please '.' There is another teacher who will be shocked to have me say "don't" when I have time to say "do not." And the other one is at hand who will be surprised that I should say "big" when large would be so much better.

But those who say these things are the very ones I should like to have a talk with if I could but reach them. They should be talked with. See that preposition at the end of the sentence ! Some of them can never abide the sentence ending with "with." They never say, "What is Montreal noted for?" They put it, "For what is Montreal noted?"

They get wrong ideas as to the meanings of certain words, and then they try to get their pupils to square their lives to these particular meanings, regardless of many other meanings, which are just as good and which ought to be considered by the one who hopes to be correct in speech.

Elementary Teaching Tends to Linguistic Fussiness "Do not say you take the car; the car takes you. Make your speech conform with the facts." "When you speak to me, kindly put your thought into a complete statement," and "Horses and other such animals sweat, but human beings perspire," are bright examples of this. They are taken from life. Teachers are taking the time of school to instil into the minds of children that they must not do certain things which are perfectly proper for them to do. Why not teach something worth while?

In the elementary school the adult mind leads the younger about so much that it becomes a habit, and the little ones must be pulled about at times when there is no sense in the act. When the program seems to lack spice something of this sort is injected. It reminds one of the old lady whose neighbor's house was burning. She threw a dipper of water from her second story window and drenched a policeman, saying she " didn't feel right in being idle when there was so much that wanted doing."

I wish it were more common for certain teachers to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. They seem to forget that nature has any hand in education; it must all be manufacture. Sometimes in school the leading mind should be silent and let the children think and work out something for themselves. A new requirement will some day be added to our examinations for certificates to teach, and it will be a test in keeping still and not interfering with what is going on naturally.

The teacher who has been abroad on one of those flying excursions where you are delivered bodily at certain famous cities, fed three times or so in each, and then whisked aboard the homebound steamer, is particularly flippant in speaking of the bad things we have in America. Sometimes the mere reading of an itinerary has that effect on the lively imagination and the reader deplores certain American things.

Things are Very Bad This Side the Water

Even those who have a relative who has travelled abroad sometimes get nervous over our Americanitis. One of them said to her class, "You should never cut your sentences short; finish one sentence before you begin another." May I be permitted to ask what for? So we may talk like you? Excuse me.

She deplores the great hurry of the American who says "Thanks"; she doesn't wish to hear her pupil say "Thank you"; she prefers "I thank you." Now "I thank you" is very good at times; but the others are good in their places. It is not particularly American to say "Thanks." "Thanks." It and its counterparts are heard in all the languages of Europe, both in court circles and in intellectual company. The English have said it regularly since the sixteenth century when America was part of China. Shakespeare put

"Thanks" into the mouth of his most courtly characters, and it was eminently proper before he did it; it has remained so ever since. There is no civilized people among whom it is required to put an expression of gratitude for any small courtesy into a sentence with subject, predicate, and object. It is a sign of good breeding to give just enough and not too much time to the acknowledgment of the little kindnesses which are handed about by refined people without thinking specially of them. Think of a Frenchman's filling out his sentence when you let him pass through the door ahead of you! Isn't "Merci " enough for you?

I know the English business man who thanks the newsboy who offers him his wares puts "you" after "Thank"; but he merely does it to get the kindly rising inflection which he enjoys using. We let our voices fall in saying "I thank you"; but the English have a trick of making the voice rise peculiarly. It is kindly and gentle; but when you first hear it it reminds you of the saucy boy who is making fun of

someone.

One says, "Don't say, 'I am a great deal better'; say, 'much better'; great deals are made on the stock exchange." That is true; but I have seen great deals in Michigan and Wisconsin that were not made; they grew. It is a good deal better to say "great deal" when you mean very much than to use uncommon words which will make your friends notice your spasm of affectation. The people of the United States and Canada, as well as those of England and Australia, have been saying "great deal" and "good deal" a good long time, and no impertinent schoolma'am is going to turn the tide of this good English usage into something that she fancies in her uninstructed state to be more in accord with propriety.

When you Must Correct, Correct an Error

You have plenty of time to find out whether a thing is wrong before you stigmatize it as an error. Don't make yourself ridiculous in the memory of your pupils, for as long a time as they can remember it, by telling them the things they say at home, and which are good English, are not proper. I remember the teacher who, thirty years ago, had forgotten, if she had ever read of it, the surrender of Detroit. She tried to make a small boy who told her his name was Hull, correct it into Hall or Hill. One of these must be the right name and the other manifestly a corruption, and she went in to rectify matters right there. She has a place in memory!

Miss Primstickler tells the class they must not say, "You had better do it," because "would better" is the proper form. She says "would do" is the verb and not " had do." She confesses that Shakespeare, Milton, Carlyle, Ruskin, and a lot of them were weak enough to go wrong in the matter and that she has read able articles on it showing her position false; but "would do " is the only thing that will do in her school. I suspect, if you watch that lady a little, you'll find she doesn't know the meaning of "would" well enough to keep it out of the place of "should" in her ordinary speaking and writing. She may even be one of those who do not know when to use "shall" instead of "will." But she has taken a large contract when she tells us, this honorable and idiomatic form of English is bad. "Had better" comes down to us by a straight line of honorable ancestry from Chaucer to Tennyson. Those who think they know better should read Cor. XIV. 19, "I had rather speak five words with my understanding. . . than ten words in an unknown tongue." The King James version, puts it in that way and the great scholars of the revision did not think it worth while to change it. I had rather be a doorkeeper in a log schoolhouse than a scholar of the teacher who tinkers at what she hasn't studied.

She is the woman who does not call those who attend her school scholars because there is another meaning for that word, so she shuts her eyes and calls them pupils because she has never noticed any other meaning for that word. She is related to the teacher who raised a great talk about a principal's treating his assistants as servants because he once referred to some of them as real help in the work; the New England farmer calls the girl in the kitchen "help."

-Omaha is to attempt manual training in the grade schools this year. Superintendent Davidson has recommended a plan for establishing manual training throughout the grades. The beginning is to be made this year in one of the buildings. Miss Katherine Lux, of Topeka, is to have charge of this work. A beginning will be made with work in the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades.

-Professor Hutchmur, of the Bridgeton, N. J., schools, has recommended the dis

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saying that if the pennies spent daily for chewing gum and candy were applied by all pupils to this purpose the supplies would be provided for without recourse to the school fund. He believes the plan would inculcate a spirit of self-denial.

-The Woman's School Alliance of Milwaukee will furnish free breakfasts to the poor children in the public schools of that city. A fund has been raised for the purpose. The authorities have recently learned that the children of poor parents came to school without breakfast, their parents having to hurry away to work. The Alliance designs to remedy this.

A NEW TRADE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

Last July a new trade school was opened in Boston, with Miss Florence M. Marshall, a graduate of Teachers' College, Columbia University, as director. This term closed September 2 with gratifying results, and on September 22 opened for the fall and winter term with thirty-one pupils. The work is planned along the lines by which the Manhattan Industrial School of New York is operated, the prime object being to fit girls to enter industrial life so well equipped that they are regarded as skilled workers, and will receive the wages such equipment demands.

While this institution is called a school, and is such, of course, in every sense of the word, there is everywhere an intention to reproduce the conditions of the shop, so that it will be no new thing to these girls when they become self-supporting to be surrounded with the atmosphere and appliances of a large establishment.

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out in the school is the meeting of the director with the girls for twenty minutes daily, when questions of honor in business are discussed. No conclusions are reached in these discussions, they are intended rather to set the girls to thinking and to settling things for themselves. Such topics as that of a girl doing more than is actually required of her, and of the benefit that will ultimately be hers for such regard for her employer's interests, are taken up, and they cannot help equipping the girls with a regard for the ethical as well as the material side of their business relations.

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"Teachers in the primary grades will consider this book a boon. It is brimming over with the spirit of the primary school and full of suggestions as to what to do. The contents are arranged in months and for each month are definite suggestions as to ways and means of interesting the children. There is a leading thought for each month, and plays, games, and a story that circle about the central thought. There are a good many illustraLions and all bear directly upon the doing element in school work. The style of the book is vivacious, conversational, and rather confidential with the teacher. If the author had a class of teachers before her, she would talk to them just about as she talks in this book and they would be very glad to hear it. There is an appendix full of helps about occupations, with plain, definite directions, and teachers never get quite enough of such help. It is a teacher's desk-book and ought to find its way to desks innumerable." Fully Illustrated. Cloth. Price, 50 Cents.

2

ΤΟ

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I find the above Number Chart of untold value in teaching beginners the figures to ten, and the simple combinations illustrated.

To teach numbers to a child who is totally ignorant of them, is tedious work to many teachers, and puzzling to others. When the concept of number is formed in the child mind, the difficulty is removed, and the progress rapid. I have tried many different devices and find this little chart, by far, the most successful. It has the advantage of grouping the simple combinations which has proven very important in earliest number conceptions. As the child is taught, so will he do in later years, and a mistake made at this early period is seldom ever fully overcome.

To use the chart, place on the board as illustrated. Make the upper row of figures large and place near the top of the board, written with white chalk. Place the ones of colored chalk (I use pink), next, comes the added row of white, and lastly, the figures again of the same color as the ones. Have the child count to ten, pointing to each figure as it comes, when he can do this readily, reverse the process and

let him learn to count as readily backwards. Now skip about till he can name any figure as soon as touched with the pointer. The next step, is to teach him that there are two ones in two, three ones in three and so on. Now that one and one make two, then two and one make three, two and two make four (do not say three and one make four, for you do not want to lose sight of the two and two, he will discover that there are other combinations later), then two and three make five, grouping the two and three and so on, till you have ten. Now teach him that there are two twos in four, two threes in six, two fours in eight, three threes in nine and two fives in ten, just as many as the fingers on both little hands. Let him count the ones, never losing sight of grouping two and three, to prove that you are right. It is best to use object in these illustrations in addition to the ones on the chart. Anything in the school-room will answer the purpose. Three girls and three girls will represent six girls and four boys and four boys will be pleased to stand for eight boys. If we use three boys and three girls, then be careful to say there are six children.

Have the child make the figures to ten copying from the large figures on the chart, later, have him copy the whole chart. He should learn to count to thirty without developing, in connection with this work. Then teach him to count by tens to one hundred, thus : ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, one hundred. Be sure he understands that there is a ten between ten and twenty,. twenty and thirty and so on, till he reaches the hundred. When he has fully mastered this work, the other combinations will be easy, for number will have taken a firm root in his mind and a strong plant of vigorous growth will be the result.