The Survey, Volume 30, Number 5, May 3, 1913Various
History
The Survey, Volume 30, Number 5, May 3, 1913
Various
Charities -- Periodicals; Social problems -- Periodicals; United States -- Social conditions -- Periodicals
The next morning, when I opened the classroom door, two pairs of smiling
eyes greeted me—the teacher’s and Walter’s. At once the teacher and I
planned our campaign. Walter was to learn that at school he could get a
chance at leadership too, for could he not play games there? At first,
perhaps, they seemed tame compared with those under the bridge, for the
classroom or the school-yard, even when given over to ball or bean-bag,
does not easily associate itself in the child’s mind with scenes of
adventure. However, the chance of some time being captain of the team
had charms even for him. The proof is to be found in the fact that he
attended school regularly, earning, in so doing, his palette and brushes
and at the end of the term promotion to a regular class.
The work of the visiting teacher has passed the experimental stage. The
position was created to bridge a gap in the existing school machinery.
The visiting teacher’s province lies outside that of the regular
teacher, the attendance officer and the school nurse, though like the
attendance officer and the school nurse, she goes into the child’s home.
To her is assigned the group called the “difficult” children, and it is
her aim to discover, if possible, the cause of the difficulty which
manifests itself in poor scholarship, annoying conduct, irregular
attendance, or the need of or desire for advice on some important phase
of life. It is too much to expect the regular teacher, handicapped as
she is by her large class, to cope with such situations. Nor is it to be
expected that those qualified to act as attendance officer or school
nurse, were they not already overburdened, should do the work of the
visiting teacher. In her is united the training that makes a teacher and
a social service worker, and it is because of this combination that she
is able to widen the regular teacher’s reach and help her interpret and
solve the problems as they present themselves.
From the school she learns that the child is apparently making little
effort; that his work is “C” or worse; that he is perpetually making
trouble in the class room and is never attentive: that he seems
lifeless, unable to keep pace with the class; that he attends so
irregularly that it is impossible to teach him anything, or that he has
no time to study and the situation at home is such that he must leave
school and go to work. With these facts as clues she sets to work; it is
impossible to define her methods, for they vary with her tact and
resourcefulness and with the specific character of the problem before
her. Briefly, they are the methods that spring from a friendly interest,
an intimate personal relation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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