Training the TeacherLamoreaux, Antoinette Abernethy
Religion
Training the Teacher
Lamoreaux, Antoinette Abernethy
Bible -- Study and teaching; Sunday schools
#1. The Value of Character.#--We teach more by what we are than by
what we know. Emerson once said, "What you are thunders so loud I
cannot hear what you say." Everywhere the character of the teacher is
counted a vital part of his equipment. Even in secular schools the
teacher is required to possess a good moral character. How much more
should we demand high moral and spiritual standards of the teacher in
the Sunday-school! But mere goodness is not enough. We must demand, in
addition to personal worth, certain other salient qualities in the
person who stands before childhood as a teacher of God's truth.
#2. Training Always Needed.#--There is a common notion that teachers
like poets are born, not made. This is fallacious for two reasons: (a)
we do not know till we try whether or not we can teach; (b) we do know
now that the greater number of teachers are made by training and not
by inherited qualities. Then, too, we are told that born teachers need
no training, that they can teach without preparation. This notion is
false, because the best native power may be made better by proper
training. We call a doctor who has had no training in medicine a
"quack," and it is not too much to say the same of untrained teachers.
Hence all of us will be the better fitted for our work in the
Sunday-school if we have in addition to our native powers such added
power as prayer and training assuredly give.
#3. A Living Example.#--The teacher should be not only a professing
Christian, but a living example of the kind of life we want every
child to live. It is unfortunate to place the destiny of a human soul
in the care and under the directing thought of a teacher who neither
believes nor lives a consistent Christian life. The teacher should be
_kindly considerate_ of his pupils[.] No amount of fine teaching power
can compensate for the lack of such kindly concern for the welfare of
his pupils as will best lead them to crave in their own lives the same
courteous and considerate qualities. He should also be perfectly
_sincere_ and _frank_. There can be no such thing as "playing a part"
in the presence of children. They discern with an intuition that is as
certain as logic the sincerity or insincerity of the teacher. It is a
mistake to flatter, to scold, to threaten or to cajole pupils. These
are the marks of poor teaching. A perfectly frank teacher will never
cheapen his sacred opportunity by any trick or device that has the
ring of insincerity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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