New-York tribune., 1920-04-12
Act
AS Teachers
In Shortage

Devereux's place. One of the girls
from the eighth grade, a monitor, was
selected to take charge of the class for
the first hour of the morning. She
would give the children little arith-
metic and little spelling. Unhappily
the words she propounded were usually
beyond the capabilty of her charges
and when she attempted to correct this
she swung too far the other way and
selected words so simple that the eight
year-old masculine dignity of the pu-
pills was affronted and some of them
hooted at her She was powerless tc
control such situation and when the
class discovered this even the best of
the forty-tlve were transformed into
decidedly mutinous subjects.
1t wouldn't be libelous to saw that
some of them acted like tiny fiends.
Tie situation was saved for a while
each day by two other teachers One of
these would relieve the distracted lit
tie monitor when she had free"
period, and at the close of that hour
the other teacher would in turn devote
her free period to these educational
orphans. After that it would be time
to dismiss the class for luncheon.
Cleanliness Disappears
After few weeks of this Mrs Haas
noticed that instead of coming to school
neat and clean they were appearing
with unbrushed shoes, grimy hands ana
faces, without neckties and wearing
dingy sweaters in place of the clean
shirts that had been exacted by Miss
Devereux. They had slumped terribly
IN personal appearance and they had
slumped far more mentally.
Some times the monitor was in tears.
lcf Eoh~ -
was learned that it would be impos-
sible for Miss Devereux to return to
school this year, broke the class up
into three parts and assigned each Of
these groups of fifteen boys to three
other classes of the same grade. This
swelled three normal sized classes of
forty-fve to unwieldy classes of
sixty, one-quarter of whom were be-
hind their new classmates in all their
work. Naturally the work of the other
three-quarters of each of these three
classes was delayed, while the nevcoE1
ers struggled to catch up. Ali told 1S0
pupils, who we're entitled to careful in
struction With G bit OF personal, nd-
vidral attention from their teacher
were getting only mass instruction. The
inattentive pupils made practically no
advancement.
Finally, late in March, Mrs. Haas
,C
to take charge of Glass A were r@-
warded, for Mrs. Adelaide Hayden We
persuaded 10 take charge of the clas-
The separated groups were pu. baci
into one class room. Ms. Hayden tool
charge.
Children Lose Much
In telling about this Mrs. Haas said:
These boys were not the clean, well
behaved youngsters that Miss Devereux
drilled and taught up to the time she
suffered breakdown.
Mrs. Hayden complains bitterly that
they are far behind the other classes in
reading and spelling. BY hard work
she may be able to bring them up to
year SO that they will not fail and
thus lose six months of their school
lives, besides suffering the humiliation
of falling behind the other children of
their age. Despite all her efforts she
may not succeed in passing all of them
If they do fail, who will be responsib BILE :?
"lt was just q stroke of fortune that
was able to get Mrs. Hayden. With,
out her most of these boys would fail
| in all their studies this year, for if
they were passed their deficiencies
would be revealed next year. In other
schools this situation is repeated in
many classes. With the boys of A
there is an almost happy ending. We
were especially fortunate. l was by
no means as badly off as many princi-
pals, even when in February / had
eighteen teachers absent out Of staff
of seventy"
Makeshift Plan Aids Many
If the i'll equipped substitutes-the
monitors and part-time instruction.
were abandoned the number of children
sent home each week would be tripled
In one week in March on that basis
10000 would have been sent home. 1t
would take a week Of daylight to
pa rade that many children.
Ir almost all schools classes are