In ordinary cases, business comes at first by slow degrees, and
the beginner is introduced to the labors and responsibilities of his
employment in a very gradual manner. The young teacher, however, enters
by a single step into the very midst of his labors. Having, perhaps,
never even heard a class recite before, he takes a short walk some
winter morning, and suddenly finds himself instated at the desk, his
fifty scholars around him, all looking him in the face, and waiting to
be employed. Every thing comes upon him at once. He can do nothing until
the day and the hour for opening the school arrives--then he has every
thing to do.
Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that the young teacher
should look forward with unusual solicitude to his first day in school,
and he desires, ordinarily, special instructions in respect to this
occasion. Some such special instructions we propose to give in this
chapter. The experienced teacher may think some of them too minute and
trivial. But he must remember that they are intended for the youngest
beginner in the humblest school; and if he recalls to mind his own
feverish solicitude on the morning when he went to take his first
command in the district school, he will pardon the seeming minuteness of
detail.
1. It will be well for the young teacher to take opportunity, between
the time of his engaging his school and that of his commencing it, to
acquire as much information in respect to it beforehand as possible, so
as to be somewhat acquainted with the scene of his labors before
entering upon it.
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