We come now to a
second point.
2. It will assist the young teacher very much in his first day's labors
if he takes measures for seeing and conversing with some of the older or
more intelligent scholars on the day or evening before he begins his
school, with a view of obtaining from them some acquaintance with the
internal arrangements and customs of the school. The object of this is
to obtain the same kind of information with respect to the interior of
the school that was recommended in respect to the district under the
former head. He may call upon a few families, especially those which
furnish a large number of scholars for the school, and make as many
minute inquiries of them as he can respecting all the interior
arrangements to which they have been accustomed, what reading-books and
other text-books have been used, what are the principal classes in all
the several departments of instruction, and what is the system of
discipline, and of rewards and punishments, to which the school has been
accustomed.
If, in such conversations, the teacher should find a few intelligent and
communicative scholars, he might learn a great deal about the past
habits and condition of the school, which would be of great service to
him. Not, by any means, that he will adopt and continue these methods as
a matter of course, but only that a knowledge of them will render him
very important aid in marking out his own course.
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