Educ P

130 2 V.219. nol 1864

Thoughts for New Year.

ings, he will earnestly strive for that wisdom and strength which will better prepare him for the work of the new year upon whose theshhold he is just entering.

Teacher, another year, with its pleasures and pains, its successes and failures, has forever gone and its record is sealed up. However much you may wish that you had been more devoted to your work, and that you had done one thing or left undone another, it is now too late to make any changes or improvements. The "living present" is all with which you have to do. Regrets for past errors and deficiencies. will prove useless only in that they may lead you to act more wisely the part remaining to you.

While we would gladly mingle our voice with the thousands of bright and merry children in wishing to the teachers of our State a "Happy New Year," we would more gladly say or do something that would throw light and sunshine about their path and cause their arduous labors to be more successfully performed and more justly appreciated. Will you pardon us for calling your attention to two or three particulars, the right observance of which will be essential to your usefulness or happiness?

1. Consider well the nature of your work.-The just appreciation of any work is indispensable to its proper performance. The artist who would produce a correct sketch must not only conceive in his own mind what the essential points are, but he must also know precisely what to do in order to give clear expression to those points on the canvass. He might paint, day after day, without producing a single valuable result. If, however, he is a master workman, every movement and touch of the brush will be for some well defined purpose or end. Watch the sculptor as he works on the senseless block and blance of the human form. See with what care and skill he uses the chisel and how, little by little, he causes the mar ble to assume the form which he had previously conceived for it in his own mind. A single blunder might, in an instant, mar, if not spoil, the work of months. Knowing this, how carefully and watchfully he toils. You, teacher, are

strives to produce a sem

Thoughts for New Year.

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working on mind. Daily and hourly you are making ineffaceable impressions upon your pupils which will tend to mar or beautify them. Impressions of some kind you must make, and will make, constantly. Let us then entreat you to consider what your work is, not only in its present bearing, but, more, in its future influence and results. You are not toiling for the present hour, but your work and your example will long be felt in the lives of all who are committed to your charge. Labor, then, as "they who expect to give an account."

2. Make your pupils feel that you are their friend.-Do not imagine that you have performed your duty simply because you have heard all your classes recite and preserved a tolerable degree of order. True teaching implies more than this. It requires that something be done to correct bad habits, to develop and strengthen the better feelings of the heart, and bring into full action all that is manly and noble. Ever bear in mind that the boys and girls under your care will soon become men and women, and that their future will testify to your fidelity or neglect. Then seek to do them good and to make them better. Lead them to confide in you, and so speak and act that they may imitate your example. If possible, gain an insight into their hearts. Study their peculiarities. Learn of their trials,—their temptations, their aspirations, that you may prove a friend and guide to conduct them through the devious and dangerous paths of youth up to honorable and useful manhood and womanhood. Labor for them and pray for them, and you will not fail of a rich reward.

3. Strive to promote a pleasant co-operative feeling on the part of parents. You need the sympathies and kindly aid of parents. You can not do all you ought without them. These you can not secure without effort. You may be compelled to labor long and patiently to remove prejudices, and prepare the way for right impressions. Let them see that your heart is in your work and that you are desirous of benefiting, in every way, their children. Go to them and converse freely and frankly. If their children have faults,

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The Schools I have Taught.

and most children have,-speak of them in a plain but kindly manner, and ask parental co-oporation in your efforts to eradicate bad habits. Do not aim so much to say smooth and pleasing things, as to present defects in a way that will not give offense, but rather secure attention. Remember that you are working not on perfection, but towards perfection. Your daily duty will be to remove obstacles and furnish aid and encouragement in the path of knowledge,-that you may by all means, help your pupils to walk in "wisdom's ways." Be faithful in all your labors, and then may you enjoy many happy years here, and finally receive from the "Great Teacher" a welcome to a happy eternity in heaven.

For the Common School Journal.

THE SCHOOLS I HAVE TAUGHT.

By this it is not meant any considerable suc

I was born to be a school teacher. to lay claim to any special gift or to cess in teaching, but only that after several ineffectual attempts to break away from the toils and the attractions of an employment I hardly know how I have been led into, I have decided that this is my appointed work. Friends, who do not esteem teaching as highly as I do, have urged to other courses, but as often as temporary influences have drawn me within reach of any of them, I have been made to feel that whatever inducements they might hold out for moneymaking, they could not satisfy a man with such inclinations and tastes as mine. I was not long since sorely tempted by an early friend, to join him in a business which promised to be lucrative to a degree ten-fold greater than teaching, but the thought of giving up my quiet evening studies, my pen of which I am very fond, and of losing my opportunities of making a mark, however imperfect it may be, upon the classes I love, was too much. And so I wrote to my friend to let me alone in my work, for why should I leave it when it was giving the means of serving my generation and an adequate support, and satisfied my ambition? And I love

The Schools I have Taught.

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teaching more and more. Restless as I suppose I am by nature, I have learned, or am learning, to be content to abide where providence seems to direct. I see an endless prospect of improvement before me, and not counting myself perfect, I still press on toward that which is before. Being neither too old nor too conceited to learn, I desire to make past and present experience conduce to further advances.

On one of my almost periodical days of reverie, I ran over this experience. One school after another I have taught, passed before me, and I taught them over again. Pleasant memories came back with freshness, and mistakes and follies startled me afresh. I wondered how I had escaped this difficulty and been led out of that danger by a way I knew not of. How was it that I had not been rejected at examinations? I strongly suspect that the slackness of committees had much to do with it. Why was I never turned out of school? I have more than a suspicion that it was not because I received my deserts. Old mortifications were renewed, and unexpected relief from embarrassment and failure convinced me that "there is a divinity which shapes the ends" of teachers as well as of other people. Moral reflections came in to give sobriety to my pictures. What has become of my pupils? What kind of men and women are they making? How much of their good character and success do they owe to me? Some of them I know have given up their lives for their country; some have entered the ministry; some are merchants, some editors, and so on. They are now almost legion in number. Would it not be a pleasant thing to gather them all together and look them in the face? But some are bearded men now, and quite sizeable boys call them father; some are mothers with daughters I should know sooner than themselves. And yet,-I say it with no desire to boast-I never meet one of these earlier pupils who is not apparently glad to see me. I met one at Rockville the other day, herself a teacher now, whom I had not seen for ten years. She said she recognized my voice at once, and called to mind a class in arithmetic in which she was pupil and I teacher. Another called on me a short time

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The Schools 1 have Taught.

since, who is now a surgeon in the navy. What a troublesome boy he used to be, and what a fine, manly fellow now. And as I brought them all up, it occurred to me that I might write a book about schools and scholars. The reader may call the thought a vain one if he likes, and yet I affirm that materials would not be wanted for a good book and a large one too; if only ability to use the materials were equal to its abundance, who will say but " Hugh Miller's Schools and School Masters," might be eclipsed? But the bare mention of that incomparable book puts me quite out of the conceit of attempting anything in the same direction. If not a book, why not a series of short papers for the Journal? They may do some very young teacher good, and show them that their trials are not so very singular as they had supposed. They might be partly descriptive, and partly narrative, and I might stop anywhere for an excursion into any of the fields which incidents in this experience might open to view. The difficulty will be, that if I stop to moralize by the way, my narrative may open out to a book, and my book to several volumes, and as experience is accumulating all the time, there may be actually no end at all. But, Mr. Editor, you can shut me off at any time, and so, if you agree to it, I will give you "My First School" next month. H. B. B.

NOTE. [We shall most gladly welcome to our pages the proposed articles, and doubt not that they will prove highly interesting and instructive. ED.]

ONE KIND OF FORGIVENESS.-We have heard, from a Sun day School teacher, lately, an illustration of one kind of forgiveness. Improving upon the day's lesson, the teacher asked the boy whether, in view of what he had beeu study. ing and repeating, he could forgive those who had wronged him. "Could you," said the teacher, "forgive a boy, for example, who had insulted, or struck you?" "Yes sir," replied the lad, very slowly, "I guess-I-could;" but he added, in a much more rapid manner, "I could if he was bigger than I am!"