The Question-and-Answer Method The Teacher Who Opposed the Testing Program The Teacher Who Used University Methods The Teacher Is Stimulated to Organize Work on The Teacher Who Talked Too Much The Class That Used a Family Comb Disciplining a Gymnasium Class The Teacher Who Needed a Complete Overhauling 1. Lack of Control over Technique of Teaching 2. Lack of Ability to Maintain Order and Disci- 1. The Destructive Cynical Type 2. The Optimistic Impressionist . 3. The Constructive Coöperative Type Modus Discendi 1. The Disciplinary Method 3. The Purposing Method VISITING THE TEACHER AT WORK CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION "As is the teacher, so is the school," has become an educational maxim. Her personality, her vision, and her skill are, next to the child's own intelligence, the most powerful factors in the school organization conditioning educational progress. Any agency that makes for better vision, greater enthusiasm, and a clearer understanding in the teaching corps is contributing abundantly to the realization of the ends for which the school exists. The guidance of teachers to these higher levels of achievement is the task of the supervisor, whether he be called superintendent, principal, grade or departmental supervisor, or critic.) This splendid opportunity for aiding teachers to master more effective methods of teaching is often lost for the lack of an acceptable procedure for dealing with the delicate problems of human relationship involved in giving assistance. At the best, the task is performed with a modicum of skill. The purpose of this book is to make available to superintendents, principals, grade and departmental supervisors, and critics an abundance of concrete material dealing specifically with the problems of visiting and helping the teacher at work, in the hope that it may aid supervisors in setting up standards and applying them with greater success. In a recent investigation two hundred supervising principals, elementary supervisors, and superintendents were asked to state what, in their judgment, were the best means of obtaining improvement in classroom teaching.1 Closer supervision, according to this group, was the most important means. This supervision was more specifically defined as demonstration teaching, conferences with teachers, visitation and observation, visiting days, teachers' meetings, teacher participation in the solution of problems, use of tests and measurements, diagnosis of teacher failures and remedial measures, providing good working conditions, assignment of fewer subjects to teachers, development of the socialized recitation, stimulation of professional growth, provision for better equipment, helping the teacher to maintain order and attention, careful grading of pupils, development of friendly feeling between supervisor and teacher, and providing a condition of freedom for the teacher to carry out her own ideas. Such a list as this indicates the variety of contact possible between teacher and supervisor as well as the necessary scope of a text dealing with problems of supervision. The specific topics to be discussed in this book are: 1. How to study the work of the teacher: studying the teacher, analyzing recitations, getting the facts, etc. 2. Preteaching conferences: helping the teacher plan her work, lesson planning, etc. 3. Helping the teacher: procedures, illustrations, suggestions for the constructive criticism of teaching. 4. Visiting the classroom: a discussion of the many routine matters pertaining to classroom visitation, when to visit, how to prepare for visits, entering and leaving the room. 5. Case studies of teaching: stenographic reports of supervisory conferences, reports and analyses of specific teaching situations. 'Unpublished materials, Wisconsin Department of Public In struction. |