London Normal School - Spectrum Yearbook (London, Ontario Canada)

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1 1 To The Graduate I WELCOME you, a new teacher, into a challenging and rewarding profession. The challenge is that of giving meaning and reality to our national traditions, and of imparting them to the youth of Ontario. In so doing you will help to develop a generation of citizens well prepared to take their places in a democratic society. As a beginner, you will find the profession rewarding to the extent that you realize that you are entering upon a career of learning as well as of teaching. Your education thus far has equipped you only to begin your career. To advance in your chosen work you must continue to grow intellectually and professionally. Next September you will be responsible for the instruction of a group of girls and boys in one of our elementary schools. May you approach the task with the vigour, the enthusiasm, and the fresh outlook of youth. F. S. RIVERS Superintendent of Professional Training. Page 5

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I N the Teachers ' Colleges of Ontario there are this year more than 3,000 men and women, most of whom will be teaching in the elementary schools of the Province, beginning September, 1956. Of course, there are some who have another year of instruction and practice-teaching ahead of them. You who are graduating from the London Teachers ' Colleges will have no difficulty whatever in obtaining good positions; you have been well-prepared for a teaching career; and to you I send on this occasion my most cordial good wishes for abundant success in your work. Speaking from a long experience in teaching and in administration, I can assert that three essential factors for success are these. First, every teacher must be prepared to work hard and to like it. Second, every teacher must take part as a full-fledged citizen in the community. Third, every teacher must get as much fun as possible out of teaching because good humour is essential to success. Very well do I realize that there are times when sternness and unbending firmness are necessary because discipline must be kept at all costs but those occasions are rather rare nowadays in most schools. Teaching is fun if the teacher commences by refusing to be annoyed by the various peculiar incidents that occur in almost any class. Rewards are better than punishments; in an elementary school marks or stars are prized rewards (unless times have changed since I taught) and are much more effective than those peculiar punishments known as keeping in or writing lines which are surely obsolete in these enlightened days. As you read the newspapers and the magazines today, you cannot fail to realize that there is far too much international bad feeling in the world ; and elsewhere you see evidence occasionally of selfish shrewdness and delinquency of many sorts. That peculiar word, frustration, is far too often heard today from dis- contented people who think they should have rewards for which they have not worked or who feel that the world is all wrong. Teachers, being good citizens, can do a great deal to promote good feeling in their communities; for example, there is no need for quarrels between teachers and trustees nor between teachers and parents. So, if you find, as I am sure you will, that teaching is fun, you can spread that same spirit of light-heartedness among your friends and associates wherever you go. This I hope you will do. Permit me, then, to extend to every one of you the very best of good wishes for a satisfying and rewarding career in the teaching profession. Page

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VoU remember St. Luke ' s story of the man sick of the palsy. The multitude had followed Jesus to Capernaum, where the crowd was so great that in the house where He was staying there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door. But there came four bearing one sick of the palsy, And when they could not come nigh unto Him because of the press, they uncovered the roof where He was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay. You know the rest of the tale: there was the one needing the Light, and there was the Light, and when the two were brought together, there was the transformation. What is strangely touching about the story is the anonymity of the four who brought their burden to the Master. How inventive and determined they must have been, how loyal to the one in their charge, to find a way through difficulties which would have daunted lesser men. Without them, the man who needed the Light so desperately would never have received it. And yet the chronicler did not see fit to record their names; the mists of history have closed over everything about them but their number. I am indebted to Dean M. Woodside for an application of this tale to your task and mine. It struck me so forcibly when I heard him give it to an audience of teachers that I have asked his permission to pass it on to you. Mr. Healy and I can think of no better parting words. We teachers play somewhat the same part as did those four nameless ones. We are simply the means of bringing together the Light and those who need the Light; only the intermediaries. Our task will take as much initiative, will often be just as discouraging, and will be guided by the same loyalty as was their task two thousand years ago. All the outward glory that most of us will earn will be a similar anonymity. Inwardly, we, like the four of Capernaum, will earn a glowing treasure. We shall know that without us the miracle would not have taken place. F. C. BIEHL J. B. HEALY Page 6