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

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Frown The Clergy On behalf of the Clergy and Ministers who give courses in Religious Guid- ance at the London Teachers ' College, I am happy to offer a word of congra- tulation and good wishes as you go out into your chosen work. Teaching is a great vocation calling forth every gift and ability which man has. To teachers are committed the young folk of our communities to be fe d with the rich food of our culture and tradition and yet to be led in such a way that they are free to develop their own unique aptitudes and to make their own particular contributions to our corporate life. Few other fields are so rewarding and yet so exacting. May you learn to depend not only upon professional skills but as well upon the continuirg resourses which God gives. May He keep you humble, brave, loving and patient that in educating your pupils you may not cease to grow towards the maturity which God intends for each one of us. F. A. Peake, Director of Religious Education, Diocese of Huron. THE FOLLOWING CLERGYMEN KINDLY INSTRUCTED US IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION: Rev. Maurice Farr Rev. A. E. Ongley Rev. Francis Peake Rev. F. T. Darnell Rev. F. A. Jewell Rev. John Farr Rev. C. J. Killinger Rev. G. A. Gordier Rev. John Fleck Rev. J. O FIaherty Rev. G. Zimney Rev. J. L. Doyle Rev. Ralph Barker Rev. E. A. Currey Rev. G. E. Rousom Rev. R. B. Cumming Rev. A. E. Duffield Rev. R. H. McColl Rev. John Stinson

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Aims MESSAGE TO THE GRADUATING CLASS OF 1960 You ore leaving us now, after one or two years with us during which my colleagues and I have tried to discover with you the nature of our common craft. At a time like this I search for something which will compress all that we have learned together about the work that lies ahead This year I am turning to a very old friend whom I have been visiting during the past winter , although he is dead these six hundred years. In spite of his age, I have found him just as shrewd and wry, just as rollicking and just as grave, and in so many ways just as modern- minded, as when I first met him in my own student days. That friend is Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of the Canterbury Tales. In these tales Chaucer gathered together a band of pilgrims who plodded their way to Canterbury through a Kentish springtime. Each pilgrim had his portrait sketched, in colours as fresh to-day as when they were first painted; and each pilgrim in turn told his own story, stories which ran all the way from the sanctified to the scandalous. Like the characters of two or three other great literary creators, these pilgrims seem to have a life more real than many real folk whom we meet to-day; among them is a poor scholar from Oxford. Of him Chaucer writes: It is this line which I should like to leave with you, as an eight-word course in teaching. Here are the two things which in themselves will make a great teacher; and without which all the other dozens of things which we have talked of this year will be of little avail. First comes your own appetite for knowledge. You must store the cupboard from which you set the table, so that those who come there to eat will be nourished abundantly and richly. In restaurant circles, I understand that one sign of a true chef is that he is literally a well-rounded individual; to create good food he must himself enjoy good food Isn ' t it the same with the food of knowledge in which you and I deal? The other lesson for us is twice-repeated in Chaucer ' s eight words. All the teachers whom you have admired have have a double zest--zest for learning, and zest for imparting what they have learned. As you come to e joy teaching yourself, so will your pupils come to enjoy learning from you. In fact, you have already discovered the other side of this picture: that none among your pupils will be more interested in what you have to teach than you yourself appear to be. So I wish you joy both in learninq and in teaching: first, because I hope you will be happy in your work; and second, because when vou are happy in your work your pupils will catch your own love for learninq. I can wish you, then, nothing better for your success as well as your hap- piness than that it be said of you, as Chaucer said it of the Clerk of Oxford: And gladly would he learn and gladly teach. F. C. Biehl 5

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Introduction