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

Page 10 text:

This year of 1968 marks your graduation and mine from London Teachers ' College. You are a lot brighter than I. You did it in one year, and it took me twenty. These twenty years have been happy ones indeed for me. Throughout them there have been many changes of staff, but my colleagues here have been distinguished as loyal colleagues, hard workers, eager innovators of change, and above all patient and enthusiastic guides of young people into their own chosen field of teaching. Our present building, in whose design I had some small share, is one of the most comfortable and elegant centres for teaching in this province, and certainly our maintenance staff have kept it one of the best-kept of all homes for education. The ladies in the office have kept me at the dozens of things I should otherwise have forgotten, and have suffered with a smile my quirks, whims, and shifts of direction. But above all I shall miss the gay and lively and eager and attractive streams of young people with whom I have worked these twenty years -- in my opinion, admittedly a prejudiced one, the finest group of youngsters any man could wish to have in his school. So it is a real pang to say goodby to a job that for me has surely been as pleasant as it has been rewarding. Nevertheless as I have got older, the school has got bigger and problems about its future more demanding. Mow the time has come when for the sake of London Teachers ' College I think I should give over the helm to a younger and more vigorous pilot. At present I hope to take a year to recharge my batteries through books and far-away places, and then to return to my first love -- teaching English to people like you. So you are beginning to teach and I am hoping to return to teaching. What are the things that both of us should bear in mind? Foremost, that a teacher should know his stuff; but that stuff for a teacher is both the subject he teaches and the people whom he teaches. Really he cannot teach anything, but only help others to learn for themselves, in the way that fits each of them personally to learn. We must remember that gadgetry and methods are important things, but anything that is exciting because it is new becomes stale as it becomes familiar. One thing in teaching, however, never grows stale. And that is the enthusiasm a teacher has for what he teaches, and for the people whom he wants desperately to discover a way of learning for themselves. F.C. Biehl Principal

Page 9 text:

We come Graduates As Minister of Education, I am pleased to welcome the graduates of London Teachers ' College to the teaching profession in Ontario. In but a few months you will meet your own class and you will begin to exercise the teaching skills you have attained and use the academic knowledge you have acquired. The world which your students will face in their own future and for which you will help to prepare them will demand the very best that our youth can offer. It should go without saying that the same world will demand the best that our teaching staff can offer. It is my hope that you will never cease to grow intellectually and professionally as you serve in our schools and that you will take advantage of the many courses offered for practising teachers to upgrade your professional status. You carry with you as you begin your teaching the very best wishes of the staff of your College and the Department of Education. I hope your days as a teacher will be satisfying and rewarding and that you will be both dedicated to your task and enthusiastic about your career. Good fortune go along with you! 5

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There ' s no madness in methods! The know how or method is the mark of distinction between a truly professional teacher, and any well- educated layman with a good understanding of children. When you reflect upon the year you spent at Teachers ' College, perhaps you recall an almost maddening emphasis upon teaching methods. Not only were methods of teaching delt with during the intramural weeks, but also during your eight weeks of practice teaching. Methods lectured upon; methods discussed; methods written about; methods practised; methods critically analysed. Methods! Methods! Methods! Despite the emphasis upon methods we are only too well aware that you have acquired only a rudimentary knowledge of how children learn, and how teachers help them in the process. Now, your task as you begin your career is to polish the elementary teaching methods you have already acquired meanwhile being constantly on the alert for new and better ways of teaching. Reading, observing, discussing, experimenting and evaluating will be the guiding activities on your way to true professionalism. It goes without saying that a teacher must know the subject matter he is to teach and have a sound knowledge of how children learn; but it is the mastery of teaching methods that is the true distinguishing mark of the I would wish for you health, courage, and enthusiasm to meet the challenge of teaching. And I hope that even now you will have recognized a purpose in presenting you with a madness of methods. teacher. My best wishes go with you as you take your places in the most necessary and most challenging of professions. D. F. Harris Vice-Principal