Montclair State College - La Campana Yearbook (Upper Montclair, NJ)

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CLARION, But wherever we found satisfaction for our social outlets we found something new to learn. And in spite of the fact that we had resolutely vowed never to become school-teachers, inside we knew that learning how to act or write or build would help to make us the better teachers we really wanted to become. By the end of the year we began to survey ourselves in a more objective light. We began to think seriously of the future and of ideals and the real Truth. Vacation is always welcome because it is a break in the long winter of routine; but we were anxious to get back, to get to work again. THE YEAR OF PREPARATION As juniors registration day has little novelty to it. Greeting friends and professors, quickly filling schedule cards, and it ' s over. With the junior year there came a certain poise, the ability to get things done — and quickly. True, we entered into the first week ' s fun, but juniors have become adults, and while we protected the freshmen when the path got too thorny it was with a certain patronizing smile. The junior year was the year of preparation. The major field no longer loomed all-import- ant. There was a minor and second minor. Interests became more diversified and less narrow. Back- ground and educational courses became important and worthwhile. As juniors we could see the rea- son behind Dr. Sperle ' s discussions on class routine and discipline. It was along about the middle of the junior year that the terrifying fear of being caught unprepared for practice-teaching came. There was a flurry of activity and busyness. College life became more and more complicated, and we were caught in a web of endless assignments and new responsiblities. At this stage in our training it had become fashionable to stoutly declare we would have none of the teaching profession. But under- neath the outward cynicism we felt an impatience and an eagerness to try our hand at it. The junior year flew. It was over so quickly we scarcely realized the time was spent cramming a thousand activities into every shallow twenty- four hours. But there we were, seniors, safely de- livered, after an exciting and world-staggering sum- mer. College and war had always been synonymous for us, but now we were in school and the war was over. The whole aspect of our social attitude • 28

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mer ' s class room savoir faire and World Lit where the ancient Creek plays became part of the daily grind. Underneath the outward pressures which made us despair of all that homework we were becoming new people. The laughter, the fun was still there, but a new seriousness of purpose had instilled itself. There were three more years to go before we became teachers. There were military exercises with Miss Duke in the gym, and daily sessions talking art with Dr. Cayley in the amphitheatre. The narrow horizon of two hundred ex-high school seniors was begin- ning to widen ever so little. There are a thousand things to recall about the freshman year: brisk campus walks, the first cig- arette, term papers, the frankness of long talks about Life; but these were little things. Bigger things were shaking the world, and we began to feel the reverberations . . . there was the War. Men came and went, but gradually they mostly went ; until Montclair became completely fem- inine in its outlook. Social life began to limit itself to the Clairmont on Friday night and a special de- livery letter on Monday. But we began to realize the fact that the freshman year was the most event- ful, the most important. We were brought in con- tact with a whole new world. We had already become a part of the teaching profession. Every moment of our school life, every class, every hour whiled away in conversation was poured into the mold of our personality . . . the kind of teacher we would be. THE SECOND YEAR September brought us back as sophomores, blase and wise. We knew our way around, and for once there were people who knew less than we — the freshmen. And like all good sophomores we made their life miserable. The flurry of registration, the changed courses, little conferences with the Dean, and we soon settle down to a rather placid existence occasionally in- terrupted by oral reports in Speech class or heated arguments over Contemporary Political Life. The areas of education — professional, background, and major became intensified. We began to delve into new fields in quest of a minor. Learning became more important, and the more we learned the more vital education and teaching became for us. Freshman reticence banished, we flung our- selves with enthusiasm into all phases of extra- curricular activities. For some students this meant work as an apprentice in PLAYERS, carrying scen- ery, holding props, watching others act. For others this meant writing for QUARTERLY or the MONT- 27 •

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BBB geg . changed. We were impatient, straining at the reins of another year, eager for change. And as the first half of the senior year plays a prologue to the second, it went as quickly. A few months spent in methods course, the culmination of four years in the developing of an individual philosophy of education, practice-teaching assignments, and the semester was gone. Practice-Teaching. Each senior bid his classmates goodbye and went to try his fledgling wings at the real thing. It is difficult to say what each senior expe- riences as a practice-teacher. Each situation is different, and the student teacher must learn to cope with these many-faceted sides of secondary school life. The ten weeks of practice teaching stand out as the culmination of all four years of professional training. When the period of teaching was over the seniors returned to pick up the threads of per- sonal education again. Practicum became a sym- posium hour for the talking over of experiences, trials, and tribulations in the teacher ' s life. But time ran short towards the end of the years and the last week of frivolity and carefree fun was upon us: Senior Week. Each minute was cram- med with busy, all-absorbing social activity of Sen- ior Assembly, the President ' s Reception, and the Senior Banquet. If receiving our diplomas seemed an anti-climax, and if we were a little tired from the Formal Ball activities of the night before gradu- ation, don ' t judge us too harshly. The little white scrap of paper really meant a great deal to us. It was the symbol of all for which we had worked and studied. It was a record of one fifth of our lives. We could never treat it lightly. And so they are over. The college years. One hundred and thirty teachers are foisted on the world to give new vigor and new strength to the profes- sion. But the school does not stop with us — it goes on. The classrooms still ring with sturdy discussions, the professors lecture on, the labs are filled with students bent over microscopes. Ail year through, season after season, day after day, Montclair goes on — preparing the best all-round teachers a school can produce.