University of Wisconsin Oshkosh - Quiver Yearbook (Oshkosh, WI)

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MISS ALFARKTTA HASKELL. Miss Haskell has lx en connected with the Oshkosh Normal School, cither as student or teacher, from the first year of its establishment. She graduated from the elementary course in 1875, a member of the first class graduated from that course. She afterwards took a course for the training of kindergartners in the St. Louis training school, at that time under the able supervision of Susan K. Blow. She taught for several years in Menomonie and Sheboygan, and later as critic teacher in the Winona. Minnesota. Normal School. In 1883. she was invited to take charge of the primary department of the Oshkosh Normal School, and from that time until the present, with an interim of but four years, her own school has lx en the fortunate school of her labor and the object of her untiring and devoted service. She was a woman of great energy, high ideals, unusual industry, and varied aptitude. Whatever she did, she did well. It was l oth her disposition and her delight to see every matter for which she was responsible done in the liest manner and finished in every detail. She jjossessed. in a marked degree, the housekeeping instinct, and so her school room was always bright, orderly, and rejxiseful. like a well-ordered, well-kept house. She had great natural jxnver of control and ability to inspire children with a sense of resjxmsibility, and to secure from them dignity of demeanor and real scholarly effort. She had the faculty of establishing pupils in right habits, and of teaching them self-control and self-direction. As a teacher of subject-matter she had few equals. Her instruction was always clear, attractive, stimulating, and of permanent impression. In method she was rapid, deft, and worked with the sure hand and effectiveness of the artist. Her teaching was never slow, never dull, never clumsy. She had the jx wer and the charm to take a group of children to whom she was an entire stranger, and in a few moments fix their attention upon a piece of subject-matter. set them thinking toward some definite end. and reciting with natural ease and evident satisfaction. All this may lx summed up in the statement that she was one of the most skillful of primary teachers. She lived with and for the children and loved so to live. She was a daughter of the most devoted character: besides her school duties, she took the most patient, faithful, and loving care of an aged father and mother for many years. She was a woman of marked executive ability, of courage, and of power to lx ar her part without flinching or complaining. She met the world with'a cheerful face, and found no fault with the demands life had laid upon her. She died with the same quiet courage with which she had lived, and uttered no complaint as to the time or way. She has left behind her not only schoolroom lessons well taught and well learned, but lessons of life, a record of virtues that we all may admire and emulate. These words as a testimony to her worth and a tribute to her memory, from one who knew her long and well. 19

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A iss Alfarctla Haskell 18

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Eloisc Bell Irving King Elizabeth Stevens Livingstone L. Summers Grace L. Shepardson Walter F. Coolidge 20