Chapter 14. Classroom troubles

(…) Another problem which Anna found a difficult one to solve, was the management of her classwork as opposed to everyday teaching and discipline.

Preparing lessons was a fairly straightforward business undertaken in the evenings, in the comparative peace of Mrs Flynn's establishment, and with the help of reference books, maps, pictures, and so on. Catching and holding her class's attention was becoming easier as the months passed and Anna's authority was recognized by the children and her own self-confidence grew. But there were difficulties in organizing the children's work which Anna had heard nothing of at college.

Apart from the impossibly large number in the classroom which was the arch-problem, there was the difference in speed at which children worked. Poor Anna found that she would spend most of her precious dinner hour in putting out paper and crayons for an afternoon's art lesson, would spend ten minutes or more explaining carefully that they were going to attempt to design wallpaper pattern, would show them how to fold their paper and perhaps give a few simple examples to start the more inartistic members of the class, and would then relax in the hope that the rest of the lesson stretching ahead for another forty minutes, would be happily and usefully filled with artistic endeavour.

Alas for such fond hopes! Within five minutes two or three slapdash individuals would have scrawled а motif in each square, coloured it in with a frantic crayon and rushed to Anna for approval.

"Finished!" they would say proudly, sniffing cheerfully. "Can we draw on the back?"

At first Anna would protest. The pattern was too sketchy, it was carelessly done, they must go back and improve it. And they were not to hurry. There would be no prizes, Anna paid firmly, for the people who finished first.

Sometimes this worked, but with the one or two incorri­gibly lazy it became simpler to let them turn over and expend I what little energy and talent they had in drawing cowboys and Indians, ponies, ballet dancers, or simply a mammoth Union Jack in variegated colours — this last a firm favourite with the really backward members of the class.

At the other extreme, of course, would be the painstaking perfectionists who rubbed out as fast as they drew and attempted designs of such intricacy and flamboyancy that only half the work was completed when the bell rang for playtime. Then there would be a great outcry for more time to finish.

"Can't we do them after play?"

"Can't we crayon while you read us The Heroes?"

"Can we take them home to finish them?"

"Oh, miss! Please, miss! Oh, miss, do let's!"

It was a basic problem of class management which could only be mitigated, and never completely overcome.

Anna's severest shock, in this connection, came one day when she decided to look through her class's work-books. Each child had one of three large paper-covered books containing English exercises, lists of spellings, general know­ledge, diagrams and pictures. The work was largely self-corrective and the advantage of the scheme was the fact that each child could work steadily at its own pace.

"Their work-books," Miss Enderby had said casually to Anna, "need not be taken for correction very often. Their ordinary exercise books for arithmetic, English, nature, history, and so on, must be carefully corrected after each piece of work, and the corrections checked too."

Anna had felt thankful that at least one of the books in each of the forty-eight desks could be left to look after itself for a week or two, and she was only too delighted to see the children busily working away, at odd times; in these books which they much enjoyed using.

The results, she found, on looking them through were dis­astrous. There seemed to have been a great competition going on to see how many pages could be filled up in the shortest time. Scrawls, illegible scribbles, and sometimes hasty dashes where the answer was not even attempted disfigured the pages and — worse still — the work-books signed to give useful instruction for about a term, were filled in a matter of a fortnight.

These difficulties she overcame to some extent by using odd sheets of paper made into simple one-section books one handwork lesson by her class. These they called their "busy books", and when the covers had been thus lovingly inscribed and then decorated, they were encouraged to spend the odd minutes, in which they might be waiting, in writing down useful lists, copying in short poems which they liked, items of news, or simply drawing pictures. It gave an outlet to their inventiveness and the more expensive work-books resumed their proper function.

All this took time to learn. It was experience bitterly bought, Anna found, at the cost of her own nervous energy and anxiety. Would any of these difficulties matter so much with a class of half the size, she sometimes wondered? Did Miss Anderson, at the village school at home, face quite such problems? In comparison, Anna thought, remembering her visit just after Christmas, it seemed like the land of the lotus-eaters.

An incident occurred one day which made Anna realize that size of class was indeed only comparative. Miss Enderby had opened her door one morning and in had filed a dozen or so beaming children, each clutching a chair, a pencil, several books, and other odds and ends.

"Do you mind having a few extra for today, dear?" asked Miss Enderby. Anna felt rightly that this question needed no answer and tried to look welcoming. It was at times like this that she thought enviously of the old-fashioned double desks in the village school where two small bodies could slide obligingly to one end of the bench to make room for a third without the encumbrance of extra chairs in the classroom.

The newcomers ranged themselves as neatly as they could in the little space available and held excited conversations with their friends in Anna's class who welcomed this diversion from normal routine.

"It's Mr. Drew's class, dear," said Miss Enderby. "I'm having to divide them between four of you as I've a committee meeting at the Town Hall unfortunately. Otherwise of course, I could take them over myself."

"Is he ill?" asked Anna in surprise. She had spent the evening before with him and he had seemed in his usual robust health then.

"His father has been taken ill. A telegram arrived this morning. A stroke, I gather, poor fellow. Mr. Drew has gone straight off. It's most worrying for him."

Poor Tom, thought Anna, it certainly, would be a shock. She only hoped that things would not be as bad when he arrived as he would be imagining them on his long journey.

But her sympathy for Tom had to be put aside under the pressure of immediate circumstances. To keep over sixty children happily occupied in a confined space is not easy, especially when there are not enough desks to allow pencils and papers to be used. They read, but those with no desks had their books at uncomfortable angles and soon fell to fidgeting. They sang, they took it in turns to recite poems and to tell stories. Anna read fairy-tales to them until her throat ached. At last she could bear the oppressive mass of children no longer and throwing the timetable to the winds she escorted her mammoth class into the playground.

It was wonderful to feel the wind oil her face after the stuffy classroom. The children were unwontedly excited and rushed madly about, obeying the blasts of Anna's whis­tle far from promptly. How much more difficult it was to manage sixty-odd than forty-eight, thought poor Anna.

SECTION III - AT THE LESSON

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 841