p. 167 | Co-Working by H. Clay Trumbull

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 12, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 11.

Co-Working.

By H. Clay Trumbull

THE scholars being attentive, and the teacher having found a way to make clear that which he would teach, the teaching-process now hinges on the co-work of scholar and teacher in the transfer of the needed knowledge from the teacher's mind to the scholar's mind; or, more properly, in the enabling of the scholar to obtain that knowledge for himself, under the teacher's guidance. And for this co-work, also, the teacher is responsible, as it is the teacher's method of securing the completion of the teacher's process that we are considering; and no teacher can do a teacher's work without the co-work of his scholars.

The first requisite to securing the co-work of your scholars, is to bring yourself down to their level. You probably are above their level to begin with. You ought to be so. But if you and they are to co-work to advantage, you and they must get together in some way. They are as yet unable to rise to your level. You ought to be able to stoop to theirs. This you can do without losing your own vantage-ground.

It is not always easy for a teacher to ascertain a scholar's level. That may itself require careful study. But there is no safe and sure progress in teaching until that knowledge has been gained. In a city mission school which I superintended some years ago, a teacher asked question after question of a new little scholar, without ever getting a satisfactory answer. The boy did not know who made him, or who was the first man, or who built the ark, or who was cast into the lions' den, or any other item of the elementary information which was then made the main subject of Sunday-school pursuit. At last the teacher asked, in despair, "Why, my boy, what do you know?" And the discouraged face brightened up, as the little fellow answered cheerily, "I know the head from the tail of a cent." Then for the first time the teacher knew what that boy's level was.

Brought up in the crowded streets along the river's bank, he had watched the older boys pitching pennies, and he was not a little proud to have already learned the difference between the "head" and the "tail" of a cent. And that was a good starting-point for a wise teacher who could come down to a scholar's level. It were easy then to take a penny, and show its two sides, and ask and talk about the difference. Then could come the story of Jesus finding a lesson on the "head" of a penny; and other Bible stories about a penny could follow, as a basis of further co-work in the teaching process. Finding a scholar's level in order to get down to it, is quite as important a matter to a teacher as any other result of his study. And when that level is found, it is the teacher's duty to make his starting-point there. That is the only hopeful spot on earth for him—as a teacher.

When you and your scholars are fairly on the same plane, you must see to it that they are familiarly at ease with you. It is not enough for a stranger to get down on the floor alongside of a little child. There will be shyness on the child's part until acquaintance is made with the new-comer, and until sympathy and confidence bring ease and familiarity on both sides. When these are secured, the child will be ready enough to do his share of the talking. Once get a child to feel free with you and he will talk with you as he would with his parents or his playmates. If you can get no word from a child in a class, the trouble is not with the child alone. It is in your relations with that child. There is still some obstacle between that child and yourself; some hindrance to his perfect freedom with you. That hindrance you must set yourself to discover and remove, if you would secure his co-work with you in the teaching process.

A good teacher had in her Sunday-school class one shy little child, who for a long time could never be drawn out to take any part in the lesson exercises. But one Sunday, as the teacher was speaking familiarly with her scholars, this little child broke out most unexpectedly with the announcement, "I went to the circus yesterday." The teacher wisely saw and improved her opportunity. Had she checked that child for that interruption, as she might have checked another scholar, the shy little one would have felt the rebuke, and have drawn herself back into her own timid self once more. "Did you?" asked the kind teacher, in evident and hearty appreciativeness. "And what did you see there?" Full of this new episode in her commonplace life, the interested child, at her ease all of a sudden, started off with the story of the sights she saw at the circus. Watching the play of the little one's mind, the teacher went alongside of the scholar until she had a fair hold of her sympathy and attention, and then she adroitly turned the scholar's mind onto a thought somewhat nearer the subject of the lesson for the day. That scholar, thus put at her ease with her teacher, never shut herself away from that teacher again.—H. Clay Trumbull.