Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 December 1879 — Educational Department. [ARTICLE]

Educational Department.

The first teachers’ iastitnte of Hanging Grove township was held Dec. Sth, at Center school houseTeachers all present, and a goodly number of citizens. Organized with Mr. G. W. Johnson, President and Miss Lizzie Richardson, Secretary. The subjects were spiritedly discussed and the session as a whole, was interesting and instructive. Next one will be held at same place on the first Saturday in January, next. The State Teachers’ Association in Indianapolis on the 291 h inst. and will be in session three days. A good programme is announced and doubtless a very pleasant lime will he had. Teachers if you wish to take a holiday-vacation-trip, attend this meeting. It K will rest, brighten and instruct you. Rail roads leading to the city have made half-fare rates.

At a recent teachers’ institute a gentleman dilated on the importance of facial expression. The earth has a face; the sky has a face; every audience has a face of its own; history has a face from which events look down upon us. The face unmistakably reveals the character of the mind. A feeling long indulged in, a thought habitually entertained or constantly dwelt upon, leaves its imprint on the countenance. In this fact lurks a significant warning to teachers. By feeling sour they come to look sour. We speak of looking sour and feeling bitter, but: the fact is that the face exagerates the inward feeling, atd those who feel sour are sure to look bitter.

It is the duty of teachers to take care of their souls; it is no less a duty resting on them to take care of their faces. By indulging in bitter feelings they not only make their pupils unhappy but they also blight their own prospects in life. It is bad to spend the years of youth governing and instructing a perverse and thankless generation; it is bad enough to be crowded out at the end of those years without note of warning, or sympathy, or appreciation; it is bad enough to have the fact of your dismissal heralded to the world, so that opportunities of getting a place elsewhere may be reduced to the minimum; but the worst of all is to wear on your countenance documentary evidence, written upon tanned leather with a pen of iron and in letters of gall, that you have been a grumbling, peevish, petulant pedagogue.

Sympathy. A teacher had opened his school —it was a country school, and the children came thronging in. The usual effort was mode to arrange them into, classes, and soon order prevailed. It was Mr. Roberts’ second term; he thoroughly believed what he taught and practiced it too. He had just told the scholars that every one should be treated kindly and that no distinction should be made because of clothes, when the door opened and a tall, ragged, unprepossessing lad entered. Instantly the whole school began to laugh. Evidently he was the butt of the entire district. Mr. Roberts bade him welcome, and invited him to read. He found he was very ignorant and sadly neglected. A poor little testament was his only school-book. It took the lad but a short time to find out that the teacher was on his side. Said he “I thought I would come, for I saw you go by the other day, and calculated you would give me a lift. The boys and girls laugh at me, but I don’t mind that; but I can’t stand the stones so well.” “No one shall hurt you,” said the teacher. When he returned to his boarding place, and when good Mrs. Deacon Smith heard that the “big Kelley boy” had entered the school she laughed. “Why, Mr. Roberts, I wouldn’t have such a boy in school, the family is as ignorant as savages.— They live down by the creek, and they are a dreadful set.” “Young Kelly says the /boys throw stones at him.” ' “Well, I don’t wonder.” Years passed. The teacher was working in a large city, and saw a face that looked familiar. But be could not “place” the gentleman. His fine clothes, his elegant goldheaded cane, hu manly bearing were all strange. But it was no other than the pupil he had sympathized with and befriended; and it was that sympathy that had saved him.—N. Y. Journal.