Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1909 — Pay In Kindergarten Work [ARTICLE]

Pay In Kindergarten Work

Why la it that this line of work is so unreraunerative? It is something that calls for as much patience, If not more, than is expected of teachers in higher school grades, yet the salary is meagre and one must serve an apprenticeship to get even one of the worst paying positions. No one knows but those who have had children in their charge just what it takes to entertain them, and this first year in preliminary training, even though mere play days, is something that calls for love, patience, tact and a large percentage of education. It is a position deserving of a salary commensurate with duties performed. No difference where I have lived, I have always had a coterie of little friends, and through ttyeso little ones who have come my way I have studied the very depths of child nature, their likes and dislikes. until I never hesitate to speak of them or for them, and while I dearly love the little folks of my acquaintance whom I have gathered around me to amuse them with paper dolls, stories or make play houses, yet I have found it a task at times, therefore my appreciation of the teachers who take up the work for a living. One must dearly love children to understand them; a grown person must be a child at heart, sometimes, to bs one of them, and the fact that a kindergarten teacher is this. And even more. Is one strong reason why she should he paid a larger salary. It Is not an easy task to learn the rudiments of the work, and it is not everyone who ean perform the duties even then; and to those who can, give them more power and more money,