Discovering Individual Differences (1953)

[Music] la [Music] this is Janet Peterson new student teacher she's been with this fifth grade class for just a few days it's a Friday afternoon the end of another school week several weeks after that first day when Miss Smith the regular teacher greeted the children for the first time since the first of the school year Miss Smith has come to know each of her children as an individual this has resulted not only in a relaxed and friendly classroom atmosphere but also in more effective [Music] teaching Robert friendly and sociable ru much more cheerful [Music] now and Mark right and alert Elizabeth wants to stay and help after school Miss Smith thanks her but explains there's nothing to help with this [Music] afternoon John still unresponsive and [Music] withdrawn let's sit down shall we how do you do it how do I do what how do you get to know the children so well which child well all right how did you find out about Robert Begin by using your eyes and ears you see him for instance in the reading Circle struggling with material that others read [Music] easily of all the readers Robert is one of the [Music] poorest before the class begins when no one expects to be watched you watch you find a few of the children isolated a few more talking in peirs and then a cluster of the really popular children and it is here that you discover Robert Robert is popular with his peers and this is something you look through Robert's cumulative record file Health normal grade level achievement in Reading very low all his academic performance low as you had observed in class his educational age is low but then so is his IQ as you might [Music] expect Robert plays games well physically in with his hands Robert shows up better than he does in more formal aspects of school work you remember another child's remark that Robert is good with tools academic tests never reveal a complete picture of the child's potentialities Robert with his limited powers of intellectual achievement nevertheless has much to contribute to a unit on Transportation you see the confidence and pleasure of a young Craftsman Robert is not a mechanical genius but he can work better with concrete materials than with symbols here is our pattern and we build on [Music] strength and Ruth how did you approach Ruth Ruth well first of all you look at Ruth as you you would look at any human being and your eyes tell you quite a good deal her clothes faded and worn looking her pale face the eyes with their apathetic look her listlessness and then you find things out from other [Music] teachers you pull information with these teachers you compare notes on brothers and sisters from the same family on the same child whom other teachers have had before you know Root's mother is dead but you know little else about her family you discover that Mrs Ellingwood who had Ruth last year has visited Ruth's home she describes the poor neighborhood and the rundown condition of the little house where Ruth lives with her father and baby [Music] brother she discovered that Ruth had entire responsibility for running the household and caring for her baby brother after school hours you look up the records on rot you find that her IQ is normal but her academic progress considerably below that of other PES with comparable intelligence after noting her poor attendance in previous years you check the health records and find indications of illness and frail physical health so you make a date to visit the school nurse to consult with her about [Music] Ruth with a cooperation of the nurse you arranged through the PTA for Ruth to receive a healthful meal at noon time in the school [Music] cafeteria and then you do something else which is a kind of observation but under controlled conditions you keep roof after school a couple of minutes one day on some [Music] pretext you dig into your desk drawer and pull out a hair ribbon you tell her that you just found the ribbon last night and you thought of her that it would go nicely with her [Music] complexion you tell her how pretty she looks and then know that by using your eyes and your head and your heart together you've begun to get somewhere with this child you know that she knows that she has a friend and that's the beginning for room tell me about Mark Mark you remember in a arithmetic test you gave to class not so very long ago everyone settled down and it seemed that they had just gotten well into it why Mark that's very flat ing may I have it I'd like to add this to my collection and now young man I assume you're finished with your arithmetic paper may I please have it thank you and you discover that your assumption was correct Mark is finished and without an error right there was the nub of your trouble with Mark he was seven jumps ahead of the rest of the class and sometimes a jump or two ahead of his team teaching all his classwork is Flawless with a quality of ease about it which is amazing you have consulted the records on Mark but they only confirm what you have gathered without them you look at Mark as you have looked at Robert and Ruth and you see that Mark is a very popular child so popular in fact that his influence over others is not always desirable something happened a couple of weeks ago which brought this out you had noted it down in the behavior [Music] Journal Jerry who is quite shy and withdrawn as a rule offered a suggestion on something which a committee was considering Mark rudely brushed off Jerry's suggestion it wasn't too practical an idea as you happen to overhear it but Jerry deserved better treatment you could see the effect on Jerry and so there was only one thing to do enter up Mark and check his [Music] rudess you do what you can to get a fair hearing for Jerry's suggestion then you resolve to speak to Mark privately at the first opportunity [Music] afterward Mark at begun to use his social status and his unusual intelligence in a way that harmed another child without his realizing [Music] it the arithmetic test had been typical also he had finished so far ahead of the others that he had had time to bother and distract them you made an appointment to talk with his mother and father you had to reassure them that you had not come because Mar Mark was doing poorly or because he had been bad you explain the problems of creating a challenge for Mark school was too easy for him you showed them samples of his written work especially in arithmetic he could do school work now at an eighth grade [Music] level Mark you explain was an unusually gifted and intelligent boy if you could not challenge him there was no end to the amount of Mischief in which he could involve himself your continual problem was to keep him occupied and interested but you talked his parents out of the idea that Mark should skip a grade that would create more problems than it would solve and at any grade the problem would remain essentially the same things had to be found which challenged [Music] Mark Mark's father who was an engineer told you about Mark's interest and activity in photography together they had built a dark room and together they had learned the many steps involved in making a photograph each picture was theirs the product of a joint project he also told you that recently he and Mark had started building a telescope this had aroused in the boy a considerable interest in astronomy you grabbed at this information the astronomy particularly you explained would meet a need of the moment in connection with social studies the children were studying the exploration of the new world which in turn was arousing an interest in ships and navigation the idea of navigation was proving too difficult for most of the children but Mark understood it and could make a real contribution and this was a way of enriching Mark's progress thing that would have to be done on many occasions it had been a pleasant and successful talk because the basic ingredients were all there a good home intelligent and sensitive parents and a child with a tremendous capacity through cooperation and teamwork we had found a promising approach oh poor Elizabeth she brought her rubbers this morning and now she's forgotten them tell me about Elizabeth you remember today how downcast she was when I told her she couldn't stay in help for one afternoon in the beginning of the year I made up my mind I was going to pierce that solemn resentfulness of hers I had made no Headway with a child and so on this particular afternoon I made up an excuse and asked her to stay to help me with something and and it worked little by little you got her to talk to you and you began to understand just a bit of why Elizabeth behaved the way she did Elizabeth volunteered several times afterward to stay in help perhaps it was not so much that you had succeeded with her as that Elizabeth had found an excuse for not going home but now when you looked at Elizabeth the same way you have looked at Robert and Ruth and Mark you get a feeling of why there was the sourness the hostility and the isolation there was one day that Elizabeth did not make a very good Committee [Music] Member anger with sudden explosiveness you could see no reason at first why she did it then you remembered that that morning Elizabeth had told you that her parents had been fighting you'll take that dress back tomorrow I will not that money was for the ramp you stole it like a common Thief how dare you talk to me like that tell it to the lame boy [Applause] a teacher is limited in dealing with such influences Upon a Child Miss Harper I'd like to speak to you about Elizabeth how about the day after tomorrow oh no I'm terribly sorry I have an appointment the hairdressers all afternoon well would the day after that be possible it's really very important my dear I'm so busy some friends are coming to my house and I invited them so long ago has Elizabeth been bad oh no it isn't as simple as that why don't you name a time next week anytime after school in the afternoon or in the evening well really if it is that Elizabeth has been a bad girl I don't see why you can't tell me what it is now I'm afraid we couldn't discuss it adequately over the phone oh there's someone at the door you'll excuse me why don't you call me some other time Miss Smith I must go now very [Music] well you had tried to see her mother before it was no use you decided that this problem was too complicated to handle alone and that you needed special help and advice now tell me about John you remembered when you saw John that first day of school he was so small you thought he had wandered into the wrong room oh he's in the class that's John Cooper of all the children Little John is one of the biggest problems there was always the feeling of something missing from the pieces of the [Music] puzzle you look at John as you have looked at the others and you feel his isolation from his [Music] classmates he has as much difficulty with school as Robert but the differences between the two boys are striking in athletics and physical activity for instance records they were interesting and revealing educational age is low as Roberts but significantly his IQ is not a low one and then something written into John's health record not by the school doctor or the nurse but the dentist markedly a dentition what did all these things [Music] mean further Clues emerged as you talked with other teachers when he first came to kindergarten his mother had to take him home again after a short time it had been decided he wasn't ready yet for kindergarten his first grade teacher remembered finding him away from his fellow first graders playing with kindergarten children certainly not typical behavior only yesterday you had gone to a staff conference you you had requested it the principal Mr Jones presided it was devoted exclusively to the problem of [Music] John each of us had his say with varying guesses and insight and finally after everyone else had a turn Miss Black the school psychologist began to put all the pieces together to make a pattern which made sense as I see John his tiny size the development of his teeth his not being ready for kindergarten his playing with younger children the isolation from his classmates his consistently poor work all through his school career and his IQ higher than that schoolwork would lead you to expect all points to just one conclusion John is growing more slowly than other children of his age I'm sure that must be it but now what do we do about it how do we proceed with John unfortunately in the public school system of today there is no provision for the slowly developing slowly Growing Child such as we have in John this is not to say that they cannot be such a solution or that we ought not strive hard to find one in a way John and other children like him are a test for everything we believe in everything we are trying to do for meeting the needs of the child is the goal of Education certainly it is no answer to put him back a greater to he is 10 years old now chronologically and good or bad that is the way we group our children in our classrooms on the basis of chronological age he has enough to cope with emotionally without the added burden of such obvious [Music] failure could we go over all of it briefly so I can be sure to get it all down certainly first there is observation a teacher must use her eyes and [Music] ears [Music] and then controlled observation with the teacher's head and heart suggest something to her and she tries it and learns more about the child her needs and characteristics the records on all of the children you find out what their IQs are their educational ages other teachers notes and [Music] observations you check their health [Music] records the behavior Journal a valuable Aid in revealing to a teacher the pattern of a child's behavior from the bits and pieces of her isolated observations you share information with other teachers compare notes on brothers and sisters in the same family discuss the same child when the other teacher has had the child [Music] previously you try to arrange interviews with parents this is not always possible but you try when a parent interview is [Music] indicated when they are successful parent interviews can provide the basis for the sort of teamwork sometimes necessary and always helpful in dealing with the problems of [Music] children you arrange for a staff conference with a particularly difficult problem so that several Minds can go to work on [Music] it maybe you could say that you could summarize all of the techniques by describing them as extensions of the teacher sense perceptions plus a mixture of Good Sense I'd say that that was a fair [Music] summary we have seen a number of useful techniques which were used to learn more about children in the end we must admit that the experience and resourcefulness of a good teacher cannot always be conveyed in a book or a film there are no Pat answers no fixed ways for a teacher to learn about and work with her children nor is there any substitute for fundamental knowledge sensitivity and [Music] intelligence