3.3.5.3 Optimism

It is as natural to expect a plant to develop when covered with a blanket as it is to expect a class to be full of activity and responsiveness under an influence of unnatural solemnity.

Lincoln is quoted as having declared, “You can catch more flies with a drop of honey than with a gallon of vinegar”—a homely expression, but full of suggestion. A grouch is no magnet.

A little girl when questioned why she liked her Sunday School teacher said, “Oh, she always smiles at me and says, hello.” There is contagion in the cheeriness of a smile that cannot be resisted.

Children live so naturally in an atmosphere of happiness and fun that teachers of religious instruction may well guard against making their work too formally sober.

Frequently teachers feel the seriousness of their undertaking so keenly that they worry or discipline themselves into a state of pedagogical unnaturalness. There is very great force behind the comment of the student who appreciated the teacher who could be human.

The experience is told of a teacher who continued to have difficulty with one of her pupils. He so persisted in violating regulations that he was kept in after school regularly, and yet after school hours he was one of the most helpful lads in the school; in fact, he and the teacher seemed almost chummy.

Struck by the difference in his attitude, the teacher remarked to him one afternoon, as he went about cleaning the blackboard, “Jimmie, I have just been wondering about you. You’re one of my best workers after school—I can’t understand how you can be so different during school hours and after.”

“Gee, that’s funny,” put in Jimmie, “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

To be cheerful without being easy is a real art. Liberty is so often converted into license, and a spirit of fun so easily transformed into mischief and disorder. And yet cheerfulness is the great key to the human heart.

An attitude of looking for the good in pupils will lead to a response of friendliness on their part which is the basis of all teaching.

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