Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 180

two Toylond: "You-ou-ou Can Never Return Again uteer milh body tbey intend to poke. "You see why I like Eric as a captain?" Mrs. Harper asks rhetorically. "It's because be knows bow to rest so nicely. Jeremy, I like the way you're resting todav a ee if you can rest as well as you did on Friday.

Friday was the best day you ever rested." A semblance of quiet settles over the sea of undulating little bodies. Heads bob up here and there, survey the scene, and then, finding Mrs. Harper's disapproving eye fixed upon them, subside again. She employs these few calm moments to prepare some brightly colored construction paper for a future lesson and to make entries in an official board of education record book. When she isn't teaching, she must devote hours to records for each of her 60 pupils.

"Jenny and Nancy, let's see those beads down over there, please." She maintains also a heavy correspondence with parents, the letters passing back and forth thru the good offices of the children. Sometimes notes are fastened to the children's clothes with safety pins, and sometimes they are carried, crumpled bound upward like released springs and return their rugs and blankets to the cupboard. It's 10:52, time for exercises. Once more they stand on the circumference of the circle while Mrs. Harper plays their exercise song and all sing together: "Heads, shoulders, knees, and toes, "Eyes and ears and mouth and nose." The children touch the appropriate parts of their bodies while they sing until, as Mrs.

Harper speeds up to an impossible tempo, they lose the rhythm and their small limbs flail in a blurred jungle of arms and legs. Ecstatic giggles. "An right, girls, sit down. Boys, get in your circle. Ankle walk now." Plunky-plunky-plunky, she plays at the piano.

The boys bend over, grab their ankles, and lumber about the room. "That's a pretty lopsided circle," she observes severely. In truth, it is no circle at alL The girls try it without any noticeable improvement More lessons. First comes a chart that says, "See the jacket, see the boots," but instead of the printed words "jacket" and "boots," the chart has pictures of these articles. "Which way do you read ft?" "Left to right," most of them say.

A few would prefer to think it over for a few minutes before committing themselves, and one pensive boy labors under the impression that these things are best read from right to left. Mrs. Harper cements the notion of reading in the proper direction and at the same time gets in some drill on the best sequence in which to don your clothes. These children have a great deal to learn before they graduate from college. She distributes a stack of printed material entitled "My Weekly Reader Surprise," and they bend to a study of its drawings and photographs, which requires much questioning and explanation.

"What is he doing?" "He's making a Santa Claus." "Can you find the first picture on the left? That's right, it's a Christmas tree. Do you see the needles?" "Hey, Mrs. Harper, you know what? My brother is a crossing guard, and if he sticks me with a needle, you know what? I'll pull a needle off the tree and stick him." "Wen, I never beard of using a Christmas tree for that I think the needles look best right on the tree. Now look at the next picture. They're not wearing any jackets.

Can you guess why?" "Because it's summer," a little girl guesses. "No, because it's a different kind of climate." New word. and soiled, in small pockets. Each absence from school must be explained by a parental note. And because Mrs.

Harper takes her pupils outside the school building to visit museums and fire stations, she must obtain signed permission for each child for each trip, which requires additional letter-writing and recordkeeping. "Jeremy, lie down." The routine and many of the techniques of teaching can be acquired in teacher training courses. Mrs. Harper, who comes from Dover, N. left the University of New Hampshire after three years to be married, but eight years later she finished her undergraduate work at Roosevelt university and went on to earn a master's degree.

She has a son of her own, now 13 years old, so she is acquainted with considerably more than the theory of child-rearing. "And I like the way Adam rests. He always rests so nicely." To help her in her task, Mrs. Harper has a classroom full of equipment: a sand table, painter's easels, fish tanks, a low sink, blocks, the piano, small-scale tables' and chairs, and a million beads and wax crayons. The walls are covered with instructive illustrations of the alphabet is for kitten, is for lamp" and "Healthy Ways" "Brush your teeth," "Wash your hands and face," "Care for your Most of one wall is occupied by a display entitled "Kindergarten, a World's Eye View," on which a long piece of red yarn leads the eye from a floor plan of the kindergarten to a picture of the school building, then to a map of the city, and finally thru a map of Illinois to one of the world.

"All right, just a few more minutes. Let's see everybody's head down." But ultimately neither teacher training courses nor sand tables will show Mrs. Harper bow to cram knowledge into the heads of her small charges. Only an agile mind, a rich imagination, love, and a sense of dedication will bring this minor miracle to pass. It would be fatuous to put a price tag on this kind of talent.

A teacher with Mrs. Harper's experience and academic achievements makes about $6,600 for 10 months' work, but bow much is a woman worth who introduces 60 young minds to the world of learning? And there are scores of teachers like her in the Chicago public school system. If a true value could be established for their services, no city could afford to pay iL Rest period ended, the children RK2 i 9 I NEW RESEARCH CONFIRMS CREAM OF RICE STILL THE MOST DIGESTIBLE TYPE OF CEREAL. A new research study confirms what we've been saying all along Cream of RICE is easier to digest than any other type of cereal. And now we also know it causes less stomach acid than any other type of cereal.

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