The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living/Chapter 15
The girl who must become a wage earner "at once" should not look to kindergartening as her field of school work. It is perhaps the most subtle branch of pedagogies. Its principles must be absorbed slowly. They cannot be swallowed at a gulp, as the average American girl tries to acquire her preparation in many fields of moneymaking.
Kindergartening is a philosophy. Its founder, Froebel, built his methods upon the philosophy of right living and individuality in childlife. The girl who hopes to become a successful kindergartner must first build her own character according to that philosophy. It is not enough to love children, though this love is an important stone in your foundation for the work. You must be versed in the psychology of childhood. You cannot "cram" during kindergarten preparation. Neither can you make up deficiencies in your early education. You will require all your physical and mental powers to master the new ideas presented in the training-school for kindergartners. You may enter a shop as a clerk and tread the pathway to financial success by way of experience and your early mistakes, but you cannot correct mistakes in the kindergarten.
A business college may grant you a diploma and send you out to plague future employers because you learned to form the pot-hooks of stenography before you had thoroughly mastered your spelling-book, but you cannot enter a training-school for kindergartners without passing preliminary examinations which will test severely your qualifications in high-school branches.
This introductory preachment is offered because I want to play fair at the beginning. The high-school girl who must make money immediately on graduation is wasting her time in building kindergarten plans and air-castles. The woman who has been a home maker and out of the school atmosphere for years cannot read a few books on kindergartening, buy a few games and open a kindergarten in a few weeks. But to the girl who is considering the matter seriously, who has time and money to take a thorough course in the work, kindergartening opens a field of self-support worth cultivating. The ambitious, business-like kindergartner does not to have to remain on salary—she can have a school of her own.
First, what are the requirements for admission to a recognized training-school for kindergartners?
A high-school education or its equivalent at a private institution.
Second, what is required of an applicant for a position in the public kindergartens of large cities?
A two-year course at some representative training-school for kindergartners.
The would-be kindergartner must have a knowledge of music; both instrumental and vocal are desirable. She must have at her finger-tips a practical knowledge of botany, art, geography, mathematics and general literature. She must be of good character, even-tempered and self-controlled, neat in appearance, amendable to the red tape and the regulations of public-school systems, and she must possess above all things that indescribable gift, the power to attract, often called personal magnetism, and to inspire confidence in children.
The hysterical girl will never succeed as a kindergartner. The untidy girl has no place in this wonderful garden of children. The girl who looks beyond the month's work to salary day, and this to the exclusion of everything else, will not last in the kindergarten field.
Many girls have written to me that they understand that a college degree is necessary to secure a position in a first-class school. This depends entirely upon your interpretation of the term "first class." If you mean the public kindergartens (and there are no better fields of effort, no schools that pay better salaries in the long run), then the statement is incorrect. Principals of fashionable private schools demand a college degree from every applicant for a position, and in the public schools, if you desire to rise to the rank of supervisor or teacher in a training-school for teachers, the degree is essential. On the other hand, a girl is entirely safe in taking merely her two years of work at a representative training-school for kindergartners; and then, after she has established herself successfully as a teacher and has saved funds from her salary, she may take the special college course which will fit her for the post of training-school teacher or supervisor.
Now for the girl in a large city who is ambitious to become a kindergartner.
Investigate first the possibilities of the public-school system in your own town. There may be attached to your own normal school a kindergarten course. At the training-schgol for teachers in New York City, and in connection with the Girls' Normal School in Philadelphia, for instance there are kindergarten classes. Here a girl may quickly discover whether she is fitted for the work. If there is no kindergarten training-school in your town, you can at least secure your preliminary high-school training there. Do not imagine that you can take a home-study course in the high-school branches, "cram" relentlessly, and then pass your preliminaries. In rare cases a girl might accomplish this feat, but it is safer to complete your high-school course in the usual way.
If the local board of education offers you nothing in kindergarten training, thenstudy the various fields carefully before you decide upon a training-school away from home. If possible, select a school which is heavily endowed or connected with some established university or college. The small, private training-school holds certain dangers for you. In the first place, its work may not fit you for the examination for positions in the public-school kindergartens, and in the second the small kindergarten training-school needs your money more than does the endowed institution, and its principal may not be entirely honest with you regarding your suitability for the work. By this I mean that at certain established institutions or training-schools your work from the very start is watched very carefully, and if you show that you are eminently unsuited to the work and the money which you would spend upon your tuition would be wasted, you will be told so frankly, and advised to give it up, and even the fees you have paid in advance will be refunded to you. On the other hand, a training-school which is not endowed needs every cent it can secure from pupils, and the principal will often permit a girl to continue the work, knowing that her diploma will not insure her a position, and that the first supervisor under whom she works will mark her deficiencies.
Many girls from small towns write to me after this fashion:
"I have met a lady who runs a kindergarten here. She has a nice little school of her own, and she thinks I would make a fine teacher. She has offered to teach me the work very reasonably. Do you think I could secure a city position after taking such a trianing?"
It would be impossible to advise any girl to take such a course of training without knowing the kindergartner who has offered her the course at reduced rates. She may be a kindergarten enthusiast who has faith in her would-be pupil, sufficient faith to give her the training for practically nothing. Perhaps she wishes to train the girl as her assistant. In either case she will see that her pupil is trained as thoroughly as she was herself. But it is a matter of regret that many such offers are founded on the need of earning extra money; and the girl who accepts them secures only a smattering of kindergarten methods and never gets to the root of Froebel philosophy.
"What will the training at a representative school cost me?" inquire many girls.
At one of the endowed institutions in the East, of whose graduates ninety-seven per cent. have secured positions, the charges are twenty-five dollars per term, three terms in the year, which means an outlay of seventy-five dollars per year for tuition. As the course runs two years, one hundred and fifty dollars, plus a small sum for personal supplies, will cover the actual expenses of tuition. Pupils at this school are furnished with lists of boarding-houses, where they can secure room and board as low as four dollars and fifty cents a week. At this rate a girl's living expenses, including laundry, will run about three hundred and fifty dollars for two years. A very strong girl can reduce expenses by working in a family night and morning for her board, but it is better to concentrate strength and interest on your training. The average training-school has a daily session, except Saturdays and Sundays, from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon, with much field work, visiting kindergartens and teaching or substituting in charity kindergartens.
The girl who has no money for her training must simply find some way of earning it. She can become a mother's helper and test her patience with children. Perhaps this experience may cure her of any desire to teach even in a kindergarten. If she lives in a college town she can become a caterer in a small wey and prepare college "spreads," or have a pretty tearoom in her own home, where the college girls may drop in for tea, sweets and chat every afternoon. She can do fine laundry work for college girls, mending, anything which will allow her to lay aside each week a small sum toward the expenses of the coveted training.
Other girls inquire: "If I do take a course of training, how do I know that I can secure a position?"
By the time you have spent two years in a training-school you will know where and how to secure a position. That is one fruit of the training. Furthermore, promising teachers from good schools are in demand. Authorities in the work say that for the next twenty-five years kindergartening will be a profitable field, because it will not be overcrowded.
"What salaries are paid kindergartners?" ask other girls.
In Greater New York the minimum salary paid kindergartners in the public schools is six hundred dollars. The maximum salary is twelve hundred and forty dollars. Salaries increase with the term of service. Supervisors and teachers for training-schools command higher salaries, and the offices often go begging for lack of competent applicants.
It is impossible to name salaries in private institutions, as these vary according to the standing and prosperity of the school and the experience and capabilities of the applicant. In addition to private and public schools, free kindergarten associations and private charities afford openings. These relieve the congested condition in the public schools and aim to help the child who must be clothed and fed as well as taught. The summer vacation schools in large cities offer opportunities for special work to ambitious teachers, and a bright girl at a fashionable summer resort can easily form her own vacation classes among juvenile guests, and by working in the morning earn enough to pay her entire summer's expenses at the hotel.
Kindergartening is a profession, but mere knowledge of its philosophy, theory and practice will not make for success. Often the girl who might be described as a born kindergartner is outstripped by a girl who has less grounding in the philosophy but a better developed business instinct. Of all branches of pedagogy, probably kindergartening offers the surest avenue to economic independence, for it takes less capital to start a kindergarten than a full-fledged private school with many departments. The girl who wants to be her own mistress can become so through kindergartening—if she combines thorough training with good business management.