The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living/Chapter 17
Physical culture, like domestic science, is one of the teaching branches which any girl who desires to specialize should consider for the good of both her purse and her health. It presents a field as yet uncrowded. As a special study it has its place not only in public and private schools, but it is right in line with all the new social and charitable movements, recreation parks and centers and public playgrounds, as well as the institutional church. It is particularly in demand at schools for deficient children, where teachers are paid exceptionally good salaries. It is ideal work for the girl whose health will endure neither long hours of confinement nor great nervous strain, and will, if combined with outdoor life, check incipient tuberculosis. Especially does it appeal as a source of income to the girl who does not want to leave her home city to face the overwhelming competition of the larger centers of population. The girl with a large circle of friends, the charm of personality and a reasonable amount of training in a good system of physical culture can always make a moderate living in her home town.
Just at present there is also a very brisk demand for the teacher who combines with a knowledge of physical culture ability to teach dancing. In all the larger cities dancing, especially folk-dances, is being introduced into the public schools, recreation centers and playgrounds. This requires special training, but to the girl who has already mastered physical culture it will come quite easny.
Girls who think they would like to teach physi cal culture must first consider in what way they will utilize the specialty. The girl who hopes to teach in public or private schools will have to take a complete normal course, and a college degree will be most helpful in her advance to the post of supervisor. In many cities it will be essential. On the other hand, if she proposes to organize small private classes, combining dancing with physical culture, an abbreviated but earnest and thorough course, preferably with a good private teacher, will suffice, providing always that the girl continues to read and study every good work obtainable that deals with her specialty. Especially her studies of anatomy must be persevering and unceasing.
In New York City to-day sixty teachers are employed to train the children of the public schools in physical culture. In the primary schools these teachers draw from eight hundred dollars to fifteen hundred dollars, and in the high-school grades from fifteen hundred dollars to three thousand dollars a year. In New York City the private schools were pioneers in this work, until what was considered as the privilege of the rich child was recognized as a necessity for the masses of children who had to be taught the use and care of the body as well as the mind.
Private teaching in New York is also lucrative. It is estimated that there are twenty-one hundred classes all told under the direction of fifteen hundred teachers, men as well as women. These classes are conducted at private schools and in gymnasiums, including the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. rooms and the settlements and parish houses of institutional churches. Presumably each of these fifteen hundred teachers makes a comfortable living, whether by teaching physical culture alone or by combining other special branches with it. Also the same teacher conducts classes in different schools, clubs or settlements, arranging a schedule of hours.
In order to teach physical culture in the public schools of New York City you must have had three years' experience as a teacher before you can take the entrance examinations. The object of this rule is to maintain as high a standard for the teacher of physical culture as for any other branch of study. To secure positions in many of the private schools you must have a college education, precisely as would be required of a teacher of Latin, Greek or algebra. In other words, your education must be broad and liberal enough to entitle you to consideration for any branch of high-school or private school teaching. You cannot gloss over the defects of a grade-school education by an expensive course in physical culture. If you live in a community where your certificate must be renewed at stated intervals for general teaching, the certificate will be demanded if you try to teach physical culture. This explanation is offered for the benefit of the many girls who think that an abbreviated and defective education will be overlooked because they have taken a special course in physical culture.
In Philadelphia physical training is part of the normal course for girls, and is taught in all the public schools. In that city preference is given to graduates from the normal college. Chicago, Boston, in fact all the leading cities, have made physical training part of their public-school system, and all progressive small cities are following suit. A prominent teacher of physical culture states that he has requests from small cities the country over for teachers and supervisors, and that the girl who is willing to go to one of these smaller cities and lead the movement in favor of physical culture can eventually become supervisor of the entire work in the public schools.
Naturally the teacher of physical culture who accepts a position in a public or private school at a stated salary enjoys a certain sense of financial security, and this step is generally taken by women qualified to hold positions in either public or private schools. On the other hand, some girls who have completed only a desultory course at a so-called finishing school but who are bright and well educated, through reading and observation, have taken up the study of physical culture thoroughly and have succeeded as private teachers.
The teacher who "free-lances," or organizes her own classes, must summon personality to her aid. She must make a strong appeal for her work, interest editors of local papers in physical training, and establish herself largely through the pleasing impression she creates. Later her methods of teaching may be commended. Her training of young people may show results. But at first she will win out on purely personal grounds.
I recall a young woman who made just such a struggle in a small Ohio city. She started out with four pupils, two of those being children of a local physician, who recommended her class to patients with growing children in the family. Skillfully she mixed pleasure with physical culture, took her pupils on walking trips, with nature talks on the side, arranged games to be played after the lessons, and in fact scored a social success among young people.
Gradually her class grew, because children wanted to share the good times. Then she offered to supervise an entertainment for local charity, and for this purpose drilled a number of the elder brothers and sisters of her pupils. The drill was a success, and while the entertainment did not net her enough money to pay for the many rehearsals, it introduced her work to the general public and started an advance class. She worked in this fashion, barely making a living, for nearly two years, and then public sentiment demanded that she be given a chance to introduce physical training in the public schools. I cite this instance particularly to show that physical culture opens up possibilities in almost any city for the woman with sufficient force of character and personality to make her influence felt.
The teacher of physical culture who is a recognized authority in her community has no financial problems to solve. If an appointee in the public schools, she has many opportunities to form evening classes among adults or teachers who desire to perfect themselves in this branch of teaching. She is invited to lecture for a fee during the winter in her own and neighboring towns, and she can accept engagements, if she so desires, for summer schools, etc.
A complete normal course in physical culture or elocution occupies two years. Special courses are given in both branches, but in physical-culture training particularly, a class course with regular practice is almost essential. A typical two-year course includes the following branches, and costs three hundred dollars:
Theory
Anatomy.
Apparatus.
Athletics.
Anthropometry.
Child Study.
Chemistry.
Eduction.
Histology.
Kinesiology.
Methods.
Physics.
Physiology.
History of Gymnastics and Physical Training.
Psychology.
First Aid.
Physical Diagnosis.
Gymnasium Administration.
Public-school Methods.
Personal and School Hygiene.
Practice
Apparatus (light and heavy).
Athletics.
Delsarte.
Calisthenics.
Swedish Gymnastics.
Anthropometry.
Voice Culture.
Fencing.
Esthetic Gymnastics.
Games.
The average pupil allows ten dollars a week for board, laundry and incidental expenses, in addition to the three hundred dollars tuition. Girls often ask whether they can earn at least part of their training, and the head of one of the most successful training-schools tells me that a number of girls have paid their way by teaching outside classhours, the compensation being two dollars an hour. Naturally, it takes a bright, tactful, pleasing girl to secure this work.
Now as to securing positions after taking the course. The incidents related in preceding pages tell part of the tale, particularly for the girl who intends to form private classes. A position usually awaits the graduate of a normal course or school of high standing, as the number of cities introducing physical training in the public schools increases each year, and it will be some years before the supply equals the demand.
The girl who wishes to teach in private schools usually secures work through a teachers' agency. Positions in institutional churches, settlements and among wealthy children or women who will join classes in light physical culture are secured entirely through acquaintance and influence.
The teacher who drops general work for physical culture, with a view to teaching in the public schools, particularly of a large city, confines her efforts to this one branch. The girl who expects to organize private classes or conduct classes in different private schools, settlements or institutional churches generally combines some other branch with physical culture, such as cooking, sewing or elocution. The latter is peculiarly suited for combination with physical culture, as the physical training gives grace to gestures, and a correct method of breathing is invaluable to the pupil in elocution; in fact, nearly every successful teacher of elocution includes in her class or private work simple gymnmastics, and Delsarte exercises. Just now dancing movements and steps play a large part in physical culture and elocution.
If, in addition to teaching the conventional elocution, she has the gift of story-telling, a girl can often secure engagements to entertain at parties.
Another line of work in which up-to-date elocution and physical culture teachers are scoring rather heavily this year is known as the general culture class—teaching young girls how to enter and leave a room, how to carry themselves, how to sit correctly, how to meet strangers, how to cultivate a pleasing speaking voice, how to converse on general topics. This appeals to many girls who would turn a deaf ear to the appeal of physical culture or elocution alone.
The girl from a small city or town who goes to a larger center to secure her training in physical culture and who has a year's time and the funds to spare, should study dancing or elocution also. Armed with two specialties, she can appeal to a larger proportion of the young people in her home town and its environs than if she were limited to one sort of class work. With good instructors and her own concentration on the task to be accomplished, she can return home at the end of a year entirely capable of making her own way. As I have said so often in the course of this work, success lies in the girl as much as in the amount of her training. The head of a normal training-school of physical culture has pointed out to me student-workers in their third year who were not yet capable of leading a class, yet his course is supposed to occupy only two school years. Again, when a student has met with reverses after the first year, with a few additional private lessons she has been able to leave the school and teach with success.
The same is true of elocution and dancing. Some girls go to a dancing-class year after year and never acquire knowledge of the principles on which the art is founded. They may be graceful dancers but utterly unable to give instruction. Another girl with less natural ability but more genuine desire to succeed will be teaching children's classes while the others are still working. A girl who must teach elocution within a given time will walk straight past the girl whose father has the funds to give her an indefinite course of study and who likes to go back to the school, season after season.
In a small city, dancing-lessons can sometimes be organized more easily than those in physical culture. The latter classes are often less attractive to young people, but the teacher must never give up her aim, i.e., to introduce physical culture into her community and create a demand for it in the public schools.
The young woman starting her first dancing-class should select a hall with discretion, always giving her class a certain social standing. A large private parlor, with waxed floor or canvased carpet is preferable to a cheap hall in a questionable neighborhood. The girl without great influence will do well to secure social leaders as her patronesses and give a series of dances during the season which will have a little air of exclusiveness. Some teachers call these cotillon clubs, dances de luxe, etc.
In starting her classes, the newcomer should teach adults the round and square dances, with an occasional special event, like a cotillon with inexpensive favors. The children—and their mothers—will want to have fancy dancing included in the afternoon's work. A girl who has not enough classes to keep her busy in her own town may be able to go to smaller towns within commuting distance for weekly or semi-weekly lessons.
The girl who combines elocution with physical culture must be resourceful and able to arrange amateur entertainments that give pupils a chance to appear with credit, and parents and friends an opportunity to admire and applaud. The girl who can stage-manage or produce small plays and allow other local talent to shine therein is very much more apt to succeed than the girl who casts herself for the star rele. Upon such little evidences of tact and good will does the teacher of physical culture and dancing or elocution build up remunerative classes. They are to be found in nearly all small cities, especially in the mid-West, West and Southwest.