Official proceedings of the annual meeting: 1923

THE VISITING-TEACHER MOVEMENT-NUDD

423

finding it necessary to go to work, need advice; the adolescent; the indescribable, who
are always in need of counsel; the precocious and gifted children who do not find full
scope for their interests and abilities; and those whose home conditions are so adverse
that they need special supervision or guidance. All such children, if early adjustment
is lacking, not only miss the full advantages which the school affords, but, if permitted
to drift from bad to worse, arrive only too frequently at the children's court or other
corrective agencies.
I should not attempt to describe the technique which the visiting teacher employs
in handling such problems, even if it were within the province of my paper to do so.
The chairman of this meeting and the speakers who follow me are far better qualified
for this task than I. Suffice it to say that she seeks to enlist the co-operation of every
agency and device within and without the school that can supplement and reinforce
her own efforts to enable the school to provide that individual attention and treatment
which its growing conception of the pupil as a child requires.
It is evident that work of such a character is not the province of the school nurse,
for the child's health may or may not be a factor in the child's difficulty. Nor does it
fall within the province of the attendance officer, despite the great importance of that
officer's work, for a child may have a perfect attendance record and yet present problems of behavior and scholarship for which the special help and advice of a specially
equipped teacher is needed. It certainly should not be expected of the class teacher,
for she is already fully occupied, if not, indeed, overburdened, with her regular classroom duties, and, even though she may have time (as she should) for social calls, she
cannot, without great injustice to the majority of her pupils, spare the time for the
follow-up work out of school that is needed for the proper treatment of the type of
problematical children referred to the visiting teacher. Furthermore, such work
involves not only visits to the homes during the regular school hours but also emergency
calls to various social agencies. It also requires a degree of experience in social case
work that the regular teacher cannot be expected to acquire while performing with full
efficiency her regular duties. It is essential, of course, that the visiting teacher should
co-operate closely with all school departments and that she should frequently secure
results through them, but her work is not a substitute for theirs, nor can they take her
place. Her services are supplementary to theirs and help to make them more effective
in the light of a broader understanding of the social and educational needs of the children
in question.
The first visiting teachers began work in the school year x906-7 in New York City,
Boston, and Hartford. In these cities, and later in other places, as has frequently
happened with other educational experiments, the impulse came from outside the school
system. Private organizations like the Public Education Association, settlements, and
civic organizations first supported the work, until the school authorities recognized its
value and made it part of the school system. Subsequently, in other places, like
Rochester and Mt. Vernon, New York, the boards of education introduced it directly.
At the present time there are about 140 visiting teachers, including those on the
staff of the National Committee on Visiting Teachers, in about 50 cities and counties
scattered through 26 states of the union. The majority of cities have adopted what we
regard as the most satisfactory method, the assignment of a visiting teacher to a single
school or to two or three small neighboring schools. This enables the visiting teacher
to become identified with the interests of the school and neighborhood, and better to act