pecial instructions in respect to this
occasion. Some such special instructions we propose to give in this
chapter. The experienced teacher may think some of them too minute and
trivial. But he must remember that they are intended for the youngest
beginner in the humblest school; and if he recalls to mind his own
feverish solicitude on the morning when he went to take his first
command in the district school, he will pardon the seeming minuteness of
detail.

1. It will be well for the young teacher to take opportunity, between
the time of his engaging his school and that of his commencing it, to
acquire as much information in respect to it beforehand as possible, so
as to be somewhat acquainted with the scene of his labors before
entering upon it. Ascertain the names and the characters of the
principal families in the district, their ideas and wishes in respect to
the government of the school, the kind of management adopted by one or
two of the last teachers, the difficulties they fell into, the nature of
the complaints made against them, if any, and the families with whom
difficulty has usually arisen. This information must, of course, be
obtained in private conversation; a good deal of it must be, from its
very nature, highly confidential; but it is very important that the
teacher should be possessed of it. He will necessarily become possessed
of it by degrees in the course of his administration, when, however, it
may be too late to be of any service to him. But, by judicious and
proper efforts to acquire it beforehand, he will enter upon the
discharge of his duties with great advantage. It is like a navigator's
becoming acquainted beforehand with the nature and the dangers of the
sea over which he is about to sail.

Such inquiries as these will, in ordinary cases, bring to the teacher's
knowledge, in most districts in our country, some cases of peculiarly
troublesome scholars, or unreasonable and complaining parents; and
stories of their unjustifiable conduct on former occasions will come to
him exaggerated by the jealousy of rival neighbors. There is danger that
his resentment may be roused a little, and that his mind will assume a
hostile attitude at once toward such individuals, so that he will enter
upon his work rather with a desire to seek a collision with them, or, at
least, with secret feelings of defiance toward them--feelings which will
lead to that kind of unbending perpendicularity in his demeanor toward