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. at Maytown about people, crickets
Mrs. Janet (Arthur)
Siegler, second grade teach-
er at Maytown Elementary,
. believes that education is a .
~ **threesome,’’
not just a
‘*twosome.”” Education is
not merely teacher-child,
nor is it parent-child; it’s
parent-child-teacher.
“lI think it’s good for
‘children to realize that their
rents are interested in
eir work. I try to get
‘everyone involved togeth-
Janet Siegler
One way Mrs. Siegler
gets parents, children, and
teacher involved together is
to invite her pupils and their
parents to visit her home in
Donegal Heights. The
parents and children are
eager to visit the Sieglers, to
see Mr. Siegler’s elaborate
model trains. Parents call up
the Sieglers and make date
to view the trains. Each
family comes at a separate
time, enabling Mrs. Siegler
to get to know them all well.
Teacher of Week
Janet Siegler teaches 2nd graders
4 a
“It helps the children,”
she says. “‘It’s a big thing
for the children to visit us.
We have made a lot of
lasting friends from these
visits.”’
Mrs. Siegler thinks that
the parents in our area are
unusual in the interest they
show in their children. *‘I
would miss that if 1 would
ever go somewhere else. I
don’t know whether that
would be true somewhere
else.”
It is clear that for Janet
Siegler, education is con-
cerned with relations be-
tween people, their feelings
and attitudes teward each
other.
“I believe that every
person is different,”’ says
Mrs. Siegler. ‘People are
not good or bad, but
different. For example,
handicapped people like
Louis Braille and Helen
Keller are different from
other people. We all have
different handicaps. There
are degrees of being
handicapped.
“I once had a little boy
in my class who wore a
hearing aid. Through him
we invited a specialist in
hearing problems from the
I.U. to come and talk to the
children in my class. He
taught us a little about sign
language.
“Recently, I took a course
in sign language, and I am
teaching some of it to the
children. They learn the
alphabet in sign language.
Sometimes we spell in sign
language. We learn a few
words in signs. It makes
learning more interesting.
“One little: girl Is
communicating in signs with
a deaf child. Another is
teaching her father a few
words; he works with some
people who are hard of
hearing or deaf.
‘‘Last spring we went to
Middle Creek Conservation
Park and took the multi-
sensory hiking trail for the
blind, where you can smell,
touch, taste, and hear as
well as see many different
things.
“The children felt with
their fingers the messages
at different locations along
the trail.
‘“Handicapped people are
not much different from us.
Some people have trouble
walking, but I have trouble
with something else.’
Mrs. Siegler wants her
pupils to realize that all
people are the same—in
being different. She doesn’t
want her pupils to grow up
thinking that some other
people are ‘‘strange or
odd.’”’ She tells her pupils
the story of Louis Braille
Al The codfish lays ten thousand eggs,
The lonely hen but one.
The codfish never cackles when her laying’s done.
And so we scorn the codfish,
The humble hen we prize.
Which only goes to prove, my friend,
A [It Pays To Advertise!
———
who was blinded as a
three-year-old playing with
one of his father’s tools.
When Louis was only 14
years old he invented the
raised dots of the Braille
alphabet, but for a long
time experts ignored his
idea because he was only a
boy.
The children in Mrs.
Siegler’s class watch a
movie about Helen Keller.
When the movie is over, and
the lights go up, there are
some little, red eyes in the
class. ““There is nothing
wrong with showing some
emotion,”’ says Mrs. Sieg-
ler.
Mrs. Siegler is not
imparting warm feelings
just about people to her
children. Her classroom i
filled with the soothing
chirping of crickets, kept ir
a small aquarium in the back
of the room. The children
brought the crickets in and
are feeding them, apples
and lettuce, also dogfood.
Mrs. Siegler says that the
crickets did not sing so
much at first, but as they got
to know the children better
they lost their shyness and
started to chirp.
In another container, the
children are raising meal-
worms in the dust of
cornmeal. The mealworms
are also eating apples and
lettuce. One of these days
the children will behold with
their own eyes the miracu-
lous metamorphosis of the
worms into large black
beetles.
Learning is vital in Mrs.
Siegler’s brightly decorated
classroom. The walls are
covered with pictures, all
with an educational and
stimulating message.
Learning in her class is
creative and purposeful.
‘““Why should anyone want
to learn to write a letter?’
she asks. Each of pupils
writes a letter for a good
reason. A letter is written
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SUSQUEHANNA TIMES—Page 11
during Fire Prevention
Week to Smoky the Bear,
applying for a position as a
junior forest ranger. In
child an individually ad-
dressed letter containing a
junior forest ranger badge, a
membership card, and
stickers.
‘‘Reasons for doing things
are important, even for
second graders,’ says Mrs.
Siegler.
All the teachers in the
early grades cooperate in a
school fair where old books
and drawing are sold for toy
money which the children
have been receiving as
rewards for learning. Learn-
ing is motivated—and the
children learn arithmetic by
making change in their
purchases.
Reading and writing are
taught together in Mrs.
Siegler’s class, and the
writing is often original,
composed by the child. The
children make up a lot of
their own reading material
in small groups. One group
composed a story of a school
bus driver who .let the
children on the bus do
whatever they liked. They
sang and shouted, giving
the driver a headache. They
ate and threw their food; the
bus was a ‘‘mess.”’ There
was moral in the fable, of
course. The anarchy on the
bus, the children concluded
‘drove them bananas.”
Here is a poem composed
by a group including Jimmy
Dickinson, Jane Endslow,
Amy Maguire, Michelle
Nissley, and Niki Wivell:
‘““‘What is Blue?’
Blue is the color of
The great big sky,
The rain
And also a blueberry pie.
Blue is the ocean
And the bluebirds that sing
The color of people’s eyes
And cold, cold lips that sting: