The Wellesley Magazine, Vol. 2

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Excerpt from The Wellesley Magazine, Vol. 2: February 24, 1894It was my privilege to be one of a class of ten or more students who, during the last two years of their college life, elected Miss Shafer's course in mathematics. It is difficult to give adequate expression to the impres sion which Miss Shafer made as a teacher. There was a friendly gracious ness in her manner of meeting a class which established at once a feeling of sympathy between student and teacher. This sympathy was to her one of the essentials of successful teaching, and nowhere was her wonderful tact more displayed than in the freedom with which she would alter the usual presentation of a subject to one better adapted to the feeling of a particular class. We saw at once that she expected from us conscientious work as a matter of course, but we soon learned that she looked for more than this. She taught us to aim at clearness of thought and elegance of method, in short, to attempt to give to our work a certain finish which belongs only to the scholar. It is needless to say that we failed to reach this high ideal which she set before us, but she was appreciative of our attempts, always charitable when we failed, and when a word of commendation was merited and given, the satisfaction of the student was as complete as the occasion was rare, and the whole class felt honored by the success of the individual.It was seldom that Miss Shafer occupied much of the recitation hour. If possible, she would make the student clear up the difficulties, and she rarely offered an explanation except when she could persuade no member of the class to undertake it. As a result, she developed in her classes the power of concentration, and they left the class - room with every faculty more alert and active than when they entered, and the subsequent recitations profited thereby. Not perceptibly, perhaps, but none the less rigidly did she hold her students to steady work. She expected so much of them that they were ashamed to give her less than their best. She roused them to the keenest activity by the absolute confidence which she Showed in their inten tions to work. Her words of commendation were rare, but the class was always sensible of her appreciation of good work. Miss Shafer was quick to detect the strong points of any student and to make the most of them.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.