When the phone rings, a teacher should answer

Teachers need their own telephones. Teachers need to call parents and guardians; they need to contact teacher centers, universities, and research libraries; they need to be able to reach their colleagues, not only within the same school, but within the school system.

And teachers need phones to reach their own home to take care of routine as well as emergency needs.

The lack of frequent contact between parents and their children's teachers is good for neither the pupils nor the teachers. But too few schools provide personal office space or telephones for their teachers; and this is particularly true for primary-level teachers, who are the ones who might want to be in contact with parents the most.

Parents, school people are quick to admit, send the very best children they have to school. And they care deeply what happens to them there.

Hence, the kind of interchange promising growth and progress that parents and teachers need requires uninterrupted telephone time. Whatever the dollar costs, the gains from home and school working closely together would far offset them.

And just think how much more efficiently teachers and home-room supervisors could control homework assignments for absent pupils via telephone! The teacher , in most cases, would be able to speak directly to the pupil, giving whatever help was possible to allow home students to keep up with their in-school classmates.

And what a boon for the busy teacher to be able to have a phome for personal use as well!

Teachers work mighty hard, and they are forced to spend a great deal of their waking hours institutionalized. They deserve the kind of efficiency a telephone provi des.

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