The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

time to time in the Farmer’s Advocate, par- ticularly Forgotten Children in Our Rural Schools, October 9, 1954, the Travelling Teacher of Wellington South, February 11' 1956 and Our Little Girl was Born Deaf, February 23, 1957. An Institute Project In the meantime the original resolution from our Branch Women’s Institute had passed through the regular channels of Dis- trict and Area to the Provincial Board and a committee had been set up by the board to study this problem of the retarded rural school child. Interest in the project was spreading. Letters of inquiry came to memâ€" bers of the committee, indicating that there were many rural homes Where a handicapped child and his peculiar needs provided a problem too large for the parents to solve aIOne. In our community, neighbouring branches became interested There were discussions, speakers, visits to the area school boards, press comments. Enheartened by an enthusâ€" iastic Inspector of Schools in the person of Mr. W. G, Anderson of Oxford County, two area school boards got together, discussed and surveyed the situation, and finally voted to coâ€"operate in employing a teacher of special education. An advertisement was prepared, a generous salary offered, but alas there was no teacher to accept the position. Special Teachers Needed Now we come to the greatest hindrance in the development of this projectâ€"namely. the lack of interested and skilled teachers. In order to obtain a permanent qualification a teacher must have successful teaching experi- ‘ ence and then attend two of the summer ses- sions in Toronto. In addition to this require- ment the successful remedial teacher will have in his heart a concern for this type of child. Some teachers have said that they are 1 interested in this work but would hesitate to dedicate themselves to it for their whole teaching career. This should not be necessary. but what a wonderful background a few years of such teaching would be for one who aspires to be a Principal or an Inspector of Schools. There are some places, we underâ€" stand, where this type of experience is pre- requisite for a position of greater responsiâ€" bility. Disappointed that teachers of special educa- tion were not available, Woodstock North Institute members decided to offer some in- ducement so that experienced teachers would find it worth while to take the course. If the boards could find a suitable prospect who had yet to take the training, the local Branch decided to offer a generous bursary to help to defray expenses. Again there were disap- Ointments. One who would have been a plendid applicant had to withdraw for per- Dnal reasons. Another year went by. Now there came encouraging word from nspectorate No, 3 of Grey County. Though 4‘. All. 1958 Mr. Fred Reynolds. ilineronl iemediol leocher in uclion in a rural school working wilh a child having :2 serious speech dilficully. we do not know the story of how this (30» operative scheme was organized, we do think it important to include here a report from W. G, Rae. Inspector of Public Schools, to show how wonderfully successful it has been. “In September of 1956 the five township school area school boards of Grey No. 3 In- spectorate, organized co-operatively under In- spector W. G. Rae, engaged the second itiner- ant auxiliai‘y-remedial teacher to serve in the rural schools of Ontario. The first such service was previded in Wellington No. 2 Inspector» ateâ€"Mr. W. R. McVittie, Inspector in 1954, “Mr. Fred J. Reynolds left the staff of Kitchener Public Schools, where he was a special teacher, to take on this pioneering effort in South Grey. His duties have taken him into 49 schools, all of them but two be» ing one-roonied schools. He has made regular visits to some twenty-odd schools where pupils who, because of their inability for various reasons to progress in their studies at a normal or average pace, have become retarded and frustrated. “By the spring of 1958 sufficient time had elapsed to evaluate objectively the progress of the pupils so helped and it was found that most of the pupils, after being given a new start at achievement levels within their abil- ity, had been able to increase their rate of progress by several times that prevailing before the remedial programme started. In one township the average increase in proâ€" gress rate over a six month period was 240%, in another the average was 116%, in one it was 99%, and in the other two 72% and 54% respectively.