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Part III - Emma Hamsher - Thoroughly Modern Twentieth Century Teacher

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            In the Summer of 1918, when Emma returned two weeks early to the New Mexico Institute for the Blind to do her field work,  she decided she would begin her first trip in an area where there were sufficiently good roads. She took the train to Albuquerque, rented a car, and with the help of medical professionals, clergy, teachers, and just talking to people, she discovered several blind children in the area.                 Perhaps one of the saddest cases Emma experienced was a family consisting of a father, mother, a toddler around two years old, and a two-month old baby.  The family was living in a box car on an unused siding in the desert. The box car was filthy and had a horrible odor of excrement, body odor, and rotted scraps.       Both of the parents had sores around their mouths and the father’s lesions also covered his hands and arms. The toddler was also...
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Jest 'Fore Christmas by Eugene Field

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  Jest 'Fore Christmas by Eugene Field   Father calls me William, sister calls me Will, Mother calls me Willie, but the fellers call me Bill! Mighty glad I ain't a girl--ruther be a boy, Without them sashes, curls, an' things that 's worn by Fauntleroy! Love to chawnk green apples an' go swimmin' in the lake-- Hate to take the castor-ile they give for bellyache! 'Most all the time, the whole year round, there ain't no flies on me, But jest 'fore Christmas I 'm as good as I kin be!  Got a yeller dog named Sport, sic him on the cat; First thing she knows she doesn't know where she is at! Got a clipper sled, an' when us kids goes out to slide, 'Long comes the grocery cart, an' we all hook a ride! But sometimes when the grocery man is worrited an' cross, He reaches at us with his whip, an' larrups up his hoss, An' then I laff an' holler, "Oh, ye never teched me!" But jest 'fore Christmas I 'm as good ...
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Part II - Emma Hamsher, Thoroughly Modern Twentieth Century Teacher

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In 1917, Emma Hamsher, a thoroughly modern, Progressive teacher, taught high school Latin, algebra, geometry, English, history, girls’ athletics, drama, dancing, and directed Industrial Arts at the New Mexico Institute for the Blind. The school’s classrooms were light and airy and class sizes were small - six or seven students. For the first few days as the children arrived at school, she visited them when they were being put to bed, starting to get to know them.  She went to bed feeling depressed and wondering if she was capable of teaching these children. Emma found her students delightful, cooperative and willing to learn, with one exception - - the school's greatest athlete, a Navajo boy totally blind from smallpox. Yiacero had never been taught by anyone but a male, and every time she asked him a question, he said, in a staccato voice, “ I don't know.”  She was sure he did know.      She tried all the teaching tools she had learned in college;  she kne...
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