=Securing Teen Age Teachers=

As soon as Sunday school teaching becomes a dignified, worth-while job, men will be attracted to the task and privilege.  The unemployed male members of the church will then be led to see that there is something real to be achieved.  The vision of a symmetrically developed boy is all that is needed to get most men.  Of course, they demand a plan, and the organized Sunday school class with through-the-week activities will supply that.

Sometimes it is a good thing to send the boys themselves after the teachers.  This has been found to be of great profit in several places.  The request coming from the boys means a lot more than coming from the superintendent.  The following extracts from two letters of a teen age superintendent give point to this idea.

“On Sunday a bunch of the younger boys came to Mr. Ball, and said, ’We have no teacher; will you get one for us?’ Mr. Ball looked at them, and said, ‘Who do you want, fellows?’ They looked at each other—­this was something new.  ‘Who do we want?’ and the leader turned around and said to the fellows, ‘Say, fellows, who do we want?’ A hurried consultation revealed the fact that they wanted, of course, one of the prominent men of the church.  Mr. Ball said, ‘All right; get hold of my coat-tail’; and the crew got hold, and formed a snake line, and out of the school they went, upstairs to one of the class-rooms, in search of Mr. B. They found that he had left for home, and the boys looked at Mr. Ball and said, ‘Now, what shall we do?’ Mr. Ball said, ’Well, fellows, you know where he lives.  I can’t go with you, but you fellows go to his home and camp there until he says yes.’  Off they started.  Several men were telling me this story, and one is a neighbor of Mr. B’s.  He said that when he got home from Sunday school last Sunday—­a bitter cold day—­he went out into his back yard, and, glancing over the fences, he saw a bunch of twelve boys lined up on Mr. B’s back porch, stamping their feet.  He called across to them, ‘Say, fellows, what’s the matter?’ ’We’re looking for a Sunday school teacher,’ they yelled back.  He said he thought he’d drop.

“The next morning Mr. Ball met Mr. B. in the street car, and he grinned across at him and said, ’Did a group of boys call on you yesterday, Mr. B.?’ ‘They certainly did,’ he replied, with a broad grin.  ’Well, did they get you?’ ’Did they get me?  Yes, they sure got me, and from now on I’m going to teach their class; there was nothing else for me to do.’”

The story of another teacher acquired in this way reads as follows: