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AM I FIT TO TEACH?

The talks that follow are addressed to young teachers. They treat everyday problems in a homely way. I have tried to be plain and pointed. I have omitted long terms. I do not speak of correlation, apperception, spontaneity, etc., and I omit long psychological terms. You get enough of these in county institutes and educational journals.

You are a school teacher. You have taught but a short time, and you want to make a success of the work. You may not be even a professional teacher. You hold neither a normal school diploma nor a life license. Both of these are good, and a desire for one or both upon your part would be commendable, but neither is all that is required to teach a successful school. Some of the most impractical of visionary dreamers I have ever known possessed the first, and the most tiresome of moss-backs the second. Given a young man or a young woman of good character and fair scholarship, desiring to teach school, with little or no professional study or training, yet anxious to succeed, what may I say to help them? What are the problems which they must face? What advice and what cautions will they need, and how may I say this to be most effective? This is my task.

Perhaps a little self-catechising on your part will be helpful. In the daily hour of self-communion--and each teacher should have such an hour--when you turn your thoughts inward and analyse your own motives and shortcomings, ask yourself in all seriousness: "Am I fit to teach?" You may not be a "born teacher." Very few persons are. Few indeed have the inborn qualities so strong that teaching and teaching alone will satisfy. Few are so heavenly inspired that they may teach and succeed at it in defiance of all rules or regulations or accepted laws of pedagogy. There are some qualities that will help you and some qualities that you may cultivate--qualities that are essential to the person who would aspire to be leaders and models for young people. What are some of these?

Character is what you are; reputation is what others think you are. Character is essential to pure manhood and pure womanhood, but reputation also is essential to the teacher. Reputation cannot exist long without character, but if from any cause however unjust your reputation is lost even though character remain, your best usefulness in that immediate community is gone. Then guard well your life if you are to teach. Avoid not only evil but the appearance of it. Be not prudish, but keep your reputation unsullied or seek not to stand as teacher to the young.

Then, too, your teacher's knowledge of the subject must be broader and deeper and better organized than the pupil's. You must see each subject in its proper relation to other subjects. Each chapter must be seen in its relation to the chapters which precede and follow it in the development of the subject. The pupil's knowledge of a subject may end with the gathering and the understanding of facts, but the teacher's knowledge must include this and add to it the knowledge of its deeper relations to other subjects and to mind growth. To teach a subject is to learn that subject anew, to see it in a new light, in a deeper and richer significance. You cannot as teacher reach your own highest success with but a student's knowledge and view of the subject you teach. You must have a connected and logical view of the subject as a whole, and also an intimate and accurate knowledge of the relations of the parts. This deeper and broader knowledge, properly focused and presented to pupils gives you strength as a teacher. The deeper, the broader, the more accurate the knowledge of the subject, the better the teaching, provided the teacher has tact to present it properly. You must focus your efforts and bring your teaching into the range of the pupil's mental capacity and in an organized form so that pupils may grasp it. You must stick to the subject, remembering that the minimum of your knowledge of the subject without review will probably be the pupil's maximum after study.

Ask yourself, seriously and earnestly, "Am I fit to teach?"

SHALL TEACHING BE MY LIFE WORK?

Shall teaching be my life work? This question stares the sincere young teacher squarely in the face. He must answer it sooner or later. His answer means much to himself as well as to others. We speak of the profession of teaching, but in the truer sense we have none at present. Teaching may be "the noblest of professions and the sorriest of trades," but as long as our standards of entrance are so low and the number of exits so many, teaching cannot be in its strictest sense a profession. It is far behind medicine or law, and to a large number of persons it is only a trade or a temporary occupation.

There are professional teachers. There are persons who have spent time and money and mental energy studying the problems of the school and of education. There are persons who seek earnestly to formulate the truths and to reduce teaching to a science. Many of these truths are as clearly worked out, as reliable and as completely accepted as are many of the principles of law and medicine. The work is yet incomplete. Shall I make it a life work and give to it my life and the best that is in me? This is the question.

No man can answer this question for you. It is personal. The best that can be done, and this is worth while, is to weigh the good and the bad features and leave you to choose for yourself. So much depends upon the individual. Let me say also that it is never too late to mend. I am one who believes that there are thousands of good teachers, persons who are teaching and doing it well, persons who are leaving their impress for good upon boys and girls, and young men and young women, and who will not make teaching their life-work, and have never intended to do so. They are teaching now, and they are, for the time being, putting their best self into the work. So long as they live in the work and get life out of it nothing is lost. When they begin to slight it, turning their energy to law or medicine or business, when their best self goes to something else while they become "school keepers" instead of teachers, it is time for them to quit.

And what about the lady teachers? Are they to make it a life work too? That is also a question for the individual. To this large and growing class of zealous, capable and untiring teachers the present and the future owes a debt which the world can scarcely pay. There is but one more sacred place--the wife and mother's. The woman who quits teaching to become the center of the home--the purest, the noblest, the most sacred--she does not leave the profession. She is only promoted.

Let us look at the ugly side of the profession first.

These are the things which make against teaching as a life work, but the picture has a brighter side--a side too often overlooked in this day of dollar chasing.

Teaching, if your heart is in the work, will keep you young. It will bring you into contact with the best in life. It will be a constant inspiration to pure thought and right conduct. It will give you the love and respect of young people whose future joys and sorrows will be your joys and sorrows, and whose successes will bring you pleasure. Last and least, but nevertheless essential, it will remunerate you until by thrift and economy you may lay up enough to live a comfortable, even though it be a simple, life.

SECURING A POSITION.

The problem of securing a position concerns not only the young teacher, but often the experienced teacher as well. Thousands of young persons begin the work of teaching for the first time each year. The securing of the first school is usually a red-letter day for most persons who are really anxious to teach. Most boards of education and school officials hesitate to employ a teacher who has had no experience. It is one of the conditions to be met in all occupations. Often principals and older teachers are loudest in their demands that only the experienced be employed, forgetting that there was a time when they themselves were without experience. For a subordinate place where there is not too much executive work, I should prefer the young person well prepared to the teacher who has so much experience that they feel that they know all that is needed to be known.

Most young persons, unless they have a good professional course to begin with, teach first near their home. The time is coming, and let us hope coming rapidly, when one or two years of professional study must precede any attempt at teaching. It will be well for the pupils, well for the schools and, in the long run, well for the teachers themselves. Natural ability being equal, the young teacher who has a year or more of professional study has a decided advantage. This professional study gives clearer ideas of school and higher ideals of what should be accomplished. When school officials and communities insist on professional preparation and pay salaries sufficient to justify them in demanding professional preparation, they have taken a long step in advance toward a profession of teaching. Communities will then be less dependent upon local teachers--the sons and daughters and nieces and nephews of local politicians and relatives of prominent families. Between these on the one hand and the indigent never-do-wells who have a half charitable claim on the community and are pensioned with a position in the schools there are many communities in which there is little incentive for young persons to prepare for teaching. When a professional preparation is required from all applicants things will be different. Then those who look to teaching as a serious occupation will have the advantage.

It is an unfortunate thing for the schools that so few teachers can be progressive, up-to-date, and thoroughly alive to their own welfare and continue to teach for a life time in their own locality. There are a few examples of such teachers and such teaching. The person and the opportunity met, but in many, many cases, in fact, very few cases has the worthy person and the worthy position for such person come together. President John W. Cook, in an address a few years ago, in commenting upon this lack of opportunity, thought it the duty of the community to increase the salary until we could have the best teachers remaining continually at the same school or neighborhood. This sounds plausible at first. It would seem strange, however, to see a man of President Cook's caliber content to continue to teach in the same district school where he began. We may well wonder if it would have been the same President Cook of national fame as an educator if he had done so, or whether he had been dwarfed in the staying into a very ordinary person--perhaps a cook without the capital letter.

The worthy, ambitious, successful teacher will in more than nine cases out of ten sooner or later desire a position away from home. Then the problem of how to secure a position becomes a live one to them. The first thing, of course, is to find a vacancy, a place where a teacher is wanted, and the second thing is to make the school officials believe you are just the person for the position.

A good teachers' agency can be of much service to you in finding the vacancy. They serve the same purpose in locating teachers--and a legitimate purpose it is, that a real estate agent does in buying or selling real estate. The dealer in real estate brings the buyer and the seller together. He serves both, and if a man of honesty and principle, may be of service to both and his business in every way a creditable one. The real estate man usually knows who wants to sell property, knows something of the value of property, looks up the title and records, and then brings the buyer and seller together, or takes charge of the details entirely. To the person who has ever been served by a good real estate agency no justification of the business is needed. The same is true of a good teachers' agency. A good agency spends hundreds of dollars each year seeking information of where there are to be vacancies and changes. School officials learn to depend upon many of the reliable agencies to aid them in the selection of their teachers. Agencies also often have some weight in the matter of recommending teachers. This is especially true late in the season when unexpected vacancies occur. Agencies are then often asked to select teachers for the positions and school boards take them upon the recommendation of the agency.

The greatest value of the teachers' agency to you in the early part of the season is in giving you reliable information in regard to vacancies. They often know where vacancies are to occur and the particulars of them. You would find it hard to collect this information--the places where there are vacancies, salary, qualifications desired, nature of work, etc. The information is valuable and is worth to you the cost of the commission in that it widens your field and chances. After you know these things, you must then push your own claims to secure the place.

A good agency looks up your record as a student, as a teacher, and as a person of good character, and if your record is not good it refuses you membership. There are, however, many agencies that are only leeches, depending upon membership fees for existence and caring little or nothing for the real business of locating teachers. In selecting an agency as in other things, you must use good judgment. There are many agencies that do good, honest work for its members. They usually charge a membership fee of two dollars and five per cent of the first year's salary, but they work faithfully for their members, and will not admit to membership a teacher whose record is not good. Beware of the agency that guarantees you a position. It cannot do it and do a legitimate business.

Let me emphasize the matter of arrangement of the letter. It goes without saying that the letter must be neatly and plainly written or type-written, and free from misspelled words. To my personal knowledge many teachers fail to arrange the form of the letter to appeal to the eye, and this is essential. Paragraphing counts for much in a letter of application. The long, loose, scrawly, disjointed letter, hard to follow when reading it, with pages mixed until you must turn the sheet once or twice to tell for sure where the sentence is continued--these letters often cost the writer a position, and it is right that they should. Use the standard business letter size of paper of good quality. Make your left-hand margin uniform. Write a neat, plain hand. Punctuate properly, and above all paragraph so that the eye catches at a glance each topic treated. If you are a teacher and do not know the value of the margin in placing emphasis and attention upon a topic you should study it before writing letters of application.

Do not ask a lot of questions in your letter of application--such as size of place, cost of board, railroad facilities, etc. It is true that these are important items to you. But the secretary of a school board is too busy to answer all these points until you are seriously considered for the position. You may be only one of fifty applicants. With the help of a few members of the board he will in a few minutes reduce them to probably half a dozen by eliminating those whose letters do not appeal to them. If your letter of application has been neat enough and strong enough to make a good impression it will be among this half dozen. Now comes the actual consideration of the board. They weigh and study this select half dozen. They may then eliminate two or three of these and investigate and consider the remaining ones for several days before coming to a conclusion.

Keep your application before the board. If your first letter is strong enough to place you among the few to be carefully considered, these days of investigation are critical times. The skill with which you keep yourself before them will count much. Manage to write one or two members of the board every two or three days. Be brief and be business like, but do not seem to be anxious. Personal letters from those who know you will be worth much. Have them addressed to different members of the board. This will impress your name and application upon each member. Each member will have a vote, and you must reach a majority to win. Be careful also in the persons who write in your interests. Many good men cannot write letters of recommendation and do it gracefully. They either overstate or scatter. The list of references you give will mean much.

If you are elected to the position then comes the time and opportunity to make inquiry as to salary, work, expenses, etc., before accepting. This can be done without giving offense or arousing the suspicion that you will not accept. You may also accept only conditionally until you know these points. After you have been offered a place, if you have any doubts about the work, then ask your questions. Be pointed and accurate, and expect a prompt and businesslike reply. If the conditions are such that you cannot accept do not keep them waiting, but tell them that you decline the place, and give them the reasons.

With your letter of application should go copies of a few good testimonials from persons who know you and your work. Send also a good photograph, and a self-addressed, government stamped envelope for reply. Get some good brief testimonials from those who know you best--your teachers and one or two business men. If you have taught, get testimonials from the school board and patrons testifying to the success of your work. Keep these original testimonials. Have neat type-written copies made and send a few of these with each letter of application. Offer to send others, and in writing the board later it is well to enclose one or two new testimonials with each letter.

In addition to the testimonials, refer them to a few reliable persons who know you and your worth. Ask the board to write these persons asking about you. Many persons have little faith in a general testimonial written to the public and for your own perusal. These same persons often have much confidence in a personal, private letter stating the same thing, or answering definite questions about you. For reference it is best to give the names of persons who have not already given you public testimonials. Select for such references persons who know you, and persons who will answer promptly and specifically any questions asked about you. Many good men who could and would give you a good testimonial are so negligent and careless that they fail to answer a letter of inquiry until it is too late. The busy business man who is accustomed to attending to his mail promptly and on time often makes a better reference than a man of more leisure. The first writes promptly, while the second may carry the letter for a week or ten days before the spirit moves him to reply. This delay is considered by the board making the inquiry as a reluctance on his part to recommend you.

A good small photograph should go with each application. Good copies of large photographs are inexpensive and answer the purpose well. Often these photographs are not returned, and if the copy is a good one it answers the purpose as well as a more expensive one. The photograph should be plain, but showing you at your best. A front view is usually best. The eyes and expression should be good. It should show you neatly dressed, but modestly and becomingly. Its purpose should be to emphasize your personality and not to show how pretty you can look. The low-necked, short-sleeved dramatic-posed photographs sent out by some teachers will and should defeat the applicant for a position as teacher. Such photographs might be all right in gay Newport or some other fashionable resort. But fortunately, a majority of our school boards are composed of business men of common sense, modesty, and good judgment. They are not seeking vaudeville performers, nor stage poses, but persons of modesty and good common sense to teach school. Your photograph should show these qualities in you, else in most cases it will serve to defeat rather than to help you to a school position.

Enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope for reply. It will pay. This will bring you more replies than a loose stamp enclosed. It is even better if you use the government stamped envelope which may be had at any postoffice. Applying for a school is a business matter, not social, and business forms should be used. Use plain white paper, business size, with envelopes to match, and write on one side of paper only, numbering pages.

If the position is a good one and the contest close, the board may request a personal visit. If possible, it is best for you to go. Five minutes conversation may clinch a position which otherwise you would lose. Make it a business call, not a social. Dress for business, not for society. Be well groomed, but seemingly indifferent to dress. Be at your best. If the trip is a long one stop at a hotel and rest and dust before calling on the board. Excuses for personal appearance may be reasonable, but to "land the job" your chances are better if no excuses are necessary. It is a difficult trial to appear before a board of strange men, an applicant for a position from them, and yet be quiet and composed. It is a test of your personality, and if you acquit yourself well it shows strength and usually secures you the position. To be composed you may have to use will power and mental effort. It is possible to do this successfully. In fact much of experience consists in nothing more than the ability to keep composed under trying conditions. Neither your life, health, happiness nor future success depends entirely upon the result of the interview. It may be hard to believe this at the time, but if you can make yourself realize it you have struck the keynote to success. The members of the board are only men, plain, blunt men, not always the strongest men. They are human like yourself. Be frank, be independent, be courteous, look them square in the eye, talk to the point, but do not talk too much. The interview is often a contest of personalities, your own personality, and that of the board. You must show composure and courage. This will secure for you the position often over the strongest of applicants.

There is skill and art in one's ability to secure a position. One element of advancement and success will depend upon how you master these.

PASSING THE EXAMINATION.

Passing the examination is an ordeal that confronts most young teachers and often older ones. We all feel better after it is over. Many of our leaders in education, university professors, normal school teachers, specialists and heads of departments along with many superintendents would hesitate to stake their reputation as a teacher or educator upon the answers to ten questions from each of ten subjects, these subjects to be prepared and the answers graded by "the other fellow." Yet this is the ordeal to be passed by most young teachers. Is it any wonder they dread it?

Every thinking man will concede that the usual examination does not test the applicant's ability to teach. The answers to a series of questions will not do this thoroughly. A better and more sensible test would be to have the applicant prepare a list of questions to test a class that has just completed a given division of a subject. If the teaching ability of some superintendents and examining boards were to be tested by the lists of questions sometimes asked of teachers they would be refused a third-grade license. The lists show quite evidently that they were hurriedly made with little thought of testing the applicant's teaching ability. It is also true that the examination is not even a good test of the applicant's knowledge of the subject. The real intelligence shown in the answers, the arrangement and scholarship and neatness and accuracy are the essential things. Nothing can be more ridiculous than a little two-by-four examiner or superintendent making a list of questions, many of them narrow and indefinite, and then that these same questions must be answered in certain specific words to make grades on them. One examiner recently asked: "What did Washington do before he crossed the Delaware?" Well, he did many things. But if the applicant did not state that "he divided his army into three divisions, etc.," he missed the question intended by the examiner, and lost ten per cent on that question. Examinations based upon such questions are as much a farce as the method of holding a two weeks' institute and follow it by an examination based upon the subjects discussed during the time. The whole time and energy of the teachers is spent in cramming for the examination.

If an examination is to be a fair and reasonable one, the best preparation for it is an intensive study of the subject upon which you are to be examined. Do not study the subject with the thought of examination uppermost in your mind. Study it with a view to mastering and understanding it. Let the thought of what questions may be asked on examination go. If you master the subject, all legitimate questions asked on examination will be easily answered. The hard examination to you is an examination in which you do not know how to answer the questions. If you have mastered the subject you will very probably know the answers to most of the reasonable questions asked. Cramming for examination is usually time wasted. To study and cram on question books and old lists of examination questions is time thrown away. Get your text-book and try to master the principles and divisions of the subjects, and your time is well spent.

If possible, be in good physical condition on the day of examination. This counts for much. Some teachers overwork themselves preparing for examination. They become nervous and do not sleep well. This leaves them without reserve force and in poor physical condition when the time comes. Other teachers work late the night before examination and sleep little, often getting up early to study just before going to examination. I have seen them bring a book in one hand glancing at it to refresh their mind in the hall as they were passing to the examination room. This anxiety saps their nerve force and leaves them in no mental state for a strenuous day's work. If early in the examination they find something difficult to them they go to pieces and do not recover during the day. Leave off both study and review. Do this for at least twenty-four hours before time for examination. Keep your mind from dwelling upon the examination. Take plenty of exercise and if you find time hanging heavy, read some good story. Retire at your usual time the night before examination and sleep your usual number of hours. Get to the place of examination in time to have a half hour or more to get familiar with the strange surroundings and to talk with teachers before the examination is called. Nothing relieves one's anxiety more. Practice writing a few minutes before the actual work begins. This makes your hand steady, and you are pleased with your first work. It always pays you to be on time or ahead of time on examination day.

Go to the examination room prepared for work. Have either a good fountain pen or a good easy penholder with some extra pens and a bottle of ink. It may be your superintendent demands some special kind of paper or manuscript book. Get this before going to the examination unless the superintendent supplies them. Have also a blank book and pencil and a sharp knife or a pencil sharpener. In other words, go to the examination prepared for work just as you would expect your pupils to come to school on examination day.

Work carefully and persistently, and as rapidly as possible. Nothing is more detrimental to good work than to feel that you are behind with your subject. Do not rush, but try to complete each subject in time to review your paper before time is called. Neatness, accurate spelling, and careful, systematic arrangement of your work will make a good impression always, and get the good will of the examiner. Slovenness and careless arrangement will unconsciously prejudice the examiner against you. Your thought and answers must be unusually strong if they overcome the prejudice unconsciously caused by poor writing or poor arrangement.

Let me emphasize again the importance of systematic arrangement of work. Poor penmanship, if it is uniform and legible, may be overlooked if the work is properly arranged. Paragraphing, punctuation and general arrangement count more than all else in making a neat manuscript. I used to read the manuscript of an author frequently. His writing, considered by itself, was poor--extremely poor. It required practice to learn to read it, but it was uniform. It all looked alike. His punctuation and paragraphing was almost perfect. The general impression was good, and when you once mastered his particular letter formation and learned to distinguish his a's, his o's and a few others, his manuscript was easily read. The mechanical side of your examination manuscript, will, if properly cared for, balance many little flaws in the answers themselves.

Read the questions carefully. Hasty reading of questions will account for many mistakes. After having read the question take time to think the answer. Then condense the answer as much as possible, and have it complete and clear. Number your answers to correspond with the questions, leaving one or two lines blank between the answers. If you have doubts about the meaning of a question, express it in writing, and answer it according to the interpretation you think most plausible. Do not be long-winded or wordy in your answers. Be brief, be accurate, be neat.

Try to complete each subject in time to go over it carefully. Correct any mistakes you may find before handing in your paper. It will be time well spent. Many little mistakes, simply little slips of the hand, will occur when your mind is centered upon the thought to be expressed. If any work or calculations are transferred from your scratch book to your manuscript be sure it is copied correctly. Frequently mistakes are made in copying, but the examiner cannot know this, and must grade you in what you place on your manuscript. He grades upon the accuracy of the work as he finds it.

Approached properly, the examination should lose many of its terrors for young teachers.

PROBLEMS OF THE YOUNG TEACHER.

Experience in the school-room counts for much. Teaching soon fastens certain personal peculiarities upon the teacher which makes him readily distinguished from other persons. Fifty teachers visiting Chicago had agreed to be so discreet in their conduct that no one would judge them to be teachers. Much to their surprise they had not walked two blocks from the depot until a dirty-faced bootblack called out in a drawling tone: "First class in geography, stan' up." Some of these eccentricities may be detrimental. Others are worth much professionally, as they give other people confidence in your ability to teach. They are recognized as ear-marks of the teacher.

Pupils and patrons are often more critical of young teachers than of teachers who have had experience, and have established reputations as being able to teach and to govern. They are looking for signs of weakness. Fortunate is the young teacher who can stand this test. His first and second schools will pretty well establish his standing in the community. After that they will be less critical and more apt to take things for granted.

One of the hardest problems of the young teacher is to acquire the feeling of familiarity or composure in the school-room. New clothes sometimes do not set well and new positions are the same. He hesitates, his voice does not sound familiar, he feels and looks awkward, he lacks confidence in himself, and instead of children being considerate of these things they notice them and are quick to take advantage of them. The rougher element of boys and the more careless of the girls may take pleasure in the teacher's discomfort. Such things try the mettle of the teacher. If he is made of the right material and has good judgment, he will come out all right. If he is naturally a coward or if he is full of egotism and conceit the pupils may soon lead him a merry chase. The more clearly he has the work planned, the more definite his ideas of what and how and why to do, the easier to gain composure in the school-room. Then, too, many excellent teachers are sensitive. They may soon grow easy and composed in the school-room with only their pupils before them. A caller or a visit from the principal or a school official completely unnerves them. They are ill at ease, they blush and blunder, and are always at a disadvantage. Familiarity and composure are the fruits of experience and study and practice in the school-room.

Composure, a level head, a knowledge of what you want done, and why you want it done and faith in your own ability to have it done gives composure to the whole school. Restlessness, lack of faith in self, fear of failure, these bring about the very conditions you are striving to avoid, and the school becomes restless, noisy, hard to control. The school takes its coloring from your own attitude, and when things go wrong, begin to seek the cause in your own actions, disposition and manners. Learn to study yourself without upbraiding, and yet with determination to find the cause of your failure. Confidence in yourself and courage backed by good judgment will make government easy. Remember the government of a school is more a matter of mind than of physical strength. The clearness of your mental vision, your insight into motives, your ideals of school and of life and your knowledge of boy and girl nature count infinitely more than your avoirdupois. In very rare cases from home training or peculiar environment wrong motives of true manhood may inspire a bully until force--mere physical force--is the proper remedy, and a downright good threshing is the thing needed. But such occasions are rare indeed, and the young teacher should feel that there is something radically wrong in his own personality and methods of government if he must resort to such measures often.

A young teacher must guard his health. You can't teach day and night. The petty worries of the school-room must not be carried to your home or boarding place. Shake them from yourself when you quit the building and grounds. Lock them in the school-room when you leave it, and if you sleep soundly they will have vanished into thin air before the door is opened the next day. Your health will react upon your work in the school-room. Not the work, but the worry kills. During my first three terms I taught school all day and dreamed school all night. The dreaming was harder than the teaching. My best pupils, the ones who would not for the world do anything to cause me trouble, were always in mischief in my dreams. From the first, force yourself to think of the pleasant things of the day as much as possible, and forget the unpleasant or shut them from your thoughts. Too often you find after sleepless nights of worry about some frivolous little breach of conduct by some thoughtless boy the whole thing glides by without a ripple, and the problem solves itself.

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