Teaching, Living, and Learning: A Poem for Today: 8/14/05

Sunday, August 14, 2005

A Poem for Today: 8/14/05

SUDDEN CURES:

VELCRO STRIPS

He stood beside his bike in the sunshine,
looping ropes and strings across the pack
to tie it securely to the rack.
It took him many minutes
to fasten everything down.
There was a noisy rainstorm along the streets,
but he knew a pack tied tightly to his rack
would carry him carefully through his journey,
no matter what the weather.
That’s when the stranger offered him
the use of Velcro strips.
“Got all I need. Go ahead and use ‘em.
Tie anything down.”
He unfastened the ropes
and strapped on the Velcro strips
in just a few seconds.
There was something sweet
in the air just then, he thought.
The showers were passing down the street
like a celebration that slowly vanishes.
He stood back a step or two
and smiled at the Velcro strips
and said thanks to the stranger
who was walking away.

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I found this quote (below) in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. She's describing Fanny Price's home at Mansfield, but the words exactly remind me of the atmosphere I try to maintain in my classroom:
" ... no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody's feelings were consulted."

...........

The following quote is from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I would like my classroom to be like Dr. Strong's school:

"Dr. Strong's was an excellent school...It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honor and good faith of the [students], and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of these qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders. We all felt that we had a share in the management of the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity."

If I replaced "agent" with "teacher", this passage from a short story might, I hope, describe me in my classroom:
"The agent spent his days in following what seemed to many observers to be only a dull routine, but all his steadiness of purpose, all his simple intentness, all his gifts of strategy and powers of foresight, and of turning an interruption into an opportunity, were brought to bear upon this dull routine with a keen pleasure."
-- from "The Gray Mills of Farley" by Sarah Orne Jewett