Teaching, Living, and Learning: Journal: 9/13/05

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Journal: 9/13/05

Yesterday I had a wonderful day of teaching. I worked through my lessons slowly and thoroughly, stopping every so often to give the students the benefit of some silent thinking time, to be sure they were not overly confused. I wasn’t rushed at all. I felt the lessons unfolding in a natural manner, sort of the way the weather of a day unfolds – inexorably and at its own perfect pace.

Speaking of the weather, it stayed just as lovely yesterday as it’s been for the past many days. I even took my class outside for a period in the afternoon. We sat on the grass as the refreshing winds swirled around us, and I read part of a story to the students. There we were in paradise – at a one-in-a-million school on a fine September day of sunshine and peaceable breezes.

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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