Teaching, Living, and Learning: Journal: 10/16/05

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Journal: 10/16/05

Yesterday evening, I took a walk in Wilcox Park and saw several beautiful sights. First of all, the park lights came on as the evening darkened, and I saw how lovely they looked. They glowed with a sort of deep golden color, spreading their radiance softly around to a circumference of about forty feet. I felt like I was walking through pools of pretty light as I made my way around the park. When I came to the pond, I noticed something else. I don’t think I had ever stood at the western end of the pond and took in the view from that angle, but I’m glad I did last night. The water was gently rippling in a breeze, sending streaks of silver light across the pond, and in the east a giant yellow moon was sitting just above the trees. I stood for a few minutes and admired the view – the ripples, the trees swinging in the wind, the moon, and one couple pushing their baby stroller and serenely disappearing into the shadows. It was as lovely a scene as I have ever witnessed. I walked back to my apartment slowly and pensively. I kept seeing the park lights and the great moon glowing in my mind.

No comments:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

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