Teaching, Living, and Learning: Journal: 10/26/05

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Journal: 10/26/05

Yesterday an unpleasantly cold rain blew back into town. All day the kids at school were coming in from outside with raindrops glistening on their shirts and a look of winter on their faces. I heard shivers and brrrrs all up and down the hallway. You would have thought it was going to start snowing any second. Fortunately for me and my students, I have a small, reliable space heater in my classroom. I turned it on yesterday morning, and within an hour I could feel an agreeable sense of wellbeing in the room. Throughout the day, my teaching seemed to take place in a warm and comforting atmosphere. The wintry storm was surging around outside, but in the classroom there was the peace and contentment that comes from being warm on a cold and showery day. (It also comes from small space heaters.)

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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