Teaching, Living, and Learning: JOURNAL: August 16, 2006

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

JOURNAL: August 16, 2006

Yesterday the universe, as usual, did everything right, and I was one of the beneficiaries. My morning spiritual reading went very well (starting at 4:00 a.m. in the silent darkness), after which I went for an inspiring walk in the park. Breakfast was especially delicious, and my tutoring sessions in the morning were efficient and enjoyable. I spend the afternoon working on my curriculum for the coming year, which is always an enjoyable task. I sat at my desk at home and slowly got some lessons organized as a pleasant breeze blew through the screen. The minutes passed in total peacefulness.

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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