Teaching, Living, and Learning: JOURNAL: August 31, 2006

Thursday, August 31, 2006

JOURNAL: August 31, 2006

Yesterday everything seemed to happen just as it was meant to happen – thoroughly and correctly. Whatever I found myself involved in – meetings, conversations, meals, driving somewhere, teaching a class – seemed to be precisely what I should be doing at that time, and I seemed to be doing it perfectly. Everything occurred the way it was meant to occur. You might say, I guess, that yesterday was an ideal, faultless day. That’s not to say that everything went exactly the way I wanted it to, or the way I had planned. Nor is it to say that no mistakes were made. Like any other day, my personal plans were occasionally thwarted or sidetracked, and I wish I could do a few things over again and do them a little differently. However, it’s still undoubtedly true that whatever happened yesterday was exactly what was supposed to happen. Even the mistakes had some purpose, some value, some importance which I hope I will someday understand. It was a day when the universe carried on with its harmonious, perfect work, and I enjoyed being part of it.

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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