Teaching, Living, and Learning

Sunday, July 22, 2007

AN OVERWHELMING FEELING

Yesterday morning I awoke with a clear sense of the overwhelming power of thoughts. For some reason, as I brushed my teeth and prepared for the day, it seemed obvious that thoughts had far more power than I had ever realized. I could almost feel the infinite power of ideas doing its quiet but irresistible work around the world. Billions of ideas were unfolding at any given moment, and each of them would cause immeasurable changes in the universe. As I sipped my first cup of coffee, I felt as if I (and the whole universe) was being swept along by a measureless ocean of ideas. It was an awe-inspiring feeling. I had to sit down to steady myself.

-- July 22, 2007

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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