Teaching, Living, and Learning

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Vasile Hutopila, "Autumn in Bukovina", oil on canvas, 1993

ONE YEAR WITH AN ENGLISH TEACHER

Day 12, September 19, 2007

I try hard to be a peaceful teacher instead of a belligerent one, but today, at one point, I failed. An 8^th grade girl came to me to discuss a grade on a paper, and she seemed to have a rather off-putting attitude. It was obvious that she had not carefully read my comments and that she was primarily interested in getting me to raise her grade. However, instead of treating her attitude like a river flowing harmlessly around me and disappearing in the distance (which would be the peaceful way), I let my feelings control me for a moment, and I reacted in a somewhat hostile manner. I raised my voice slightly and spoke in an uncharacteristically irritated way to the girl. It lasted only a few moments, and I soon calmed down, but the damage was done. The student had seen an irate, undisciplined adult instead of a sensible and temperate one. It's disappointing to me.
(But I tell my students that every mistake has a gift for us in its hands, so I guess I better start looking for mine.)

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