Teaching, Living, and Learning

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Today I would like to live without an agenda. Today I will let the universe take care of all the agendas. I will let the weather have its agenda, but I will have none. I will let other people – my colleagues and my students – have their agendas, but I will have none. I will let the blood running through my veins have its agenda, but I will have none. I will let my lungs and heart have their agendas, but I will have none. I will let the planets and stars have their agendas, but I will have none.

Today I will give up all personal agendas. I will relax, sit back, and observe the grand agendas of the universe going about their astonishing business.

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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