Teaching, Living, and Learning

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

"New Every Morning", oil on stretched canvas, by Nel Jansen

Teaching Journal

Day 78, Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Because I was putting things away after the 9^th grade speech, I came to my first period class a few minutes late, but not to worry – the students were talking quietly when I walked in, and they quickly settled into their books for the usual few minutes of silent reading at the start of class. I always find this astonishing and very gratifying – that these boys and girls are so politely attentive to my expectations. They know I expect them to behave like civil and serious students, and therefore they do. There’s no badgering or commanding involved, because it’s not necessary. More than sufficient, I’ve found, is my solemn expectation, often communicated without the use of words, that the students will do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. They know I expect it of them, and I think they’re glad that I expect it. It makes them feel uncommon and worthy of attention – which they are.

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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