Teaching, Living, and Learning

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

"Snowy Fields", oil on panel, by Stephen P. Goodman

Teaching Journal

Day 87, Tuesday, February 3, 2009

By some mysterious miracle, today was one of the best days of teaching I can recall. I use the phrase “mysterious miracle” deliberately, because the reasons for this success remain veiled and inexplicable. I honestly have no idea why this happened today – why almost everything I did seemed right, why so much wisdom flourished in my classroom, why each class seemed abundant with blessings. True, I planned a decent lesson and I worked hard during each class, but I try to do that every day, and yet many days in the classroom are small disasters for me. Why was today different? Why did I end each class feeling like I was sailing on the ship called Success? Why did my horizons as a teacher seem to be boundless today – like I could keep teaching and learning about teaching forever?

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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