Teaching, Living, and Learning: WAITING

Monday, July 13, 2009

WAITING

(written in October 2002)

Today I need to practice the fine art of waiting. For example, I need to wait for my scholars to settle down at the start of class. They have probably just finished a serious, demanding class in the previous period, and they don’t need another teacher pushing and prodding them to get quickly started with another such class. Like a pond after the water has been stirred, they will quietly calm down into peacefulness soon enough. I also need to remember to wait a few seconds after I ask a question in class. Why do I think the students will have instant answers for my questions? I need to remember that thinking takes time, and cannot be rushed. Finally, I need to wait for happiness today. I can’t chase down happiness, for it only comes to those who wait patiently, just like we wait by the side of the pond for the water to slowly clear. Happiness, like so many good things, is always ready to arrive at the doors of those who are calmly waiting.

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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